Culturegeeks

Game over, man, game over.

When my wife and I left to go to Portland last week, we packed two suitcases, two backpacks, two coats, and Rock Band.  We left the diaper bag at home. 

It wasn’t on purpose, but it may as well have been, as this is the most fun I’ve had playing games for years, and we still haven’t played with the full four people. 

If you haven’t heard, the premise is pretty simple.  Game comes with a drum set, a plastic Fender Stratocaster clone, and a microphone.  The Guitar plays just like the Guitar Hero games.  In the above image, the right-most of the three areas represents the guitar.  There are five colored fret buttons on the neck of the guitar.  You press the fret for the color that’s coming down the playing area.  Then, you strum the little strum bar right when the green thing hits the bottom.  Sounds funky, but once you’ve done a song, you’ve got it down.  For non-musicians, like myself, it feels like you’re playing music.  When the guitar parts go higher, the fret buttons you press go up the neck.  Cool.

Next up, singing.  For those who have played the Karaoke Revolution games, it’ll be familiar to you.  The words go right to left across the top of the screen, with the relative pitch you need to sing at.  There’s an arrow showing where you’re currently singing.  If you suck, you can yodel your way up and down in pitch to try to get the right sound.  Fear not if you’re singing a song too deep for you…you can sing an octave up or down, as long as you’re singing the right note. 

Then, the drums.  The drums work similarly to the guitar.  There are only four colors in the drum track, one for each drum head.  When the green capsule hits the bottom, hit the green drum.  The one painful addition is the kick/bass drum.  When there’s a horizontal orange line, you need to kick that.  Which, believe me, makes your leg ache after a song or two. 

Then, if you have a fourth, and an extra Guitar Hero controller laying around, you can throw someone in as bass player.  Bass works just like the guitar, except the bass lines are generally easier.  Look for this to change when/if Primus downloadable content becomes available.

Yeah, so that was a pretty dry way of describing the game.  It sounds like Tetris with ridiculous controllers.  However, once you get a room full of people going to town, it really, truly rocks.  The drums are probably my favorite, although I get to play them the least often.  Funny thing about wailing away on a plastic drum set…it still makes a lot of noise.  So, while I can turn the volume down and play guitar, thus not waking the infant-beast, that’s a no-go with the drums.

One other thing that the drums has going for it:  it teaches you to play the drums.  The company reps have been very clear that if you end up playing the drum tracks on expert, you are playing the drums for that song.  That’s cool.  Every time the Yeah Yeah Yeahs drummer his pounding the skins, you’ll be tapping the plastic.  Don’t believe me?  Here’s some crazy bastard doing Metallica:

Of course, it doesn’t start off that way…when it’s on easy, you’re probably only hitting every fifth beat. 

Anyway, when you get a room full of people, preferably drinking some alcohol, wailing away on fake instruments, music blaring, some poor bastard singing their lungs out…well, it’s just the thing to keep a group entertained all night. 

I look forward to playing it with many of you in the future!

Final Track List

1960s

• Rolling Stones “Gimme Shelter”

1970s

• Aerosmith “Train Kept a Rollin’”*
• The Who “Won’t Get Fooled Again”
• Boston “Foreplay/Long Time”
• Mountain “Mississippi Queen” (cover)
• The Police “Next to You”
• David Bowie “Suffragette City”
• Black Sabbath “Paranoid” (cover)
• Blue Oyster Cult “Don’t Fear the Reaper”
• The Ramones “Blitzkrieg Bop”
• Deep Purple “Highway Star”
• KISS “Detroit Rock City”
• Molly Hatchet “Flirtin’ With Disaster”
• The Outlaws “Green Grass & High Tides” (cover)
• Sweet “Ballroom Blitz” (cover)

1980s

• Rush “Tom Sawyer”*
• Bon Jovi “Wanted Dead or Alive”
• The Clash “Should I Stay or Should I Go”
• Faith No More “Epic”
• Pixies “Wave of Mutilation”
• R.E.M. “Orange Crush”
• Iron Maiden “Run to the Hills” (cover)

1990s

• Foo Fighters “Learn to Fly”
• Metallica “Enter Sandman”
• Nirvana “In Bloom”
• Stone Temple Pilots “Vasoline”
• Weezer “Say It Ain’t So”
• Smashing Pumpkins “Cherub Rock”
• Radiohead “Creep”
• Beastie Boys “Sabotage”
• Hole “Celebrity Skin”
• Garbage “I Think I’m Paranoid”
• Soundgarden “Black Hole Sun”

2000s

• The Hives “Main Offender”
• Queens of the Stone Age “Go With the Flow”
• The Strokes “Reptilia”
• Jet “Are You Gonna Be My Girl”
• OK Go “Here It Goes Again”
• Nine Inch Nails “The Hand That Feeds”
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs “Maps”
• Red Hot Chili Peppers “Dani California”
• Coheed & Cambria “Welcome Home”
• Fallout Boy “Dead on Arrival”
• The Killers “When You Were Young”
• New Pornographers “Electric Version”

Unlockable Tracks

• Bang Camaro “Pleasure (Pleasure)”
• Twelve more yet to be revealed