Rock Band Game Information, Game Info for Rock Band
Rock Band Game Info
Reusing many gameplay elements from the Guitar Hero series, Rock Band players use peripherals modeled after musical instruments to simulate the performance of rock music. Players must play these instruments in time with musical "notes" as they scroll towards them on the screen. Rock Band expands upon the Guitar Hero series, in that it offers gameplay for drums and vocals, in addition to lead and bass guitars. The game features a single-player career mode for three of the instruments (lead guitar, drums, and voice) called "Solo Tour Mode,"[24] as well as a band career mode for 2-4 local players called "Band World Tour."[24][25] The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game support both local and online players for multiplayer modes (except for Band World Tour), while the PlayStation 2 version only supports local play.[24]
In the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game, players can create and customize their own in-game character, complete with adjustable hair, body physique, clothing, tattoos, onstage movements, and instruments. Each character is permanently locked into a specific instrument. Using cash earned within the game, the player may purchase items at the in-game "Rock Shop," with which they can customize their rock star. The game features an art maker where players can combine different clip art elements to create custom face paint, tattoos, clothing designs, instrument artwork, and band logos.[25]
On-screen, Game Informer describes the game as a combination of the Guitar Hero and Karaoke Revolution gameplay elements.[26] Rock Band has up to three tracks of vertically scrolling colored music notes, one section each for lead guitar, drums, and bass.[26] The colored notes on-screen correspond to buttons on the guitar and drum peripherals.[26] Along the top of the screen is the vocals display, which scrolls horizontally, similar to Karaoke Revolution. The lyrics display beneath green bars, which represent the pitch of the individual vocal elements.[26] If any part is not being played, its interface does not appear on-screen. The remainder of the screen is used to display the band's virtual characters as they perform in concert.
During cooperative play as a band, all players earn points towards a common score, though score multipliers and "Overdrive" (the equivalent of Guitar Hero's "Star Power") are tracked separately for each player.[26] The bass guitar player can raise his/her multiplier as high as 6x (compared to a 4x multiplier for the other players) and achieve "Bass Groove" because, as noted by a GameSpot preview, "bass can get a little dry sometimes."[27] Overdrive is collected during select portions of a song by successfully playing all white notes within that section (guitar and bass players can also use the guitar controller's whammy bar to extract Overdrive from white sustained notes).[28] Once the meter is filled halfway, players can deploy their Overdrive, resulting in the "Band Meter" (which tracks how well each player is doing) changing more dramatically. This allows players to strategically use Overdrive to raise the Band Meter and pass portions of a song they otherwise might have failed. In solo play, deploying
Overdrive doubles the player's score multiplier. However, in band play, activating Overdrive instead increases the score multiplier of the entire band by two. Additionally, players can now deploy Overdrive independently of each other (previous Guitar Hero games required players in Co-Operative mode to deploy Star Power simultaneously), as well as collect additional Overdrive while it is deployed and draining (previous Guitar Hero games hid additional Star Power sections while Star Power was activated).[28]
Each band member can choose the difficulty at which they play (spanning Easy, Medium, Hard, and Expert). If a player does not play well enough and falls to the bottom of the Band Meter, they will fail out of the song and their instrument will be muted from the audio mix. However, any active player can activate their Overdrive to bring failed players back into the song,[26] "saving" the band member. However, a band member can only be saved twice; after the third failure, they cannot be brought back for that song. Failed players continuously drag the band's Band Meter down until they are saved. If the player is not saved before the Band Meter reaches the bottom, the band fails the song. Special portions of songs are labeled as "Unison Phrases," which reward the band with a score and Overdrive bonus if each player can play their parts perfectly during the phrase. Select songs end with a special "Big Rock Ending," which gives the players a chance to improvise and earn extra points. If each player successfully plays the final notes of the song following the freestyle portion of the "Big Rock Ending," the band earns all of the "Big Rock Ending" points. Otherwise, the bonus is lost.
