This isn't a review (I do plan to write one), but more like a stream of consciousness type deal where I'm going to talk about how I feel about Rock Band 3. I have quite a few things to talk about, so this may get rambly. Fair warning.
Rock Band 3 is easily one of the most anticipated games of the year for me personally. I've been into rhythm games since playing Guitar Hero 2 at a friends house back in the day. Since then, I've been deep deep into a variety of rhythm games. No other games have grabbed me quite like the Rock Band franchise though. I liked the style of Rock Band over Guitar Hero. The fact that they evolved the genre by introducing vocals and drums didn't hurt either. I played countless hours of RB1 and 2. I beat the endless setlists for each, multiple times. When I say multiple times, I mean a minimum of three times each. Needless to say, I was primed and ready for the launch of Rock Band 3. I showed up to my local Gamestop on Monday night, about 11:30 for the midnight launch. I stood in line with a bunch of other people (mostly there for Fable), and I finally made it to the counter and paid an unreasonable amount of money for a single video game. After getting it home and playing for almost exactly a week now, that amount of money I spent still feels unreasonable, but I don't regret it one bit. With that, I'm just going to jump into a bunch of random thoughts. Starting with:
The Keyboard and Pro-Keys
The new keyboard peripheral is what ended up costing me so much money, but I'm glad I got it. Pro-Keys are probably the biggest change from RB2 to Rock Band 3. (It could probably be argued that Pro-guitar is bigger, but I can't comment on that as of now as I don't own a pro-guitar.) The first thing I did when I popped the game in was jump strait into Pro-Keys. I didn't want the watered-down experience of regular keys, I wanted to jump head first into this new and magical world of Rock Band Pro-Keys. I think I made the right decision, as learning my way around the keyboard, and advancing from easy onto medium (and in some cases hard), has been the most rewarding Rock Band experience I've had since I first played the drums in RB1. Harmonix has effectively translated keyboard play to Rock Band, and it's actually fun. I can't say that I have any piano training or anything, but playing Pro-Keys honestly feels like I'm playing a real instrument (probably because I basically am). The songs Harmonix has chosen to fill out the on-disc setlist are, in general, fantastic choices for playing Pro-Keys. There are actually a handful of on-disc that aren't keyboard compatible, which is weird, but most are. Not to mention the three free Doors tracks that were up on the marketplace; Light My Fire is one of the best keyboard songs currently in my library. I guess what it comes down to, is that the keyboard is a great addition. It's challenging as hell, but as someone that's deep into Rock Band, that's exactly what I want.
The keyboard's a great addition that adds tons of fun and breathes some much needed fresh air into the series. I recommend picking up the bundle, or if you have a PS3 or Wii, pick up the keyboard separately.
Pro-Drums
There's not a whole lot more I can say about pro-drums. They're a great minor step up from what already existed. The thing is, the abstraction of playing drums was already extremely minimal, especially compared to playing the guitar. With Pro-Drums, abstraction has been basically eliminated completely and you're now playing honest to god drum parts. Even hi-hat rolls have been recharted to the hi-hat cymbal instead of being unrealistically charted to what is otherwise the snare pad. Pro-Drums are great. Pro-Drums are realistic. Pro-Drums are fun as hell. Moving along.
UI and gameplay changes
This is kind of a wide spanning topic. I'll start with the in-song UI and gameplay. This is basically what you know and (hopefully) love. You earn stars that build in the corner as you earn points. You have a meter on the left that shows everyone's instruments, and how close the players of said instruments are to being yelled at for failing. The note tracks still scroll, and you still get little colored rectangles flying towards your face (often much to fast). There are some little tweaks here and there though, that in my opinion, aren't necessarily for the best. Exhibit A: Solo indication. It's probably a case of me not being "used to it" yet, but I often have no idea that I've transitioned into a solo while on guitar for example. The percentage counter has been removed (yet is still there for keys for some reason) and the blue color that the makeshift fretboard turned is now reserved for when you're in 4x multiplier mode. Therefore a new light blue highlight is the new solo indicator and it's really too subtle. You might think it' no big deal to not know exactly when you go into a solo, but I use the solo buttons on my guitar, and it's a big problem when it's not obvious as to when I can or can't finger tap sections of songs. This isn't a huge giant deal, as most of the time I can easily tell when I'm heading into a solo, but it's annoying when it catches me off guard.
There's a new prompt while playing guitar and drums to look out for as well. For example, when there's a super fast drum roll, instead of being forced to be super accurate and hit every note perfectly (no more, no less), it gives you a darkened section and you just need to hit the roll as fast or faster than what is charted. It's an interesting change that also applies to guitar on those fast sections where you're hammering-on/pulling-off yellow and blue really fast, for example. Sorry that I don't know all the "proper" terms, but that's why I play Rock Band and not a real guitar. :P I like this system, although I'd really prefer if pro-mode forced you to play the exact part, RB2 style. Hitting rolls too fast is definitely easier than nailing it, but that's not what I want from the mode that's supposed to push me as far as possible.
I'll also just throw it out here that unison bonuses when playing alone are stupid. The point of a unison bonus is to reward the band when multiple players all nail a section. It's less exciting when you know that all your A.I. band mates will never mess up. Minor point.
This is getting long, so I'll end this section with the general "out of song" UI. The song selection screen is something thats needed an overhaul for quite some time, and it got it. I was really excited for this, but it has issues. First of all, it lets you sort your likely enormous library by almost any method you see fit. Want to see every song in your collection that supports keys, was made in 1980, and that you've scored 5 stars on? That's doable. You can even save setlists locally now for replay later. A feature I really like is being able to take those saved setlists and share them with friends and create challenges out of them. Harmonix has already started created setlist challenges that auto-populate into the saved selist menu; pretty slick. The options are all there, and once you get the hang of quickly jumping through a couple menus, it's a nice and powerful sorting too. As for the issues though, I've ran into a couple while using keys specifically. The Music Library allows you to choose which instruments previous scores are displayed on the selection screen. I decided to use the keyboard to play a guitar part, but after I was dumped back to the selection screen, the game thought my keyboard was a guitar and wouldn't let me display keyboard scores anymore. I had to play another full song on pro-keys in order for it to recognize that i was using a keyboard again. Also, the selection screen will display which friends you're close to, score wise, but it takes forever to switch to that display after selecting the song. That should have been a toggle option. Again, more nit-picky stuff, but they just seem like easy mistakes that should have been fixed.
Rocker Customization
I don't know if this really counts as customization, but assigning stand-ins for your band could have been done better. Instead of just selecting a few characters to stand in, they could have allowed you to pick which instruments they'd stand in for. I want the guy I created to be my lead singer, to always be my lead singer, but I haven't found a way to make sure that happens.
Training
All the same training options are in there from RB2, but now with Pro instrument training as well. I'm just going to say it right now: Pro-Keys training is an absolute bitch. I've completed the easy and medium trainers so far, but the hard lessons are bat-shit bananas. That's not even getting into the expert trainers. It's pretty impressive the kind of depth that the trainers go into at times, but it's baffling other times when it seems like they just expect you to know certain things. The difficulty curve is not nice. Hand position on Pro-Keys is probably the biggest issue here. It's been brought up by lots of people and for good reason. It just seems counter-intuitive to be asking you to play these complex patterns without showing you how to properly attempt it. It will probably come with time, but including some diagrams, or better yet video, would have gone a long way in helping me learn the most efficient hand positions. In the case of Pro-Keys though, there are 17 different exercises that each have multiple parts. That's a ton of stuff to learn and once you can get it all down, you could probably take that right over to a real keyboard or piano. It's an awesome idea that I just wish was executed slightly better. I'm still looking forward to the day I can complete all of the Pro-Keys trainers. For now though, it seems insurmountable.
Also new to the practice modes is the "Learn A Song" mode. This take you step by step through a real song (as opposed to the little training beats) until you can theoretically memorize the parts and go play them for real. This is a pro-mode only feature, and in fact I think it's just for keys and guitar. Pretty cool though to think that you're learning a real song by repetition through a mode in Rock Band.
All other training stuff is kinda as you'd expect. Freestyle drum mode is in there, as is regular practice mode.
Setlist
A lot of people still put a lot of stock into the quality of the on-disc setlist. That's understandable, but the way I see it, Rock Band is more of a "platform" than ever before. I currently have 533 songs, completely independent of the ones that came on the Rock Band 3 disc. That's kind of insane, yes, but it almost makes the RB3 on-disc setlist irrelevant at this point. It's a good thing though regardless, that the Rock Band 3 setlist is probably the best of the series yet. A lot of it was built around the Keyboard, but that doesn't detract any from the fun you can have on other instruments. Songs, from the intro video jam, "Break On Through (To the Other Side)" by The Doors, to "Space Oddity" by David Bowie are featured. "Roundabout" by Yes, "Imagine" by John Lennon, "Free Bird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Crosstown Traffic" by Jimmy Hendix, and "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen are some of my personal favorites. Really almost every single song on there is fun to play though. Sure there's a handful of songs that I would have left out (I'm lookin' at you, "Du Hast"), but everyone has different music preferences and I know someone at Harmonix had to fight hard for that one, as with the rest of the tracks selected. I honestly couldn't be much happier with the setlist. It's incredibly fun getting some people together and playing "The Power of Love" by Huey Lewis & the News. Good times. :)
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