Rock Band 3 review

Formats: PS3, XBox 360, Wii, Nintendo DS
Format reviewed: PS3
Publisher: MTV Games
Developer: Harmonix
Made2Game Rock Band 3 review score: 8/10

Man versus music has been a long and tired battle, first there was the battle of the axe and then the drums, all fought on the sweat stained stage. But now we have a new battleground the home TV screen!

Rock Band and even Guitar Hero beforehand have always pushed the envelope when it comes the interaction between video games and real life music learning. But this time Harmonix have attempted to make a game that also doubles as a teaching device, which comes in the form of Rock Band 3's Pro Mode and basically allows you to play the game with a new controller designed to act like a guitar or drum kit or keyboard. This is a brilliantly interesting concept but this is as far as I can go for this particular review, in other words, though I like the concept I was not able to test this portion of the game out as at the time of going to press the Pro instruments were not available.

Still onto the main game, Rock Band 3 still has the standard game mode that you have seen from all other music titles and previous entries in the franchise; but things have changed and changed dramatically. The first thing you will notice about the game is the Career mode is now missing and replaced with a new Challenge system, this system (which is found under the Career tab on the main menu) sets you a series of challenges you need to complete to gain fans. So instead of having to play endless set lists and hammer through songs you hate to unlock fans, you just need to set yourself up with a challenge to unlock more fans.

Along with this change comes a different way to play the game itself, there is no World Tour that was found in Rock Band 1 and Rock Band 2, instead you now have a set of venues to attend - completion of which leads to an unlock of a challenge at the end of it. Fear not, you still have the star system to reflect how well you’re playing the song, but that's has changed too; so instead of just playing the songs, you have an extra in-song challenge to complete that is separate from the main challenge system.

The challenge system doesn’t involve fans but instead helps you to increase the amount of stars or aces that you pick up for completing a song well. As before there are five stars for how well you perform the song and how good your score is, but there is another bar underneath which reflects these in-song challenges and boosts you up. The challenges change from song to song, but they can ask you to play a streak without a mistake or they can ask you to play sections of the song flawlessly, the good thing here is it racks up so if you accidentally mess-up then it doesn’t mean that you can’t get full marks.

The biggest change for me is that Rock Band is slightly harder to play now, and it seems to be that they are reflecting the incorporation of Pro mode into the game in the standard version too. Playing on medium now doesn’t mean that you only have, say, the first four fret buttons to play, instead you now have all the fret buttons to use but the scroll speed and the combinations of buttons to hit at the same time have also been changed. On harder difficulties the scroll speed is increased and you have to perform more complicated finger gymnastics. Something else that has changed is the way in which gigs are controlled, now songs are dynamic and change.

For each gig, you have three options to use all of which consist of pre-set or random list of songs that again can change if you exit out of the instrument selection screen and re-enter. Sometimes you will also be given the chance to choose your own songs, which will also include any which you have previously downloaded from other versions of the game. The game interface has changed in that each player or controller is shown at the bottom of all selection screen, and each controller is given their own menu of which they can change the options on the fly. So if you want a different difficulty then just hit start and change it or if you want a different character you can change it there and then. You can even drop in/out at any point in the game.

Without been able to comment on the Pro mode I can’t tell if the full package of Rock Band 3 is a massive change or not. But the changes to the normal modes have made enough of a difference to the way that you play so that the game feels fresh and different.

Music games have something to live up to now and to be honest if Pro mode is what Harmonix claims it to be then this could well be an excellent teaching tool for budding musicians.

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