Don’t stop the (virtual) music

A music video game that rocks

October 9, 2008

Articles, Nu Magazine - October 9, 2008

Since November 20, the release date of Rock Band, I’ve spent most of my weekends in a cold basement banging on a plastic drum set, strumming a fake guitar, and singing into a USB microphone with friends and family.

Still, people ask me, “Is that game any good?”

Well, let me set the record straight.

Rock Band is not only the greatest achievement in video game history; it is quite possibly the pinnacle of human excellence in technological advancement.

For those who don’t know, the main idea is more or less an elaboration of everyone’s old favorite, Guitar Hero. You strum the guitar and hit the correctly colored button in sync to the musical “notes” of favorite songs that scroll on a video screen.

In Rock Band, players can customize their own characters to mimic themselves or others and create custom Fender guitars and basses as well as Ludwig drum sets to construct the ultimate band. You get to pick the name of your band. Rock Band achieves its purpose in allowing all people to be “virtual” rock stars.

You tend to forget you are, in fact, not actually playing in a band in an amphitheater in Tokyo, until you realize your eyes are burning, you haven’t eaten lunch, you really need to use the bathroom, and you’ve been playing for over four hours.

There are a few slight differences between the guitars of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, but first let’s address the similarities. The whammy bar remains and after hitting special note streaks you can go into “overdrive,” the equivalent of Guitar Hero’s “Star Power.”

However, two improvements were added. In addition to the traditional five colored buttons, there are another smaller five further up on the neck of the guitar. These are to be used during indicated solos. Players can use their strumming hand to hit these buttons without having to actually strum the guitar (as if they were hammer-ons), mimicking the guitar playing style of finger tapping.

Also, when in overdrive, the player may change the special sound effect with a switch on their guitar, a special little perk that makes Rock Band that much better.

The bass mode offers a slightly more elaborate version than that of Guitar Hero, allowing the player to receive a “bass groove” status in which their score is multiplied from a long note streak. Other than this, however, there is not much difference in the bass option of the game.

These things haven’t changed much in Rock Band, but a large concern has been whether or not the newer instruments, drums and vocals, would be successful.

While actual drummers will most likely experience an advantage in playing the Rock Band drum set, it’s extremely user-friendly, containing four color- coded pads and one bass drum pedal. Overdrive works in a similar way as the guitars, though it’s deployed differently. As you hit the specific phrases that give you overdrive, fills will appear on your scrolling screen. These empty tubular sections allow you to bang out your own drum fills and end them with a crash to activate your overdrive.

As specific song difficulty and overall gameplay difficulty levels increase, the drums play more precise beats exactly as they are in the actual song. Easier difficulty levels offer less strenuous rhythms and note combinations for drums, bass, and guitar.

Vocals are often the hardest concept to grasp though, ironically, they might also be the simplest. The vocal display scrolls horizontally above the other three instruments and it presents the words as well as green bars which represent pitch and length of notes in relation to previous ones.

The vocalist is simply judged phrase by phrase on the closeness to the pitch of the actual singer. Judgment in the harder levels can be quite harsh. Overdrive is available for singers as well and to activate it they need only to speak into the microphone during a non-singing part. In parts of the song without singing, the vocalist must often tap the microphone to play tambourine or cowbell parts such as in the classic, Don’t Fear the Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult.

Last, but not least, the primary concern of a music game is the list of songs. There is no need to worry in this department. Rock Band contains 58 songs, 51 by the original artists, a much higher percentage than that of Guitar Hero, and spans the 1960s to present day rock ‘n roll.

Whether you like the Rolling Stones or the Beastie Boys, just about every sub-genre of rock music is represented in this star-studded virtual music game.

Rock Band is in a league of its own, better in every way than any musical game that has come before it. Whether you’re young, old, a musician, tone-deaf, a video game nerd, or an athlete, you’ll fall in love with Rock Band.

Aaron Levi, 16, attends James Caldwell High School and is a member of Nu’s teen board.