Where do I begin with this awesome game?
This game was the first in the Rock Band series and it had an excellent start. From the developers of the first 2 Guitar Hero games, comes Rock Band. Rock Band had a variety of songs, but not many on disc songs, only 58. 45 were in the main setlist making 9 tiers, and 13 bonus songs. The only other flaws that are possibly known are: bass pedal snapping in half, and the stratocaster not working properly. But when you play the game and realize how great the game is, none of those flaws will even matter. EA (the hardware developers) have a 24/7 support page that allows people to order replacements for their broken instruments. The instruments that will be replaced have to be Rock Band instruments. NO GUITAR HERO GUITARS WILL BE REPLACED! Also to fix the broken bass pedal you can buy The Destroyer Pedal, or get a metal plate to put over the plastic and it will fix it all up.
This game features 4 instruments. A first for any rhythm game. Of the 4 instruments is: Guitar, Bass, Drums, and Vocals. Guitar and Bass can be played with the stratocaster, or a Guitar Hero II, or a Guitar Hero III guitar controller. The Drums can only be played with Rock Band drums at launch, but now there is an ION drumset that will work with Rock Band and Rock Band 2. The Vocals can be either done by the microphone (included in special edition bundle, or sold sepreately), or with an XBOX LIVE headset (wired or wireless).
Along with the great instruments included with this game, there also comes the great songs. Some of the best songs on the setlist will include: Run to the Hills - as made famous by Iron Maiden, Train Kept a Rollin' - as made famous by Aerosmith, Don't Fear the Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult, Foreplay/ Longtime - Boston, Enter Sandman - Metallica, Dani California - Red Hot Chili Peppers, Highway Star - Deep Purple, In Bloom - Nirvana, Next to You - The Police, Paranoid - as made famous by Black Sabbath, and Won't Get Fooled Again - The Who. Just to name a few songs ;)
To play in the solo tour, you have to create a character. Your character can be anyway you want him/her to look. They can use whatever guitar, bass, microphone, or drumset you would want them to use. You can choose their clothes, and hair style as well.
This game has many game modes:
Solo Tour: Solo Tour allows the player to play a solo career with the options of Guitar, Drums, and Vocals. As you can probably expect, the songs will get harder as the game progresses. I.E. songs in the first tier will be easier than the songs in the last tier ;)
Band World Tour- this game mode allows players (up to the 4 instruments) to be used. They can also just have a band with Guitar and Bass, Guitar and Drums, Bass and Drums, Drums and Vocals, Vocals and Guitar, or Vocals and Bass. Players will travel all around the world playing in venues playing the songs that have been set for there, and they will also be able to make setlists from the songs available, and downloaded songs. There will also be random setlists which will have songs from any of the songs available and downloaded songs as well. The better you do on a song, the more fans you get, and the more money you can get.
Score Duel: Score Duel is just a game mode where two players face off to see who can get the most points in a song on any instrument that the player chose to use. And as you would expect, the person who gets the most points by the end of the song will win.
Tug of War- is another head to head game mode where players chose and instrument and whoever has more of the green bar going in their direction by the end of the song wins.
Onscreen view of the game if all 4 instruments are being used on the same XBOX 360 console. Vocals will always be on the top of the screen, Bass always on the left, Guitar always on the right, and Drums always in the center. Remember this is only if played on the same 360 console. If playing on LIVE, Vocals on top of the screen, (whatever instrument your playing in the middle of the screen. For instance if your playing Guitar, Guitar will be in the center, Drums will be on the right, and Bass on the left).
To ensure that this game never gets old, Harmonix (HMX) releases downloadable songs every tuesday on the XBOX LIVE Marketplace. These songs may be singles, track packs, or albums. Songs will be priced at $0.99 (80 MSP), $1.99 (160 MSP). Some track packs can be 800 MSP, but then their are albums that can be priced by however many songs are on the album.
Through an update for this game, they included the music store. The music store allows players to preview songs before they buy them, preview track packs, and see new releases for that week.
Thanks for reading my review on Rock Band =)
