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Rock Band 3 Gets Even Bigger
As we inch closer to the release of Rock Band 3 it’s becoming increasingly clear that this game features hundreds of hours of content. This month, we used some extended hands-on time with Harmonix’s latest creation to dive into several new features that fundamentally change the genre, including a brand new tutorial experience and extensive time with the new keyboard peripheral.
First, the basics: Rock Band 3 is compatible with all those expensive music peripherals you already have sitting around the house and your old song library. The small improvements to menu navigation make a huge difference to the experience, especially in party settings. Drum pad menu navigation can be disabled. Players can join and drop during songs and change difficulty mid-music. Band score and individual scores are now listed separately. Filters let you select which type of music you want to appear in your selectable song list, and you can rate songs to determine how often certain music shows up in random setlists. Taken together, these improvements help players customize the game the way they want to play it.
The more substantive change comes in the alterations to career progression. Everything you do in the game now contributes to your progression, no matter the mode. Over 800 goals exist – you can shoot for them purposefully by looking at a list, or you can wait for them to trigger automatically when you complete them during a song. The game still has a storyline following your band during its rise to stardom, but the plot is now modular and updates occur after certain criteria are met. For instance, creating and naming your band triggers a cutscene about the band getting together and agonizing over its name.
Career progression is now built around progressing through goals that unlock as you play in any game mode
The more involved (and expensive) new proposition delivers most dramatic changes to gameplay. The Pro Mode requires one of the new instruments – the drum cymbal expansion, the new keyboard peripheral, or one of the two pro guitars. You’ll need to shell out some extra money, but the rewards are substantial. Rock Band 3 features an incredibly advanced instrument tutorial system for the pro instruments that teaches you the basics of play in ways that transfer to the actual instrument in question. In other words, you could learn how to play the keyboard by completing the training sections. All of the songs in Rock Band 3, and many of the downloadable tracks moving forward, will include pro instrument charts, which represent a new challenge for music game aficionados.
The keyboard parts on basic difficulty settings amount to playing one of five notes. But jump up to Pro mode, and those keyboard parts start to spread out across the two octave keyboard, often demanding that you play fast streams of notes and chords. These notes are indicated on screen by color that indicates what area of the keyboard you shoot hit, with additional onscreen indicators that show whether it's a black or white key in question. Eventually, you start to learn the standard spaces between notes, which helps to "read the music" as it streams down the highway. For many players, moving up to Expert could involve months of practice and improvement.
Road challenges act like mini tours -- short career sequences that can be played in an evening
We'll have more details on the time we spent with the pro guitar and drum experience in future weeks, but suffice to say that Rock Band continues to impress with its tremendous scope and size. The game aims to answer fans’ calls for innovation in the increasingly reiterative cycle of music products. What remains to be seen is whether gamers are willing to shell out the cash required to take that next step by picking up a new guitar peripheral, keyboard, or drum cymbal set. While we all start to make up our minds, Harmonix has shared the first 38 songs that will be included in the game:
2000s
HIM- “Killing Loneliness
Ida Maria- “Oh My God”
Juanes- “Me Enamora”
Mana- “Oye Me Amor”
Metric- “Combat Baby”
Phoenix- “Lasso”
Poni Hoax- "Antibodies"
Rilo Kiley- “Portions for Foxes”
Slipknot- “Before I Forget”
Them Crooked Vultures- “Dead End Friends
”
The Vines- “Get Free”
The White Stripes- “The Hardest Button to Button"
Tokio Hotel- "Humanoid"
1990s
Filter- “Hey Man, Nice Shot”
Jane’s Addiction- “Been Caught Stealing”
Marilyn Manson- “The Beautiful People
Smash Mouth- “Walkin’ on the Sun”
Spacehog- “In the Meantime”
Stone Temple Pilots- “Plush”
Rammstein- "Du Hast" (in German)
1980s
The Cure- “Just Like Heaven”
Def Leppard- “Foolin’”
Dio- “Rainbow in the Dark”
Huey Lewis and the News- “The Power of Love”
INXS- “Need You Tonight”
Joan Jett- “I Love Rock and Roll”
Night Ranger- “Sister Christian”
Ozzy Osbourne- “Crazy Train”
Roxette- "The Look"
Tears For Fears- “Everybody Wants To Rule The World”
Whitesnake- “Here I Go Again”
1970s
The B-52s- “Rock Lobster’
Bob Marley and the Wailers- “Get Up, Stand Up”
Foreigner- “Cold As Ice”
Queen- “Bohemian Rhapsody”
War- “Low Rider”
1960s
Jimi Hendrix- “Crosstown Traffic”
The Doors- “Break On Through”
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