Game Reviews Volume 2

Rock Band 4 (PS4, Xbox One)

I see the settled dust upon the tools of my former glory, thick andheavy after being left dormant for far too long. In my hands I holdtheir reawakening in the form of a Blu-Ray disc, my friends andformer members of the greatest rock band the world had ever knownstood beside me.

As we passed around our instruments and prepared for our reuniontour, we laughed, reminisced about times gone by and made sure thatour plastic companions would not fail us when the time came for us torock the house down.

As the lights came up on us, we stood there triumphant with the crowdgoing wild for us. The time had come for us to return and it had beenlong overdue.

Rock Band 4 recaptures the party atmosphere, thrill and unequalledfun of music games from last generation. When the genre finally droveitself into the ground in 2010 things went quiet for almost fiveyears and now the reunion tour has come about.

Whilst Guitar Hero was certainly the most popular music series oflast generation, Rock Band 4 was perhaps the most refined with thebest list of songs available thanks to the ability to import theprevious songs library and DLC into the next game. Rock Band 4 doesan ambitious job of not only importing every song from 11 previousRock Band games and all of their DLC, but also supporting backwardscompatibility for Rock Band, Guitar Hero and select third partyinstruments provided you play on the same console family as lastgeneration (Xbox 360 to Xbox One or PS3 to PS4). This was one hell ofan ambitious undertaking by Harmonix and Mad Catz and on announcementit seemed clear that Rock Band 4 would provide not only the biggestand best songlist in any music game ever, but also be the more valuefor money option compared to Guitar Hero Live. But value for moneydoesn't always mean better.

The gameplay to Rock Band 4 will be immediately familiar to anyonewho played a music game last generation. Five coloured notes scrolldown the middle of the screen, hit them in time to the music to playthe song, build up point and rock the world. There is no deviationfrom the usual formula in Rock Band 4. This works both to the gamesfavour and to it's disadvantage.

It certainly gives the game a nostalgic feel, a pick up and play fromwhere you left off attitude. It's like saying that despite the seriesbeing gone for 5 years that it never really left at all and now it'sback to carry on from where it left off. It's all about gettingfriends together and having a great jam session in your living roomto some amazing songs.

However because it doesn't add anything new, in fact it actuallystrips back a lot of unnecessary features that made previous entriesfeel a little bloated, it almost feels a last generation title. Itfeels like I'm playing a stripped down version of Rock Band 3 andthough RB3 is a fantastic game, I certainly didn't spend £55RRP(which is a joke in of itself) to play a game I've owned for 5 yearson a new console with less features on it.

That being said; Rock Band 4 offers up refinement instead ofinnovation. Similar to how Nintendo have managed to survive for thepast few decades, instead of doing anything new, it delivers the sameexperience as before but with mechanics that have been refined thatmuch further.

When compared to every music game of last generation, Rock Band 4puts all of them to shame in terms of how well it plays. It is musicgame perfection from a gameplay standpoint. The controller latency isalmost zero, the sound is crisp and as clear as it could ever be, themenu's are simplified, the game never drops a frame no matter howlong you play it for. This is the music game we all know and loveperforming as well as it ever will do, I doubt we will ever see lastgenerations formula ever done better than this.

Though these compliments certainly don't extend any further than thegameplay.

The Rock Band 4 songlist sucks major ass. Most of them are songs fromprevious Rock Band games anyway and the ones that aren't are frombands you are likely to have never heard of. You have perhaps twowell known songs that weren't in previous games. Yes okay well knowndoesn't mean good I understand that, but most of these lesser knownsongs I will never play again in my life. They just aren't that good.It's easily one of the worst out of the box songlists I have everseen in the history of music rhythm games. So if you can''t importyour songs over from previous games for whatever reason (trust me,the process is long, complicated and unlikely to work) you are stuckwith a game where that you will literally only play once if youmanage to see it through to the end...what kind of party game isthat?

Then we move onto the visuals. There is no visible improvement fromRock Band 3, which is pretty much a slap in the face for gamers. Thisgame could easily have run on the PS3 and 360 yet it is exclusive tonext generation with a outrageous price tag attached to it. Iunderstand that the low fidelity graphics help the game run sosmoothly, yet that doesn't make up for the fact that it lookshorrible. The Rock Band games were never exactly good looking gamesbefore but after 5 years of age it really starts to show.

The band customization options are also extremely limited. I had achoice of 3 outfits for my character and the only customisation Icould give to my band was the name. I can't change the appearance ofthe other band members unless other players join me and the bandmembers seem to change on a song by song basis ruining all kind offlow or immersion.

There is also no online play at all. So it's either solo play orlocal multiplayer and that's it.

Rock Band 4 seemed to be pulling all the right moves when it wasfirst announced. The sheer amount of songs and the backwardscompatible instruments were enough to get any music game fansalivating. But on release it just seems a bit like an unfinishedmess. The song importing doesn't work that well and unless you boughtthe previous games on release and downloaded specific DLC for themyou won't be eligible for it anyway. The stripped back features meanthat there is literally nothing to do besides play songs in solo ormultiplayer, the story is relegated to bits of text before playingsongs and the songlist on disc is awful.

It may provide perhaps the most perfected gameplay in any music gameever and if you can get the songs to import it definitely has thelargest songlist ever, but when push comes to shove Rock Band 4 justcan't hack it in today's world.

Perhaps the reunion tour should have been pushed back a year or twoto work out the kinks.

RockBand 4 – 5/10

+PerfectedMusic Rhythm Gameplay

+MindNumbing Songlist (Providing Importing Works)

+BackwardCompatible Instruments

+FocusesOn The Fun Of Local Multiplayer

-DatedVisuals

-TerribleOn Disc Songlist

-SongImporting Is Long & Complicated

-StrippedBack Features

-NoOnline Multiplayer