Rock Band 3 - Impressions from E3
Derek "DSmooth" Nolan had a chance to check out Rock Band 3 at E3. Read on to find out why he's calling this Game of Show... Whether you still do or not, at s
Derek "DSmooth" Nolan had a chance to check out Rock Band 3 at E3. Read on to find out why he's calling this Game of Show...
Whether you still do or not, at some point just about everyone has enjoyed playing a rhythm game at some point. For most, it started with Guitar Hero, and that feeling you got the first time holding those little plastic buttons while fake strumming made it sound like you were playing some epic song. Then came Harmonix and Rock Band to kick it up a notch with drums and vocals... Now you could really feel like a rockstar. Rock Band always seemed to make an appearance at the Nolan household during any party, whether drinking with friends or holiday parties with family. Although iterations from both franchises gave new songs and incremental new features, if you are anything like me, eventually it just wasn't as exciting and you started to play less and less. This is where Rock Band 3 comes in.
Rock Band 3 is part "more of what you loved" and part "OMG this is insane". Harmonix has listened to feedback and made the changes and enhancements to the game that everyone wishes had been in there all along. They've also taken a simple "rhythm" game and given you the option to make it a real "music" game. No longer is party-time going to be limited to 4 friends either. As the Harmonix crew demonstrated with a killer rendition of Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again", you can now have 7 people playing simultaneously - 3 vocals, guitar, bass, drums and keyboard. Yes, keyboard, but you all knew that already. The keyboard hype was blasting all over the internet before E3 even started. It's how all this fits into Rock Band that makes it awesome. First I'll cover the new instruments and Pro modes, then go into the core changes in the game and UI.
Rock Band 3 marks the first time that Harmonix is not making their own instruments for the game. Mad Catz is producing the keyboard, guitar controller, and pro cymbals peripherals for the game. In addition to that, they are selling a MIDI adapter, which I'll explain later. Also, Fender is making a Squier Stratocaster for the game too. Wow.
The addition of keyboards to Rock Band is a welcome touch. So many songs already feature keyboards, but they were never appropriately handled by any of the rhythm games. No longer is this an issue. At face value the keyboard peripheral looks like a 24 key keyboard covering 2 octaves. Above groups of keys are small bands of color that match the familiar Rock Band colors. Hitting any of the keys in that group match that particular color. Pretty standard. Even in this mode you get a sense that you are playing keyboards, or as least as much as you feel like you are playing drums or guitar of bass normally. If that's not enough, then Pro Mode, which kicks it up about another million notches.
Pro Mode is available in Rock Band 3 for the first time, and it covers guitar, keyboards and drums. Instead of just 5 neck buttons on guitar, you can either use the million fret button (well, maybe not a million, but lots - 17 frets x 6 buttons each = 102) Mad Catz guitar or the Fender with actual strings, and play note for note what comes down the screen. Instead of just color matching, you get an image of the six strings down the screen. Notes come down with a fret number to play. Harmonix demonstrated that you are actually playing note-for-note the actual strummed notes in Pro Mode by switching from game audio to an amp the guitar was plugged into. Conceivably if you memorized a song from Rock Band 3 you could play it on a real guitar. Same goes for keyboards and drums. On the keyboard, instead of just 5 color matching, the actual keyboard is showcased on the dropdown, along with the note you are playing. Since the keyboard is wider than the screen real-estate given to each player, the display shifts left and right as you move up and down octaves. Very slick. On drums, with the addition of the Pro cymbals, which are now a wireless addon to your current drum kit, things are the same way. Note-for-note matching across all of the instruments - you could actually learn something.
This is where the Mad Catz MIDI box comes in. With the addition of this, you can connect and use a MIDI peripheral (drums, keyboard, etc) instead of one of the game "controllers". This means if you already have a nice Roland keyboard, you can hook it up via the MIDI Pro-adapter and use that for keyboards in Rock Band 3. It is simply amazing.
Playing on an actual guitar, if you haven't before, actually takes some time getting used to. I assume most people will end up picking up the Mad Catz guitar, which has those 102 buttons on the neck instead of strings. For learning the fingering of notes and finger position, this is probably an easier way to both learn and play. Either way, you once again feel like a real rockstar when playing RB3.
Rock Band 3 features 83 songs right on the disc. It's also going to be backward compatible with the previous RB games, with the exception of Beatles Rock Band, and have a small "pay to import" fee to get your music into the game. It's also compatible with all the DLC you currently have and that's available now. That means as of this writing, there are over 1500 songs compatible with Rock Band 3 now, and there will be over 2000 by launch date. You can rate songs from 0 to 5 "lighters", and these ratings weight the random song selection in tour mode, so the chances of you playing things you actually like becomes much improved.
Although 2000 songs sounds daunting, as it's hard to find songs now in Rock Band 2 if you've got lots of DLC, Harmonix has added all sorts of song filtering to the game. You can narrow down you list of songs by length, decade, difficulty, your "lighter" rating, number of vocals, etc and the list will keep shrinking and shrinking until you find the songs you want. For the first time in the Rock Band series, you can also save off your setlist, so you don't have to do this every time you play. You can share these setlists with your friends, or push them up to rockband.com for you to retrieve at another time. Oh, and if you're bored at work, you can go to rockband.com, make a setlist, then send it off to your console.
People did have frustrations with the Rock Band series like, for example, when you have friends over at a party. You get everyone set up, you pick your song and everyone is just about ready to start, then the tool on the drums goes all Def Leppard and spazzes on the drums, backing everyone out to the main menu or starting the game prematurely. Rock Band 3 now features overshell menus for all 4 "primary" players. This means from the very start everyone has their own little menu, and spazzing is isolated to there. Things like "No Fail Mode" can be set on a player by player basis. Also, someone doesn't need to be present at the start of a song. The game features drop-in drop-out co-op play, as well as on-the-fly difficulty changing if you feel you aren't being significantly challenged, or if you are getting your ass kicked.
The last main improvement to the game is to the career mode. Until now, it was never possible to "win" a Rock Band game. With Rock Band 3 comes a road tour mode that takes 2 to 4 hours, and when you are done, you actually win. No more pointless collecting of fans and gear... If you want to win, you can. Knowing when a game is over is one of the things that can make a game attractive. It's OK to have endless hours of online play, but when you play a single player "campaign", you need to know when it's over.
Oh, and in case I wasn't clear, Rock Band 3 wins E3.
Derek "DSmooth" Nolan