Rock Band - The Closest Thing to Being in a Band

Rock Band which is available for the Playstation 3 the Xbox 360 and Playstation 2 is a great party game which expanded on the Guitar Hero idea. Rock Band includes game play with the drum set and using a microphone. This game is easy to just sit down and play and becomes very addictive. The developer of Rock Band, Harmonix had a head start since they developed the first two Guitar Hero games which were very popular to say the least.

When you purchase this game it comes in a very heavy box that weighs in at about twenty pounds. Unpacking this came is everyone's nightmare. There is more plastic and twist ties then I knew existed. But after you get everything out of the box and the drum set together you can admire what you spend one hundred and seventy dollars on.

Rock Band is like three distinct games built into one mega game. The guitar is built a little different then the Guitar Hero guitar. The neck is a little bit longer and there are two set of buttons. The Rock Band Guitar also has a built in effects switcher. The game play for guitar and bass is virtually identical to Guitar Hero. The strumming is identical except the strum bar does not make a clicking noise this is a relief for some people. Also many people did not really use the effects switch or the second set of fret buttons. Many people played the guitar part just like Guitar Hero. Unfortunately for some the guitar part of this game was barley challenging at all. I compare the expert part on guitar to Guitar Hero's hard. This was a turn off for some.

Next is the singing game. This is basically a karaoke part of the game where the lyrics go across the top of the screen and you try to match the pitch of your voice to the on screen bar. This is not a hard task on all difficulties. The singing can be fun but usually the weakest link ends up singing since it is the least fun.

Finally there are the drums. The drums are the best and most fun part of the Rock Band experience. The drum set is four colored pads and a kick pedal. This part of the game is most realistic. If you can play the drums on expert you can probably do a decent job on an actual drum set. There is also no reason to take it easy when using the drums the fills give you a chance to be creative and there are some solos when you can just do what you please. The drums are built very well and are really sturdy, we hit the pads very hard and they still work perfectly.

This game has over fifty songs included on the disk and well over half of them are original recordings. This makes the game play experience a lot more fun. The online aspect is also a plus. You can hop online and form a band with anyone in the country and then simply just rock out. This game has only been out for about a month and there are already over ten songs out for downloadable content. This shows how hard Harmonix is working to deliver a amazing Rock Band experience. Another good thing is they are experimenting with other genres of songs for Rock Band I personally think there will be some funk songs coming out in the near future.