Back at E3 2008 where Rock Band 2 was being hyped up as the ultimate rhythm gaming platform, Harmonix touted their motto as being “First we innovate, then we perfect.” From Frequency to Amplitude, Guitar Hero to Guitar Hero 2, and Rock Band to Rock Band 2, Harmonix has had a history of innovating an aspect of the music genre and then refining it, maybe not to the point of perfection, but at least to a point of substantial polish.
While Rock Band 3 breaks that trend by being the third game in a Harmonix franchise, it is also probably the most risky and innovative game that Harmonix has ever done.
Before we get into all of the innovations brought on by the hardware though, let’s just talk about what’s new gameplay wise in Rock Band 3. The biggest addition in my eyes, and the one that seemed like a no brainer after Guitar Hero 5, is the ability to drop in and drop out of a song, change difficulty, and put on lefty flip all from the pause menu without having to leave the song and going back through several menus and loading screens.
The already easy to navigate song list has also been made even easier by giving you the ability to set your own filters in a wide variety of different categories. Not only can you filter songs by artist, title, genre, and game, but you can also set them to only show songs based on their actual length. I personally love this addition since it always sucks when you’ve got a bunch of people over wanting to play and one of the players chooses an 8-10 minute song to the dismay of others who are forced to sit and watch.
Other additions include the ability to create and save your own setlist, the ability to rate songs and then have those ratings affect how often they will appear in random setlists in the main tour mode, and the inclusion of the same harmonizing vocals system found in The Beatles Rock Band and Green Day Rock Band.
The game is also set to ship with 83 songs on disc, which when added to the already enormous existing library of songs available from all of the previous Rock Band games and DLC, will bring the overall song list for the Rock Band games to nearly 2,000 once the game is released. Some of the songs already announced for Rock Band 3 include the long awaited “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen, “Break on Through” by the Doors, “Just Like Heaven” by The Cure, and “Crazy Train” by Ozzy Osbourne, just to name a few of the standouts.
So that’s what you’re going to be getting if you throw down the $60 on just the game for Rock Band 3 and utilize all of your existing plastic instruments. Those looking to take their music gaming experience to the next level though and are willing to spend some pretty substantial cash to upgrade their instruments might want to take a look at the new hardware Rock Band 3 brings to the table.
The first is the addition of the keyboard instrument. The peripheral itself is a fully functioning 25 key keyboard with a strap allowing the device to be slung across the shoulder like a keytar. Five keys on the board are marked with the traditional green, red, yellow, blue, and orange colors, making playing the keyboard on the standard Easy, Medium, Hard, and Expert modes fairly similar to the other instruments. It should also be noted that keyboard parts can even be played on a guitar, so you don’t have to buy the keyboard controller in order to play the keys on a song.
Where things really get interesting is when the player decides to turn on the new Pro mode. Pro Mode also comes with its own set of Easy, Medium, Hard, and Expert difficulties, but scraps the traditional five lane note highway in favor of an actual representation of a portion of the keyboard. White and black notes will travel down the note highway that correspond to the actual keys that are being played in the song.
Pro mode also carries over to the guitar as well if players decide to purchase one of the new guitar controllers that cost upwards of $150. The cheaper option is the Wireless Fender Mustang Pro controller, which has 102 buttons along the 17 fret neck of the controller with six strings, making it as close to a real guitar as a game controller can get.
That is of course unless you get the Fender Squire Stratocaster Guitar, which is a real guitar that doubles as a game controller. This baby not only can be used to play songs in Rock Band 3, but can also be plugged into an amp and used to rock out in real life. While no price has been announced yet for the game controller version of this controller, the non Rock Band 3 version of this guitar can be purchased for $180, which I would imagine means that players would expect to pay more than since the Rock Band 3 version will have some extra technology inside.
Like Pro Mode for the keyboard, the guitar’s pro mode will scrap the traditional five lane note highway and instead fill the highway with six strings obviously corresponding to the six strings of the guitar. Numbered notes will scroll down the highway, with the numbers indicating what fret needs to be held down. What’s really cool is that the base of the highway will actually tell the player which fret and string is being held down, making it easy for new guitarists to adjust their fingers without having to look down at the neck.
At the higher difficulty levels, the game will start throwing chords and bar chords at you. Another cool thing about the game is that whenever a new chord is being played, the name of the chord will actually scroll down with the notes, letting you know that you just played an Asus4 chord or something of the sort.
Pro Mode for the drums is the least significant change since playing the drums in Rock Band has always been fairly close to playing the drums in real life. In order to play Pro Mode for drums, players will need the cymbal attachments that are already available for those who have a Rock Band 2 drum set. The five note highway will remain the same, but three new notes will be added that correspond to the yellow, blue, and green cymbals attachments.
All in all, Rock Band 3 is really two games for two different groups of people. If you’ve got the money and are sick of people telling to you actually go learn to play the instrument instead of just playing Rock Band all day, Rock Band 3’s Pro Mode looks like a genuine way to shut them up for good. If you’re completely uninterested in the pro mode instruments though, Rock Band 3 is little more than an incremental improvement over Rock Band 2 that addresses some of the minor problems and annoyances of that game while giving players another 80+ songs to add to their collection.
