This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

I was in college when the original Rock band came out and it was the perfect time. Me and some friends had just moved out of the dorm and rented a real crappy house, but it was still our house and we had our own rooms. I remember distinctly borrowing money from my roommates to help me buy the big bundle (don’t worry I paid them back), and planed on busting this game out at every party. For a brief time my roommates all enjoyed playing it in our communal family room, but that quickly changed as they didn’t have the dedication I did to honing my craft. I’m only partially kidding. I loved and still love playing video games, and being a broke college student who just shelled out $200 for a game, meant I was going to get the most out of it. I had played Guitar Hero, and done Karaoke, so I wasn’t really interested in playing the guitar piece or being on the Mic, I had my heart set on the drums. I also viewed Rock Band as a cooperative play experience and I didn’t want to be the person who was holding back the band, failing songs out, or needing to be saved, so I practiced the shit out of those drums. Hindsight tells me I probably played the game too much, especially such a noisy game, and while I tried to limit my playing to when I was home alone so as not to bother anyone, I also didn’t check in everyone’s room each time I was about to play.

To give you a little piece of where I was at, I played the first one so much that I got all the achievements. Which meant I played every song on Expert on each of the instruments and completed a whole multiplayer tour also on expert. It was one of the very few instances that I felt genuinely proud of a video game achievement. Sure it was nice as a kid being good at Star Fox 64 and having my brother’s friends pay me to unlock all of the characters on foot in multiplayer, but here was a skill that I could show off or use to transition to playing a real instrument (I’m talking about drumming and not guitar or bass). Skip to much later in my life, but I did transition to taking my drumming skill I learned from Rock band to actually playing real drums, and while I’m no Alex Navarro, I can use a real kit.

However, all that experience was in the past… we need to talk about playing Rock Band now, not what it was like for a college kid with nothing but time to spend. Of course I will also be honest at the get-go, Rock Band 1 is merely a stepping stone to future iterations where the game is a much better experience for all involved. If by the strange chance you are reading this and wondering if you should get into Rock Band 1, I will just tell you now that you will enjoy any of the later versions more. So is Rock Band the greatest game of all time?

Playing it now is a very different experience, for one thing, you might forget that this game was designed almost exclusively to be played with other people in person. The showpiece mode is locked unless you have at least two people logged in on separate instruments. You can finagle your way past this barrier if you are willing to sing and play an instrument at the same time, otherwise you are left playing solo mode. Being a 30 something dad of two kids who are too young to play Rock Band, and too short on time to organize a friend get together often enough to play through the main mode, I am going to review these in two halves. The showpiece mode will be reviewed via my memory, while the solo mode can be discussed as that was my recent completion for the game.

Now its fair to say that Harmonix when designing Rock Band clearly wanted to simulate the feeling of forming a band and going on tour when they made the game. It made sense in their mind that the game would be played with other people with a group of people. Hell, it’s a party game and people playing it solo were probably only doing it to practice their instrument. Thus we have the “World Tour” mode which is the mode locked to multiplayer (local only, not online). In this mode, you and your bandmates all take turns making your characters (choosing body types, hair styles, “rock” types, and clothes) then coming together to create a band name and logo and starting location. The creation aspect is pretty deep as a whole. While you certainly won’t be able to make a character that looks just like you, as there are just archetypes to pick between, as you play there are vast options for clothing, tattoos, hair styles, and design choices that you can make. I was able to perfectly replicate my favorite hoodie into the game using their image customizer, and then wear it for gigs. Creating a logo for the band uses that same image customization, so if you have the patience you can create almost any logo you want. Seeing your custom logo on stage, or decked out characters during loading screens went a long way to helping you feel band-like.

The mode itself saw you picking gigs that varied from single songs to multiple song setlists that you would play and be scored (1-5 Stars, Gold as a sixth star, if you were on Expert). You might start by playing “Should I Stay or Should I Go” in dingy bars, to eventually playing a 10 song set in a Tokyo Stadium. Your progress was gated by earning enough Stars, and it was possible and sometimes necessary to replay songs/sets to do better to progress to the next area. It felt nice ranking up, earning cash to deck out your character, and seeing what songs or sets would appear at the next town or location that you opened up. If you were a well-balanced band, you could alternate who would control what songs/sets you picked so that they could play to their strengths or avoid songs they hated playing. It’s a good base to create a game but there were some areas that might have just needed some time in the oven.

Everyone remembers that Rock band would have a plethora of songs available for purchase after the game’s release, and while this is certainly true, those songs weren’t really folded into the world tour mode, because Harmonix couldn’t plan if someone would buy any set song. They would only show up in 2 setlists per town. One setlist was just a random selection of songs (the computer would pick the song before you go on stage), so you didn’t know what you were going to get, and the other setlist was a custom selection where you could build your own setlist. That meant that all the other setlists in the game just cycled through the same 58 songs that originally came on the disc. This meant that you would hear these songs a lot, and while if you were a real touring rock band, you would play your same hits night after night to different crowds, it didn’t translate as well into a video game. I can tell you now, that the song “Black Hole Sun” has been completely ruined for me because of this game, because of the amount of times you needed to play it during the world tour. While the Random or Custom setlists would give you a brief reprieve from the same 58 songs, it wouldn’t give you enough stars to progress through the whole game, and if you got 5 stars on the setlist, it wouldn’t even benefit you to play them over with new songs. You could have (and I did) spend a lot of money boosting your Rock band catalog, but outside playing these songs individually in quick play, you weren’t really rewarded for having these show up in the World Tour mode. Later Rock band games incorporated these songs better, but also having the additional rock band legacy songs carried over meant that you could have more variety.

On top of that, the game really wanted everyone in the band to have the same difficulty selected, and while each person could individually change their difficulty it didn’t work as well to do so. If 3 out of 4 people were playing Expert, you couldn’t earn the expert achievements, or even the Gold stars. Also since the scroll wheels of the song were impacted by difficulty, having one Guitar, Bass or Drum person playing at a lesser difficulty would throw the timing off on songs that you might have practiced or played previously. All of that practice I did to learn expert drums would come crashing down, when my roommates wanted to play normal guitar. Obviously my advice is to play at the difficulty you are comfortable at, because I would rather pass songs at normal, then fail songs at expert. However, it never benefitted you to play at a higher difficulty then someone playing at a lower difficulty. You didn’t get the benefit of getting gold stars (expert) or unlocking set difficulty achievements, so why not scale down to what your friends are playing at, even if it is slightly easier/boring of you to do so.

I can tell you one thing though, and that is even with its failings the World Tour mode was something special. I can still remember cracking that mode open for the first time, before we knew the whole setlist in the game, making incremental money and spending it on outfits or instrument skins that were just cosmetic. I even remember spending hours customizing band logos and costumes, so that the next time the “band” got back together they could see what I came up with. I’ll remember the first time we were all playing in sync, and the virtual crowd was singing along to the chorus of the song, and how that felt. Like I said, the game came out at the literal perfect time for me to discover it, and I can safely say that I won’t ever have this experience again. Sure my kids could want to play Rock band as they get older, and we can have family game night and it could still be really fun, but we would obviously start with a later Rock Band and it won’t consume my gaming life like it did back in the day.

Lets move to Solo Mode, which is what I recently completed. Just to level set, I played this playthrough on Hard and played through 100 (all original 58 and 42 DLC) songs of my 318 Rock Band 1 catalogue. I really spent a lot of time debating with myself if I should play on Expert, but I couldn’t think of a good reason to force myself to perfect my guitar skills again nearly 15 years later with no benefit. Hard was the compromise, because Normal would have been too boring. In Solo mode you pick a single instrument and then play songs in order by difficulty until you have played every included song in the game. Songs are grouped by 5 in terms of difficulty for the instrument you selected, so your first 5 drum songs won’t be the same first 5 guitar songs. You can at anytime pick a DLC song, but those aren’t done progressively, and they don’t count towards “beating the game.” Each song you complete gets you a little bit of custom cash, so you can still deck out your created character, and after beating a tier of songs you unlock the next tier as well as an instrument skin. You can bring your character over into the World Tour mode, or vice versa, but the only thing you are really bringing over is cosmetics.

There are no setlists here, no mystery songs, and while the tiers all take place at a different venue, there isn’t the feel of becoming a big band like world tour suggests. This is a glorified practice mode, If you relied on your band to get throughs songs in World Tour, you don’t have that here. You need to potentially learn where you need to save your special for, or how to complete a solo individually because if you fail out of a song, that’s it you have to start it over. Of course by beating any of the songs on expert, you can give yourself a pat on the back, because you know you don’t need help to get through certain songs. Almost everyone needs help on “Green Grass and High Tides” to get through the guitar part on expert, and playing it as a band is relatively easy, because you can space out your specials to prevent someone from failing or to revive them if they do. However beating it on Expert Solo, is a different beast since you don’t have anything to fall back on and failing it in the 10^th minute is demoralizing knowing you would have to start all over.

There isn’t much to really say about Solo mode, because its such an afterthought in a game like this. Did I have fun re-visiting some songs again, sure? And I was still reminded how other songs are absolutely trash (looking at you “Highway Star”).. Do I wish that I could take my solo band on a world tour in Rock band 1? Absolutely, but Harmonix fixed that in later sequels where that is a possibility. Do I wish it utilized the extra songs I paid for? Of Course… Playing the song once in a quickplay or begging for it to come up in a “random” setlist for world tour is kinda bunk, but…

Harmonix did great things with the success of Rock Band. In its sequels, it allowed you to bring over not only all the original songs from the disc version of the game, but all of the DLC that you bought. It was a way to keep you in the ecosystem and not feel like you need to start over from scratch every time, which would have surely had people falling off board between sequels if they had to switch games to play that 1 song they liked. Hell, upon completing this game I did look at maybe getting Rock Band 4 (one I don’t have), and the only reason I don’t have it is my music library lives on Xbox (specifically the 360) and I’m not going to buy it on PS4 and not have any tracks, or have to buy an Xbox 1 just for a single game. Even now, there is a rumor that Rock band 5 might actually see a release, but sadly I think my time with the series is gone, and that bums me out a little bit.

So, is Rock Band the greatest game of all time. No, but it is a very special game to me. It won’t reach the highs of Rock Band 2, which is the one I sunk the most time into, but it kickstarted me on that whole journey. I could argue that you will enjoy this game, if you like the tracklist, but that boils the game down and misses the point. Sure the track list is important, and you want to know that there are songs that you like on the disc before you buy it, but this game was about the experience of the game more then the music. I probably like less then 50% of the tracks on this disc, but some songs are still enjoyable to play even if you don’t like them, and maybe a few songs will be surprises to you that you find yourself actually liking upon playing the game. So, while I can safely say that RB isn’t as good as some of the top of my list, it is also one of the few games that can appeal to more people. It’s a more active party game that can devolve into a regular hang out sesh, and it can start you onto wanting to play an instrument in real life. The game took everything they learned from Guitar Hero and made it so much better. There is a reason Guitar Hero eventually came out with their own band game, instead of the reverse happening.

Is this the greatest game of all time?: No

Where does it rank: Rock Band 1 is far from perfect and not the best version of the game they were trying to make, so despite my love of this game I am placing this as the 46th Greatest Game of All Time. Future iterations will be higher. It sits between "Streets of Rogue" (45th) and "WCW/NWO Revenge" (47th)

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion).Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

Thanks for listening

I still have all the instruments in a closet, waiting for my kids to get old enough to play it with me. Hope my PS3 doesn't crap out before then.

I think I'd have loved Rock Band and rhythm games in general if I hadn't come to them so late. By the time I did sit down to play one, they were already well past their prime. As it is, I still had a hell of a time with that small scale one on XBLA... Rock Band Blitz, I think? Great game.

I didn't get a Rock Band set until The Beatles: Rock Band. I played the hell out of that game. Although it was mostly by myself as I didn't have any friends closeby who could stop by my place.

I've been a Rock Band devotee since the beginning, and while it is mostly a special occasion thing now (the family plays every New Year's Eve for our own countdown), I still love it. I also agree that 2 was my favorite (not counting Beatles), even though 3 was probably the best overall game. I'm happy Harmonix is still chugging along even if I only buy maybe 1 of 10 DLC anymore.

@judaspete: thanks for the comment.. yeah I'm kind of doing the same thing, but I also know that when my kids do get introduced to it, they won't care for any of the songs.

@sparky_buzzsaw: Thanks for the read.. the smaller games were great, I remember pouring hours into an ipod game that allowed me to import my own songs.. remember ipods?

@chamurai: thanks for the comment.. the Beatles rock band game I barely touched, I kept saving it for a big game night and it never happened.. so I guess once I spin that game I'll finally crack the seal on it.

@redwing42: thanks for the comment.. it's easy to get hooked back in, I almost went straight into rockband 2 abandoning my method. I even looked into rock band 4 but I had to pull myself away, before I got too crazy.

@imunbeatable80: I still use one. Haha.

The Guitar Hero 2 guitar was much better than the Rock Band guitar. Too easy to flub notes with those mushy buttons.

That said, drumming was a real treat. Rock Band was one of the last games I bought physically because I was able to trade it in once I moved into a dorm and realized the kit was far too cumbersome/loud to play in that environment. I’ve always regretted not owning one anymore, and realized the opportunity to replay any game on a whim is cooler than pocket change for weed.