Rock Band

Last year, when the Rock Band/Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock battle was warming up, I was in the Guitar Hero camp. Despite the original developer making Rock band, I already liked Guitar Hero, I liked some of the announced songs more, and I didn't like the idea of paying that huge amount for the whole instrument set. Issues like that tend to go away though when the new Guitar Hero developer makes some bad decisions, you have a ton of downloadable songs to improve the library, and someone else in the house is paying for all of it, as was the case with my roommate. Nailing a hard song in Guitar Hero is a great feeling, but it doesn't compare to a group of people working together to put a whole song together. Harmonix went after the group experience with Rock Band, and nailed it perfectly. I don't play it solo much at all, it's best played with four, although it's also fun with three (the computer taking over the singing, of course).

People don't often volunteer to sing around here, it can make you feel pretty self-conscious, especially when you screw up. But it doesn't matter too much if everyone's having fun, and nobody cares if you suck, as long as it doesn't cause your group to lose fans. Drums are also a lot of fun. It's easy to accidentally hit the rim instead of a pad and miss a note you feel you should have gotten, and I still haven't tried hard because it's a scary proposition, but keeping a beat is a hell of a lot of fun. Guitar and bass play like they do in Guitar Hero, although I feel like I miss repeated notes more often like I should sometimes and I'm not a huge fan of the silent strum bar. But the nice part about that is you can use the Guitar Hero guitar in Rock Band if you want, although Activision won't allow the opposite. Career mode has a lot of seemingly pointless quirks, like requiring your band leader to be there and not allowing created characters to switch instruments, but it's still fun touring around, gaining fame and fortune. Sets can get repetitive when you keep playing the same songs, but usually there's enough freedom that you can basically play what you want. I don't intend to put much of my own money into the rhythm game market in the future, but if I had to pick a game to play, at least for a while, it'd be Rock Band.