Can you believe there's no Rock Band review? UNTIL NOW.
Back in 2005, WAAAAAAY before the music game genre was milked to death, we got a game called "Guitar Hero," with its sequel, "Guitar Hero 2," released the following year. These games need no introduction.
But although we did get a Guitar Hero 3, the original developer of Guitar Hero, Harmonix, jumped ship in mid 2007 and created something completely new, innovative, and mind blowing: Rock Band. With a better emphasis on multiplayer, and new instruments, it was poised to take down Guitar Hero and become it's own franchise.
Which it kinda did.
The drums and the microphone. These were the two things that catapulted Rock Band over Guitar Hero 3. Sure, anybody will tell you that playing the guitar was still better in GH3 (it's called GUITAR hero, after all), but the drums were great, unique, and something great to take your anger out on. (Even if they were prone to often break, particularly the kick pedals)
The guitar feels far more loose than the GH3 counterpart, with an extremely loose strum bar, and "solo buttons" at the bottom of the guitar, in addition to the regular fret buttons, that are, well, kinda useless. In theory you can tap these during the solos without strumming, but you'll need lightning fast fingers to do so.
The vocals are just that. A microphone that measures pitch and tempo of your voice. It's also the primary instrument used to make someone look like a jackass. The "talkie" parts where pitch doesn't matter are unquestionably broken (which were, of course, fixed in later instalments), and there were "percussion" sections were you make noise into the mic. You can clap, tap the mic, shout, hit yourself in the crotch with it, whatever works. Its good for keeping vocalists involved.
The career mode is phenominal. The single player stuff is "Guitar Hero 101," where you play different songs in a set order and move through pre-determined setlists, but the "Band World Tour" is where it shines. You one of 4+ gigs in different cities (which can pre-determined setlists, custom ones, or even completely random) and work your way to virtual stardom, and even the damned "Endless Setlist," which has every song in the game one after another.
Of course, creating a band wouldn't work without a solid character creator. Rock Band delivers, if (by today's standards) doesn't innovate. Compared to the character creation in Guitar Hero 3, which didn't exist, it's a nice change of pace... even if the options are fairly light (Not counting clothing options).
Try to visually a 6 foot tall pale man with red dreadlocks wearing pink spadex all over his body while wearing 3d glasses and make up that can only be described as "just gave slimer from ghostbusters a blow-job." Thanks Rock Band!
There's also a score duel mode, but nobody plays that. It's basically like Face-Off in Guitar Hero. Whoever scores more wins. No Band vs Band... yet.
Since this an earlier released game in the music genre, several of the songs are in fact covers, but not those "MY EARS ARE BLEEDING" kind. If you block out the vocals, Run to the Hills does in fact sound like Run to the Hills, but it's a minor thing.
Arists like Queens of the Stone Age, Soundgarden, Weezer, and The Who are all present. It's well rounded, but not as good (in my opinion) as the "HOLY SHIT THEY GOT METALLICA, SLAYER, AND IRON MAIDEN IN THE SAME GAME" setlist we saw in Guitar Hero 3.
But OH! There's all the DLC. There's TONS of it. Over 1000+ songs availiable to download. This is the sole reason we aren't on "Rock Band 26.5" yet. It's like making your own Guitar Hero setlist, without all the crappy "Kool Thing" and "Miss Murders'" thrown in.
All in all, Rock Band is a true product of it's time. The music genre has been beaten to death (thanks, Activi$ion), but back then, all the Guitar Heroes dropped their jaws when this behemoth was released. It doesn't have the features and innovations that it's sequels/band spinoffs had, but nobody will deny, that this was the first time we could really feel like we were rocking out with our cocks out.
5.0