Rock Band

Rock Band is a video game that consists of 13 releases

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Rock Band expands on the concepts Harmonix established in its Guitar Hero franchise by allowing players to sing, play guitar, bass, and drums to a variety of songs from various genres and time periods..

Overview

Released on November 20th, 2007, this Harmonix-developed and EA/MTV-published music game provided players with four instruments--guitar, vocals, drums, and bass guitar--which are controlled by different instrument-shaped controllers. The basic gameplay for the guitar, bass, and drums are similar to Guitar Hero, and the vocals bear a strong resemblance Konami's Karaoke Revolution. Both of these similarities are unsurprising, as Harmonix originally developed both of those franchises.

Rock Band has several modes of play, including a multiplayer Band World Tour, a single player Solo Tour, both Solo and Band Quickplay modes, and various tutorial stages and competitive quickplay modes as well. Rock Band ships with 58 songs, 51 of which are master recordings (the remaining 7 being covers). The game also features a built-in Music Store, where users can choose to purchase from hundreds of songs, song packs, and entire albums, with new content added every week. A complete listing can be found here: Rock Band DLC.

Gameplay

Guitar/Bass

Rock Band Guitar

The guitar sections are almost identical to the early Guitar Hero system, except the gems are now rectangular instead of circular. They have implemented a more robust hammer-on and pull-off system which allows them to manually place these in songs instead of having them automatically detected. Overdrive (Rock Band's equivalent of star power) is still activated by either tilting the guitar upwards or by pressing the select button. This guitar features solo buttons, which are located further down the neck of the guitar, and closer to the body. These solo buttonsallow for the user to play through solos in certain game tracks without having to strum the strum bar.

Rock Band Drums

Drums

The drums are designed to be similar to real drums. They are played using regular drum sticks and the pads themselves are very similar to practice pads. The gameplay of the drums is similar to that of the guitar and bass, however there are only four regular notes. This is supplemented by a kick/bass pedal. The bass pedal is represented by a horizontal orange line on-screen. Overdrive is activated by completing freestyle drum fills, then hitting the green pad (representing the crash cymbal).

Rock Band Microphone

Vocals

The vocal track features a horizontal scrolling bar with lines to represent the pitch. Depending on the user's preference, the lyrics either scroll beneath the bar in time with the music, or remain stationary and change color as the music progresses, similar to classic karaoke systems. The style used is reminiscent of the Karaoke Revolution games, which Harmonix also developed. The current pitch being sung is represented by an arrow on-screen which can then be used to judge if the pitch needs to be lowered or raised. Overdrive energy is obtained by singing specially marked phrases accurately. Once enough energy has been collected, Overdrive can be activated any time a yellow section without pitch guides shows up, usually during a break in the vocals.

Game Modes

Solo Tour

For guitar, drums and vocals only. This is the single player career mode component of Rock Band, and strongly resembles the tiered structure of the Guitar Hero games. As the palyer rieses through the teirs, the difficulty of the songs increase. The score a player recieves at the end of a song may be added to their career score, which is the total of the highest scores of all the songs played at that difficulty. A player can compair their career score with others across the country through online leaderboards.

Solo/Band Quick Play

This is the quick, get in and play mode of Rock Band. Quick Play available for any single instrument, or combination of. This mode can be played either online or off, with remote players filling in for band members if the host chooses. The scores achieved in this mode are not recorded onto leaderboards.

Band World Tour

This is the multiplayer co-op career mode of rock band. The player must create a band with multiple people and go on tour like a real band. Traveling from city to city, the player has a choice of different venues to play at, each with several different set lists. Initially, set lists are short, with one or two songs, and most of the cities and venues are locked. Playing through set lists unlocks new cities, venues, set lists, and songs as well as extras such as tour buses and jets. After enough set lists have been completed, the endless set list is unlocked, which has the band play through all 58 on-disc songs non-stop.

Score Duel

Score duels is when two players compete for the highest score on the same song under the same difficulty. Players will play through the song and simply see who comes out with the higher score. This is also the main multiplayer component of rock band.

Tug of War

Players will take turns playing sections of the song trying to win the crowd's favor. Played on the same difficulty, this is similar to the guitar hero's face off mode. This is also the other multiplayer component of rock band.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack consists of 58 songs listed by band in alphabetical order, as well as additional downloadable content. The on-disc songs are (* indicates a cover, ~ indicates songs that can not be exported to Rock Band 2):

Artist - "Song Title"

*Aerosmith - "Train Kept-a-Rollin"
Beastie Boys - "Sabotage"
*~Black Sabbath - "Paranoid"
Blue Oyster Cult - "(Don't Fear) The Reaper"
Bon Jovi - "Wanted Dead Or Alive"
Boston - "Foreplay/Long Time"
The Clash - "Should I Stay Or Should I Go?"
Coheed and Cambria - "Welcome Home"
David Bowie - "Suffragette City"
Deep Purple - "Highway Star"
Faith No More - "Epic"
Fall Out Boy - "Dead On Arrival"
Foo Fighters - "Learn To Fly"
Garbage - "I Think I'm Paranoid"
The Hives - "Main Offender"
Hole - "Celebrity Skin"
*~Iron Maiden - "Run To The Hills"
Jet - "Are You Gonna Be My Girl?"
The Killers - "When You Were Young"
Kiss - "Detroit Rock City"
~Metallica - "Enter Sandman"
Molly Hatchet - "Flirtin' With Disaster"
*Mountain - "Mississippi Queen"
The New Pornographers - "Electric Vision"
Nine Inch Nails - "The Hand That Feeds"
Nirvana - "In Bloom"
OK Go - "Here It Goes Again"
*The Outlaws - "Green Grass And High Tides"
Pixies - "Wave Of Mutilation"
The Police - "Next To You"
Queens of the Stone Age - "Go With The Flow"
Radiohead - "Creep"
Ramones - "Blitzkrieg Bop"
Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Dani California"
R.E.M. - "Orange Crush"
The Rolling Stones - "Gimme Shelter"
*Rush - "Tom Sawyer"
Smashing Pumpkins - "Cherub Rock"
Soundgarden - "Black Hole Sun"
Stone Temple Pilots - "Vasoline"
The Strokes - "Reptilia"
*Sweet - "Ballroom Blitz"
Weezer - "Say It Ain't So"
The Who - "Won't Get Fooled Again"
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Maps"

Bonus songs

The Acro-Brats - "Day Later, Dollar Short"
Anarchy Club - "Blood Doll"
Bang Camaro - "Pleasure (Pleasure)"
Crooked X - "Nightmare"
Death of the Cool - "Can't Let Go"
Flyleaf - "I'm So Sick"
Freezepop - "Brainpower"
Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives - "I Get By"
The Konks - "29 Fingers"
The Mother Hips - "Time We Had"
Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld - "Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld"
Tribe - "Outside"
Vagiant - "Seven"

Downloadable Content

Check out the Rock Band DLC page for a list of songs currently available.

All DLC is cross-compatible between different games in the Rock Band franchise.

Faulty peripherals

The game was noted for having faulty peripherals that ever didnt work or broke quickly, some major faults were that the drums even randomly stopped recieving beats or making a different drum trigger despite not hitting it.
other common problems are that of the base pedal snapping when kicked too hard and problems with guitar and mic were noticed has the guitar's strum bar can be easily broken and the mic can sometimes not register the players singing. In response EA has allowed anyone with faulty equipment can go onto the website and send back there faulty goods for replacements.

The broken base pedal became a major problem for Rock band

General Information Edit

Game Name	Rock Band
Platform(s)	PlayStation 2 Xbox 360 PlayStation 3 Wii
Publisher(s)	Electronic Arts MTV Games
Developer(s)	Harmonix Music Systems, Inc. Pi Studios, LLC.
Genres	Add a new genre Music/Rhythm
Themes	Add a new theme
Original US Release	Nov. 20, 2007 need a fuzzy date?
Original US Release	know the real date?
Aliases	RB