Rock Band: What GH3 Should Have Been

My brother finally scraped together enough cash to buy the $160 PS2 version of Rock Band. It’s not overpriced by a long shot, since the only package available comes with the drum set, a microphone, one Stratocaster guitar, a USB expander, and the game. It’s worth it if you can afford it.

First off, the game overall. Everything is USB-powered, although you can use Guitar Hero guitars with it on PS2 (and every other one except for the PS2 GH3 guitar). Before I go further, let me explain the Guitar Hero story.

Once upon a time, there was Harmonix. It made games. It quietly released Guitar Hero for the PS2, and within a few months, found it was suddenly a known company. Guitar Hero 2 following, with new songs and characters, and was generally a hit. Then the franchise was sold to Activision, the company that was known for only the Tony Hawk games (yes, all 10 of them). It went downhill: while the next Guitar Hero game was still fun, it was noticably harder and lacked the “charm” of the first two games. Some (including me) say it just sucked.

Harmonix, meanwhile, moved on to making Rock Band. They took the “guitar” part of the title and injected steroids into it to end up with “guitar & drums & bass & singing,” except that made the title too long and they shortend it to Rock Band. Now, the difficulty is sketchy. The curve on it is steep: I can do most of the songs in Guitar Hero 2 on Hard. The first 3 “Acts” (song blocks, ~= GH’s “Venues”) I did without a problem. From then on, I was almost bound to fail except on a few select songs. The difficulty just skyrockets right around Act IV, rendering you incapable of tackling your current difficulty. Just when I had started to break my pinky in the right places, too!

The drums are… amazing. You have four pads (red-blue) and a foot pedal (orange). The difficulty style is not the same as for the guitar: all the pads are used in every difficulty; it’s more about the frequency/complexity. The pedal is the bass drum, a line across the entire fretboard, and the four drums are four “usual” notes. It is more difficult than you’d think to make two hands, two eyes, and a foot work together like that. I failed a song several times while playing with my brother. On Easy.

Another new thing in the game: failure. Not the concept, but how it’s implemented. Playing alone, failure is the end of the song as expected. With friends, however, it’s different. You fail, and you don’t play any more, or get points, or… well, you get the idea. The remaining player’s can’t allow the Crowd Meter (that thing on the side… lower = worse) to drop below a certain point, or they all fail. But not to worry! By using Overdrive (Star Power), your friend(s) can save you and bring you back in. You can fail up to 3 times.

Overdrive is different, too, and in a good way. First, the guitar and bass activate it normally, and while it’s active the distortion you have picked will be on your part. Neat, huh? Drums activate by getting the final “money note” at the end of a freestyle (bang random drums fast for more points!) section, and the same with vocals. You can also get more Energy (the stuff that fills up the Overdrive meter) while in Overdrive! This is great; it’s about to end, and there comes a silver note! Play it (or the sequence) right to keep on truckin’. The way Overdrive looks is different, too. Instead of messing with color-reliant people (like, say, me), it just shoots gold smoke down the fretboard and puts a tribal tatoo-like design in gold on the edges of your fretboard. I think it looks better, and it definitely doesn’t mess with your playing.

Overall, Rock Band is good. It uses a mix of popular and obscure songs, but it evens the setlist out. If you’re considering buying it, go for it. If not, save up and then go for it.