Review: Rock Band 3 [Gamer Version]

by David 'Hades' Becker [ Tuesday, 26th of October 2010 - 08:53 PM ]

Being that there is so much going on with Rock Band 3, I've decided to break it up into two reviews. One for the general gamer and one for the enthusiast and those interested learning through gaming. So without any further a due, let me tell you general gamers what you have to look forward to.

First things first, I'm just going to list off the things that have not changed for those of you still in the dark. All your past instruments will work with RB3. You can import all the music from the franchise, except three songs from RB1 and Beatles RB. All of the game play additions brought out in Beatles RB, Lego RB and Green Day RB have been brought into this big iteration of the franchise.

So what is new?

Well the fact that there is no real Career Mode for one. This seems to have been scrapped and replaced with two newish type features: Road Challenges and Constant Fan Growth.

Road Challenges are just what they sound; a bunch of mini-sets that earn you a lot of fans as you beat them. They get progressively harder as you do more of them, so they can kind of be seen as a form of Career Mode but they really are not. Why? Because you can completely bypass the need to play the songs on the disc for any other songs you may have on your system for one. That and the only real goal you need to do in the challenge is to collect as many Stars and Spades (more on Spades below) during a set as you can. All done in order to add more fans to your running total.

Speaking of your fan total, the other side of the removal of Career Mode falls in the fact that everything you do in Rock Band 3 will add to your "level" of stardom. Something that dictates what you unlock as far as extras in the game. I do like the fact that in Quick Play the fans I would have collected (in Career Mode) for playing a song is added into my overall total. Sometimes I don't want to have to do a specific set to get fans and just want to play. Now I don't feel like I am penalized for having this desire. I can still unlock items and progress no matter how I want to play.

It is a bit odd though that to open the higher challenges, you need to have a specific fan level, but if you go straight through the challenges you will only get about half of what you need to unlock the next challenge. So you are kind of forced to play Quick Play or do other specific challenges. It does force the player to try out all of the other aspects of the game I guess, but for those who like to hammer through, it kind of breaks the flow.

Above I mentioned the addition of Spades into the mix of song goals. What are they? Pretty much they are extra stars you earn by performing tasks during a song. Tasks like keeping a high note streak, deploying star power at specific times or some combination of the two. Thus allowing for ten "stars" per song now. At least during the challenges. Nothing too new to the rhythm genre, but new to Rock Band.

So far I have only spoken about the Road Challenges, but there are a few other kinds of challenges. Really, they are simply more goals that tie into the trophy/achievement system somewhat. That is not to say that there are only 50 or so of these extra challenges; there are loads more to keep you playing after reaching the Hall of Fame or just party play. That is, if you don't finish them all along the way to open up new Road Challenges.

Also worth mentioning, even though we have touched on it when it was announced at E3, players can now do a lot more on the fly: drop in and out of play, change difficulty, change characters and other "extra" options. It does come in handy when you are in the middle of a random set and a particularly difficult song comes on and you need to drop down a level as to not fail the band.

What saddens me about Rock Band 3 is the fact that it seems Harmonix focused more on the new Pro Mode and Keys, rather than change anything else. That includes the animations, character customization and a few difficulties with vocals. Let me break these down since this is what you gamers would want to know.

If the animations from Rock Band and Rock Band 2 seemed to repeat themselves a little, they do it more in Rock Band 3. Maybe it was the songs I played - I played the entire disc and a plethora of downloaded songs, but the same six or seven performance animation seemed to play in the background. It's nit picking, but I like to watch the game characters when I am not playing and even when I am playing and it feels like they cut a lot of the static animations for Rock Band 3.

Going along with that, similar cuts seem to have been made regarding venues and character models. I have completed all of the Road Challenges and most of the goals, but the system still seems unable to find all the items I had on my avatar in RB2. The variety of venues also seems to have been given a truncation as I felt I only saw about five different locations - all of which look exactly like the RB2 locations. I'm guessing these Hall of Famers only play specific locations and nothing else.

Lastly, the vocals. I do not play vocals all that much, I have a horrible singing voice, but I happened to have a seasoned real life singer/gamer girlfriend who helped me with the vocals. I have never seen her have such difficulties even on Medium with singing. Songs she could previously achieve perfect scores on while singing Expert levels in RB and RB2 have now magically changed when going to RB3. That, and it was next to impossible for her to employ Overdrive with any consistency. She had difficulties even when she was deafeningly screaming into the microphone.

In the end is Rock Band 3 for your average gamer? If they are truly an enthusiast for the genre, then yes. At first it doesn't seem to add much to the franchise outside of new songs and a few new options and game play abilities, but it does have enough to be considered RB3 and not RB2.5. I do also have to say it is obvious that Harmonix was focusing a bit more on the new Keyboards and Pro Modes for the game than anything else. If you are one of the people who have to have all the peripherals or already do, this will be unnoticeable to you, but those with only the basics may feel a bit left out.

Stay tuned for our follow up with the new controllers and Pro Mode.

Rock Band 3 was developed by Harmonix and published by MTV Games on October 26th 2010 for the PS3, XBox 360, Wii and DS. The game retails for $59.99. A PS3 copy of the game was supplied by the publisher for review purposes.