Conclusion, final thoughts and awards
So time to wrap up Rock Band, turn the amps off and head backstage for a selection of sandwiches with the bread too small and the meat too big.First off, I’d raise a big question mark over the value of Rock Band seeing as you have to buy the game and instruments separately. Forking out around £200 to get the game and all the instruments is just that bit too much. Since when has it cost more than a console to buy a game to play on it? That said, it’s unlikely that you’ll buy Rock Band having never played this type of game before, so you’ll probably have GH guitars already, leaving you just needing the drum kit, but then you’ll still need to splash around £100 to get up and running. Maybe I’m wrong and the price is fair… It could be, seeing as to have two GH guitars you’d have to spend in the region of £130… I’ll let you decided on that one but I reckon it’s still too much.
Click for larger imageBut what you get for your money is pretty damn good. The guitar is a much better build quality than the GH versions and has more features on it. The drum kit so far has taken an absolute hammering, (blame OKGO, The Who and The Police for that), and, other than a few minor dents on the drum pad surface, it’s till as responsive and sensitive as the first day I used it. One thing I would say is that in use the pads are damn loud, especially if you go off on a thrash, so it’s well worth investing in dampeners or, other than my awful attempt at silencing those pads, buy some rubber tipped practice sticks which seriously reduce the noise you make when playing.
So I guess Rock Band comes down to the track listing and the novelty of playing in a band without ever having had the patience to actually learn to play anything. As I said earlier, the drum kit is, for me at least, simply the best part of Rock Band as a whole. The option of having an online band as well as local multiplayer is a damn good too, but certainly not essential to enjoyment of thrashing out a killer drum break and having a bloody good time.
That just leaves the track list, which is something I’ve criticised Guitar Hero for plenty of times. I’d say my music tastes are more mainstream than Guitar Hero allows for, and Rock Band nicely hits the middle ground between tracks I know, tracks I know of but couldn’t name and tracks that leave me cold and I wouldn’t listen to. There’s a fairly even smattering of all of these and in career mode you’ll always have at least two or three tracks per set that you like. This means you’ll be playing for the fun of playing the song, not just to progress and unlock more tracks.
And of course there’s the absolute mass of downloadable content which, at the time of writing, has 119 possible downloads, from ‘packs’ from one particular band or music style through to individual tracks. The actually cost of a single track is around £1.36 while packs of three tracks are around £3.74 depending on how you buy your MS points. And while £1.36 sounds a bit steep for a song, there’s some absolute corkers in here, such as Blink-182’s All the Small Things, which is about as challenging a drum track as you’ll find in the game, even on just Hard, let alone Expert… so buy your favourites and you’ll keep on playing them.
Now we come to the final decision over whether Rock Band is worth the cash or not and, given the cost of getting all the gear, I’d have to say no, it’s not worth it. Paying out nearly £200 for the game, the instrument pack and another guitar is simply too much money. Yes, you’ll be playing it for ages but £200? You can buy a brand new Xbox 360 and a game for that kind of money. Sorry, as much as I like Rock Band, the price is too damn high.
Click for larger imageHowever, if you already have Xbox 360 Guitar Hero guitars, I’d thoroughly recommend hitting Play.com or Amazon and buying the game and the drum kit then using your GH guitars to play bass and lead. That way you’ll spend half the asking price and have nearly the whole package, unless you have a USB microphone lying around. SCAN also have the Instrument Pack up on their site for those of you in the Bolton area who fancy getting your hands on the kit right now…
So overall, Rock Band is a great game hampered by the cost of getting the instruments to play it. Luckily for Xbox 360 owners, that cost can be heavily cut by using your existing Guitar Hero kit, which makes Rock Band a much more attractive purchase. Sure, stumping up almost £100 for a game is still a helluva lot, but Rock Band is worth it if you take this cheaper route. If you’ve money to burn you won’t mind paying out for the official Rock Band guitars, which are much better quality, but for the rest of us, stick with the Xbox 360 guitars you already have, buy the drum kit and leave the singing to the pros.
So with the high cost of getting the kit in mind, I'm scoring Rock Band with a Recommended but had the cost been equivalent of what you'd pay over in the US, I'd had given Rock Band Editor's Choice. I'm quite happy to pay for the kit but not to the tune of £200, if you'll pardon the pun.
Pros
Four players at once
Superb track list
Online and local multiplayer
Massive and regularly updated DLC
Drums!
Cons
Around £200 for the full set of kit
Drum pads can be very noisy in use
No really, it’s £200…
Learning curve takes a bit of a jump sometimes
Honestly, it’s TWO HUNDRED quid for the full kit!
Rock Band – bloody awesome game, bloody daft price tag!
HEXUS Awards
Rock Band - Xbox 360
