Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Keep on Rockin' me Baby

I love the Rock Band series. Singstar and Guitar hero may have had their moments but Rock Band brought all the elements of rhythm/music games together and it it brilliantly. The multiplayer is great - I love how each player contributes soemthing different to the task presented before them and how working together achieves success. The soundtrack is great, even to the point of encouraging the music-geek in me to seek out stuff I haven't heard in years or stuff I've never heard of before. Sure its annoying that Harmonix seems to continually snubbing us Aussies but when Rock Band works, it works well.

What I find is a masterstroke on Harmonix's part is the use of DLC that can be carried on over into the next game. This is indeed a great move as the money spent downloading the songs to use are kept and are used to build a formidable selection for material for the player's use.
Better still, games bearing the Rock Band tag have continually proven to be an improvement over the last, carrying over small differences (count-ins and records in the song selection screen) into the next one to make things even better. It's great to see one conquer a song in one RB incarnation only to see it broken in with the next incarnation. Indeed, this method ensures that the Rock Band games will still be played for a while to come. A smart move and one that, I hope, other companies are taking note. I've said before that as long as a game is great people will be willing to keep on playing it and Rock band exemplifies that belief in stellar fashion.

Seeing as the appeal of rhythm/music games are now dying down, some are saying that this current Rock Band, no.3, could well be the last. If so, that could be a wise move: The game as it currently stands can't possibly be improved upon and continual release of DLC will ensure people will keep on playing it.

If only other franchises will follow suit....

No comments:

Post a Comment