Hi, I'm a student living in the East Midlands area. I'm into reading (very) and an avid movie watche...
Hi, I'm a student living in the East Midlands area. I'm into reading (very) and an avid movie watcher, so much so I'm studying a degree in film. I'm currently writing my own book, so maybe one day it'll be reviewed on here. Be kind, yeah?
Member since:10.06.2009
Reviews:44
Members who trust:1
I first played this game at my uncle's house, and within about 5 seconds I was addicted.
At this point I had already played the games predecessor 'Guitar Hero', and so had an understanding of this sort of game, particularly the guitar. Rock Band, however, is far better.
Like Guitar Hero, Rock Band is split into four difficulties. Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert. You can do a solo tour and play all the songs in sequence at different difficulties (easy has a few less songs than the other difficulties, which makes sense, since some rhythms can only go so easy). On multiplayer the format changes, and you play in different cities and venues, gaining 'stars' to move on with the plot of the game. You can have up to 5 stars, depending on how well you play the song. I don't think you can get less than 3 or you won't complete the track. The less stars you get the less money you are paid for the gig, and in multiplayer, you will also get less fans. (Fans are not involved in the solo tour).
THE INSTRUMENTS
The Drums
This is by far my favourite of the instruments. You play the drums by hitting the coloured pads with your drumsticks as the coloured bars reach the bottom of the screen. You also have to use a foot peddle, which can be very tricky at first, especially when you're required to only hit a peddle in between two arm beats. The drums get harder at a very gradual pace, slowly introducing new tricks. I'm currently playing on the Hard songs, and can also do a few of the Expert tracks.
As the songs get harder the only difference is that you get more beats on the pedal, and the general speed gets faster. You'll also have you do more fast 'foot-hand-foot- or 'hand-foot-hand' beats, which takes a bit of getting used to.
The drums however do require modifications and wear out quite quickly. You will probably
want to pad the ends of your sticks straight away, as the wooden tips on the drum pads are very noisy. I have cut up sponge held on with duct tape.
The peddle also has a habit of snapping in half, especially when you get to harder tracks, as it's used more. I have some wood cut to shape with No-More-Nails holding it together. It still works fine, but looks ugly.
The pads also lose sensitivity after a while. You can remedy this by putting a 5pence coin in the sensor bit underneath the drum pad, and you can also switch drum pads around so that the ones with less wear are swapped for the most worn. Swapping yellow for green is a good swap, since yellow is used the most, and green the least. The pads last by far the longest, and you'll get a minimum of a years heavy playing before you need to start modifying them. My uncle played near daily on his kit, and he hit his hard, and his lasted 18months before he wore it out.
The Guitar
When using the guitar controller you have the choice of playing either guitar or bass. The game play is near identical. Guitar has long notes you have to hold, and bass replaces this with long runs of little notes on the same colour. This is the only difference I've been able to find. If playing on multiplayer with two guitars you need one of each, one bass and one guitar.
To play the guitar, you have the coloured notes coming down towards you, as in drums.When they hit the bottom of the screen you have to hold down the appropriate 'fret' button and then strum the note. The strumming mechanism goes both up and down, which is very useful when you have a fast run of notes. You can hold down the correct colour fret in advance of the screen, because it's the strum that activates it. You also have the whammy bar, which you wiggle on longer notes for extra points.
The difficulty different on this is a bit more obvious than the drums. On easy you play with only 3 frets, on Medium you use 4, on Hard you use 5 and on Expert the speed increases by a large amount.
The guitar requires no Mods, but the green button has a tendency to stick after a while. The only way to fix this is to give the neck of the guitar a wiggle and push it down into the base of the guitar more firmly. This however, stops working after a point. My kit is 7 months old and still works fine however.
The Microphone
This is by far the most annoying part of this game, especially wheny ou have someone with a not so okay singing voice on vocals, my mother for example. I can still hear her warbling ringing in my ears.
This is hardest if you don't know the songs. I'd be fine now, but I know the playlist. When I started however it was a bit hit and miss finding the melody I needed to sing. You don't need to know the words, it gives you them, and if you can read that fast and keep the tune, great, but 'la la la'ing works as long as you're at the right pitch.
You also have to tap out a rhythm on the mic with some songs, more so at harder difficulties. You basically treat the mic like it's a tamburine and tap it either against your other hand or your leg. I'd not used mine much, so I can't tell you it's durability. It is however the most sensitive gaming mic I've seen, far better than Singstar, which would fail you even if you were singing perfectly.
The difficulty difference on the mic is less pronounced than with the other kit. The margin for error narrows slightly as the difficulty moves up, and there's more tamburine action on the harder difficulties, but I found I could play on Expert straight away and still come away with over 95% of the score. It varies from person to person, but I find the Mic is the least fun part of the game.
Now I mentioned earlier that you get paid money for this game. So where do you spend it?
Well, when making a tour you have to create a character to play as. This character can be male or female, and there are roughly 5 face shapes to choose from. There's a huge array of hair styles which come in all sorts of colours, and you can change the height, weight, eye colour and skin tone of your character as well. When you first get your character, he or she comes with a free instrument which is one of the most basic in the range you later have the choice to buy. Your character will be dressed in jeans and a black or white tee as a boy, or a black tee with denim skirt, tights and trainers as a girl.
Now to personalise this character further, you take him or her to the rock shop. You're given $100 initially, and get more from playing with that character. On solo you get all the money, on multiplayer it's split between the band.
The Rock Shop has several sections. The first allows you to buy clothes and accessories for your character. These range from gothic bondage style gear to glam rock to hippy to punk, depends what you're into. The clothes and accessories range from as little as $2 (for rings) to over $10,000 (eg: for the Dr. Acula Cape). All the clothes come in a range of colours you can change even after you've bought it. For example, you buy a pair of trousers in purple, you can then go to your closet and select them again, and change the colour to red.
You can also give your character tattoos, face paint, make-up and change his or her hair. The tattoos, face paint and make-up are free, but if you want to change the hair style (there is more choice in the rock shop than in the starter list) you have to pay.
You can also change your instruments as a guitarist or drummer. This is expensive though. You can however change the colour of the kit you're given free at the start of the game, same as with the clothes.
I'm a girl, I love this bit.
Other Stuff
This game never freezes or crashes. Not once has this happened to me, ever.
You can keep playing for the fun of it even after you've finished the game.
You can transfer the songs from Rock Band into the Rock Band 2 game, if you want to. there's also tons of add'ons, like the Metalicca disk.
You can buy MORE songs from x-box live. These will be integrated into your game, they don't just come up in the quickplay section.
It's a great social game. Beer and friends go perfectly with it.
Yes, it's expensive, but the game is endless, literally.
The wireless Guitar Hero controller is compatible with it.
You can play guitar left handed if you need.
Basically, this game is amazing. You have to make some mods, but the reason I've still given this game 5 stars is that it is still completely and totally worth it. Believe me, taping a bit of sponge onto your drum sticks is no hardship.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
great review!! really sums it up well! i found the instrument pack just today for 49.99 euros! i guess shops are trying to make space for the next batch of rhythmn action games that are most likely just around the corner!
RockBand is an all-new platform for music fans and gamers to interact with music. The ... more
game challenges players to put together a band and tour for fame and fortune, mastering lead/bass guitar, drums and vocals. With more master recordings than any ot...
Postage & Packaging: £4.50 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
RockBand is an all-new platform for music fans and gamers to interact with music. The ... more
game challenges players to put together a band and tour for fame and fortune, mastering lead/bass guitar, drums and vocals. With more master recordings than any ot...
Postage & Packaging: free Super Saver Delivery Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours...
Advantages: Create a Band, Drums, World Tour, Game Play, Downloadable content Disadvantages: You'll have to mortage your house and sell your children to afford it
hippo117 30.06.2008 (30.06.2008)
·
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Rock Band (Xbox 360)
Advantages: Best party game available. Drums are excellent. Put simply - its just very fun. Disadvantages: Single player guitar/vocal careers may get boring. Drum pedal prone to snapping. Fairly pricy.
echo786 09.08.2008 (09.08.2008)
·
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Rock Band (Xbox 360)
Advantages: Great fun, gets all your friends involved, almost limitless longevity Disadvantages: Expensive to buy the game and instruments and to download extra songs
Advantages: Create a Band, Drums, World Tour, Game Play, Downloadable content Disadvantages: You'll have to mortage your house and sell your children to afford it
hippo117 30.06.2008 (30.06.2008)
·
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Rock Band (Xbox 360)
Advantages: Best party game available. Drums are excellent. Put simply - its just very fun. Disadvantages: Single player guitar/vocal careers may get boring. Drum pedal prone to snapping. Fairly pricy.
echo786 09.08.2008 (09.08.2008)
·
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Rock Band (Xbox 360)
Advantages: Create your own character, online multiplayer & downloadable content, Disadvantages: You have to play some songs quite alot, gets quite repettative
kellface85 20.03.2009 (20.03.2009)
·
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Rock Band (Xbox 360)
Advantages: Plays as well as ever, great music and visuals; superb attention to detail. Disadvantages: Expensive and you cannot transfer songs between it and other Rock Band games.
Advantages: Range of difficulties for New and experienced players. Fun to play with Friends and Family. Disadvantages: Expensive for the full package. No Variety for Non-Beatle Fans. No Songs from "Help" !
Advantages: Most of the features of other music games in a single package and with great co-operative play. Disadvantages: An expensive hobby once you add up the costs of all the equipment and extra songs.
Phantom_Wombat 17.04.2009 (17.04.2009)
·
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of RockBand 2 (Xbox360)
Are you the manufacturer / provider of Rock Band (Xbox 360)? Click here
exceptional by (14%):
very helpful by (86%):
