Today I was in a Best Buy and saw that they had a Rock Band demo setup. “How could pass this up?” I asked myself. I’ll tell you how they almost caused me to — putting the Rock Band demo right next to the Guitar Hero demo. The geniuses at Best Buy didn’t seem to understand that there could be a conflict there. So I’m trying to drum along to Black Hole Sun and the dude next to me is wailing out some Paradise City on the 360 next to me. Fortunately I wasn’t in a rush so I was able to stalk the console until the Guitar Hero dude left.
I chose to play drums because drums were there to be played. I kicked things off with Say It Ain’t So in easy mode to get a feel for it, then stepped it up to Vasoline and Black Hole Sun on medium. There’s something extremely satisfying about drumming. I think it’s a similar feeling to playing Dance Dance Revolution. There’s something even more tangible about drumming than playing the guitar — you’re actually moving your body parts to affect feedback. Unlike the guitar notes that slide under my finger, I smash the drum notes out of existence (much like you stomp the DDR arrows into the ground). It’s also similar to Samba De Amigo and the dancing parts of Rayman Raving Rabbits. I’ve never played a Drumscape machine, but I now understand the appeal.
So, impressions. I wasn’t impressed with the Rock Band art direction — it doesn’t have an interesting style like Guitar Hero. However, once you get four people playing at once it will be nice to have a very simple interface so that the screen doesn’t get too cluttered. I think the song selection is excellent. I’m still sad that this is out of my price range, but judging from the equipment it seems like a reasonable price (it’d be nice if it came with a cheap mic stand, though). And while I won’t be picking it up any time soon I will be more than happy to play it at a friend’s house or in the video game lab here at school.
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