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Rock Band

Platform: Xbox 360, Play Station 3, Play Station 2, Wii
Genre: Rhythm game
Release Date: November 20, 2007
Developer: Harmonix
Publisher: MTV Games, Electronic Arts

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Synopsis

Rock Band allows up to four players to simulate the performance of popular rock music songs by playing with controllers modeled after musical instruments. Players can play the lead guitar, bass guitar, and drums parts to songs with "instrument controllers", as well as sing through a USB microphone. Players are scored on their ability to match scrolling musical "notes" while playing instruments, or by their ability to match the singer's pitch on vocals. Players with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions can interact with players on the same platform through both online and offline multiplayer capabilities. In addition to the 58 core songs included on the game disc, over 2,000 downloadable songs were released for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions.

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Gameplay

From singing into a microphone to strumming on a guitar, rock band is great to sit back and enjoy playing some tunes. Rock band is like a karaoke machine where you sing the words on the screen or strum the notes to be in rhythm with the song. In Rock Band 1, there is a total of 4 instruments that can be played at the same time. you can either be a guitarist or a base man, a drummer, or the best singer in the world in Rock Band. The point of this game is to hit each note trying to get 100% to get as many stars as you can. There are a total of 5 stars with a finish of 5 golds stars which can be received by hitting 100% notes. If you're a beginner or amazing at either instrument, there are 4 difficulties you can go through making the notes go faster and harder to hit. Rock band 1 also has a career mode, its nothing like a story mode to where you have a sad ending at the end. Rock Band 1s career mode is a character you create that goes on a road trip performing concerts and getting the most stars you can in each song. The better you do, the more fans and money you'll receive allowing you to purchase clothing and rare guitars for you character. In Rock Band 1, there is around 45 default games you can play but there is also a store allowing you to go through a variety of different genre of songs picking out the ones you like and purchasing them to play.

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Multiplayer

With over 1000 songs to play, you're allowed to connect with members across the world to play and enjoy songs. A leaderboard is also put in place to allow competition, The better note streaks you hit, the better score you'll receive getting you higher on the leaderboards. This leaderboard is global allowing players across the world to compete with you. There is also a mode called Tug-a-War where you go against another player competing to see who can hit the most notes in a song. Also can be played locally allowing the decision to see who's a better guitar player of all in your family. You are only allowed one instrument of each in a song.

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Graphic

For a game where you just copy whats off the screen, the graphics for Rock Band are quiet good. Although this game is around 8 years old, The textures of this game are still similar to what we have today. Harmonix put a lot of detail into all the customization you can do to your character on your road trip. While playing a song, you can see your character performing in a small concert being played in the background making it seem more realistic when playing a song. When playing a song you can also receive a powerup that allows your multiplier to double making your screen fill with cool designs showing you that you're on a note streak.

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Controls

Controls are pretty simple, all you got to do is press the colored key(s) that matches with the ones on the screen. If you're on a microphone, all you got to do is sing the words on the screen with the exact tone to achieve higher stars. The guitars and drums layout are pretty simple, you have 5 only have 5 colors to press and some you may not even need to use for the difficulty you're on. You have green, red, yellow, blue, and orange. on the guitar you can either can have each key close together to have better fingering or each key farther away. You also have a whammy bar allowing you to change the tone of the long notes you hold, all you got to do is shake the bar allowing the tone to change. For what difficulty you're on you'll have the task to push single notes to pushing multiple notes at the same time. Drums its a little different, you are provided with a foot peddle for the bump in the sounds. Same colors of notes but you have to hit each paddle with drum sticks. Only 1 or 2 notes can be hit at including the foot stomp.

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Rating

Gameplay: 8.5/10
Graphics: 9/10
Controls: 10/10
Overall: 9.5/10