Rock Band 3

The Short


Pros
- Adds both harmonies and keyboard to the music mix
- "Pro" mode for all instruments can teach you how to actually play a real guitar, etc.
- Full tutorials designed to teach you actual guitar, keys, and drums
- 83 songs, lots of fantastic classics in here
- Restructured unlocks with hundreds of challenges that unlock during quickplay, career, etc.
- Simplified career/road tip mode that doesn't force you to play songs you don't want to
- Further sorting options: keys/no keys, parental controls, harmony parts, etc.
- Can play any of your exported songs or old DLC, meaning this game can have 3000+ song and counting
- In addition, all old DLC supports Pro Drums
- Constant leaderboard updates for both individual scores and bands make this the most score-centric Rock Band game out of all of them
- New method for unlocking instruments and costumes is fun and clever
- Drop in/drop out gameplay that also allows easy profile switching between instruments
- No Fail can be left on and won't affect achievements
- Further UI streamlining for song selection, sorting, leaderboards, song info, and score competitions with your friends
- Note highways are the best in the series, with the "blue glow" indicating a max multiplier for all instruments
- Possible to have seven people playing at once

Cons
- Cover art on the box is hideous
- New art design for characters will turn some people off
- Some psychedelic backdrops make it hard to see when singing
- When playing "All Instruments," singers don't get scored
- Due to picking songs with keys emphasis, other parts sometimes suffer (especially lead guitar)
- While lots of the setlist songs are great, a lot of them seem completely out of the blue
- Can't unlock all challenges/achievements/costumes without buying the pro instruments
- Adding the pro instruments to your arsenal can be expensive
- Pro lessons are decent but hardly all-encompassing; the keys lessons are particularly lack-luster
- No back-charting for harmonies, pro instruments, keys, etc. (you can rebuy some of the old songs with the new features, however)
- The fact that career mode is bare-bones might annoy some people

Looks familiar? Look again. 

The Long


I'll just confess it from the start: I think Rock Band 3 is my favorite music game ever, and the pinnacle of the "plastic instrument" game genre. While I admit there are other music games that tickle my fancy (Elite Beat Agents, Parapa the Rapper), Rock Band 3 is the one that seems to fully realize the series' potential, as well as add new stuff nobody expected to the mix. It keeps enough of the core formula that made Rock Band work in the past, and added truckloads of new stuff for those who want to dig deeper.

Rock Band's biggest split from Guitar Hero is (in my opinion) the fact that they treated the game as less of a "game" and more as a platform to release music on. Yes, you get lots of songs on their discs, but the fact that you can export the songs to your hard drive as well as buy thousands of songs from the Rock Band store makes me think these games are more of a means to get songs to play rather than "the next big thing." Guitar Hero only really jumped on the DLC train late, and after seeing how successful Rock Band was, instead focusing on releasing as many disc-based iterations of their franchise as possible. While Rock Band is certainly not guiltless of this (as indicated by the fact it took three non-numbered Rock Band games to get to this one), the idea behind it is simple: you only need one disc (two if you want The Beatles: Rock Band) to play all your favorite songs. And with consistent DLC support since launch (and the addition of the Rock Band Network), it has been less about buying the latest game and more about keeping an eye on what songs are released in a given week.

Pro keys can be difficult to pick up at first (especially for those used to reading sheet music), but it isn't too difficult to learn

So, seeing as the Guitar Hero franchise puttered out because of a mix between market saturation and a lack of innovation, what is new in Rock Band 3 that makes it worth picking up over the other games in the series? Well, lots, actually. Three part harmonies are back from The Beatles: Rock Band and Green Day: Rock Band, with the added bonus that every DLC song released from Harmonix since will support harmonies. A new instrument, the Keyboard, has also been added, which in its regular mode plays like a guitar without the strumming (green, red, yellow, blue, and orange notes). Believe it or not, adding a keyboard really changes things up, if only because tons of new genres of music are now available. It does have the unfortunate side effect of making other instruments take a hit (Queen usually either has their keyboard or their guitar playing, not both, making songs like Don't Stop Me Now [DLC song; not on disc] extremely boring for the guitar part) and also leading to setlist choices that aren't necessarily fun for every instrument. Still, it's a fun toy, and the fact you can play keys with a guitar controller or guitar parts with a keys controller changes things up a bit.

It only has two octaves, but it still works well. Plus it's super sturdy. 

So we have triple-singing and a whole new instrument. That probably would have been enough for most people, but it wasn't for Harmonix. Perhaps the biggest announcement was the addition of "Pro" modes for all instruments. Basically, you would learn the actual chords on the guitar, add cymbals and a high-hat pedal for the drums, and play the actual notes on the keyboard. Crazy, right? 

This had the unfortunate side effect of (like the keyboard) meaning you'll have to buy more stuff to get the best Rock Band 3 experience. Extra mics for harmonies are cheap (you can get wireless Xbox 360 Lips mics for like $5 a pop if you are a savvy consumer), but the drum cymbals started at $40, and only worked with the wireless drum sets (so Rock Band 1 drums were out). The keyboard retailed at a whopping $90 at first (it has since dropped to anywhere between $15-$30), but the biggest ball-buster in terms of price was the pro-guitar. For the one that was part toy part guitar, that sucker was $150, but the real killer was the actual Gibson guitar, which rolled at like $300 plus you had to buy a $40 adapter. So saddle up: you are in for the long haul.

It uses buttons on the neck instead of actual strings...nice. Luckily these are like $75 now, which is a bit more manageable

Since I'm cheap but not too cheap I got every Pro instrument except the guitar. The cymbals I could justify, and we got the keyboard with a bundle, but that guitar is just too expensive. Because of that, I can't really tell you what I think of Pro-guitar mode. I've heard it's pretty decent (though the newly released Rocksmith is a better bet for learning to play, and you can plug your own guitar in if you actually own one, which I do), but it's gonna be expensive if you make the jump.

The added cymbals actually makes a huge difference in the drums. Guitar Hero has had cymbals forever so it beat Rock Band to the punch on that, but to show they actually were planning this all along every single song, even all the old songs, has cymbal support for drums. Once you start playing with cymbals (even if you are a beginner) I see no reason to go back. If you enjoy drumming, they amp up both the difficulty and the fun. It sounds stupid, but it actually works.

Pro-Keys are the last one, which is fun but hard. Keep in mind: I am pretty damn good at playing the piano, and while I tend to do better at memorization than sight-reading, I took over a decade of lessons. Reading the weird "scrolling" keyboard instead of sheet music is obnoxious at first, but given some time you learn to sight read it. I can't help but think I could learn the songs substantially faster with actual notes, but if you put that aside and think of it more as a really complex game than a learning experience, it ends up alright. I personally prefer getting super-hard keys songs and playing them on normal-expert keys rather than moderately difficult songs and playing on pro-expert keys, but that's just taste. I did learn a handful of pro keys (all the Linkin Park DLC), but I swear I'll never learn how to play those Queen songs. 

For those who already play piano, the keys can be wonky to pick up

So here's what you are probably wondering: is it worth spending $10-$100 on extra Rock Band crap in addition to the drums, mic, and two guitars I already have? Are the extra features worth it? Well...yeah, I think so, but an added "extra yes" to extra mics and cymbals. Keys are fun but I honestly don't play them as much as I do the other instruments, which is partially Rock Band's fault for not releasing more European metal. Seriously, where is the Nightwish and Within Temptation and Sonata Arctica? Sonata Arctica uses an actual keytar in their band and does tons of harmonies. While Rock Band Network usually sates my keys needs, it's usually through chiptunes music (which is awesome, by the way). More symphonic metal, please.

Now that we are done talking about all the random crap you can buy with this game, what about the game itself? What's different? What isn't? If you don't buy all the stuff, is it still worth upgrading from the ever-popular Rock Band 2?

This is looking a little more traditional. 

Well, let's look at what has improved. At the most basic gameplay standpoint, note highways have seen a minor overhaul. They are a bit wider, the multiplier and star-power is easier to read, and the contrast between the notes and the highway itself is at its best. It had some issues (read: people whined) on release with the transparency of the back end of the highway being a little too much, but that has since been fixed in a patch. A nifty addition is that in the old Rock Band games, as a bass player if you reached a 5x or 6x multiplier your highway would have a blue glow, letting you know you were doing awesome. They added this  blue glow to the rest of the instruments when they hit max-multiplier as well. It's a little thing, but it makes you feel like a kick-ass band when everybody's "in the blue," so to speak.

Overdrive is less intrusive, even when stacked on top of the "blue halo" of a max multiplier, avoiding the issue of The Beatles: Rock Band where you got sensory overload. They changed the way the bass pedal shows/registers which actually threw me off for a while on drums, but after time I liked it better. They also did general clean-up and sharpening (similar to Rock Band 2 to Rock Band) making the game more vibrant and visually appealing. Overall, the "brightening up" works, and is especially noticeable when you put Rock Band 3 screenshots next to those of the original Rock Band.

Challenges have also seen a massive overhaul

Other changes are to the career mode and the quickplay. Rock Band 3 finally realizes that people are not really buying these games to fulfill their rock fantasies anymore, they are buying them to play at parties and with friends. All songs are unlocked from the start (finally becoming an industry standard), and the career mode has been toned down immensely. Instead, your main focus is on "Challenges," mini-objectives specific to instruments, full-band, or just song related (for example, playing a certain number of DLC songs, or playing every Green Day song). When you accomplish these you gain fans, and after a bar fills up (seen in the upper right hand corner of the above screenshot) your band gets bigger. It's purely cosmetic; getting a bus or whatever just changes some loading screens and backgrounds, but it's nice to see that everything you do, either in quickplay or the "career" mode, contributing to an overall pool of fans.

The "Career" mode is really just a set of stripped-down setlists, but unlike previous games this one gives you full-flexibility of using your entire DLC library. For each challenge you have two or three options (ex: "Play four punk songs") and then you get to pick the songs from your library yourself. It's loads better than the old system, which forced you to play on-disc songs, but fans of long-winded, world-spanning career modes will be disappointed. It's very clear that at this point Rock Band is more about the quickplay than the career mode, so I honestly don't count it as too big a loss that it's been stripped down. Besides, the hundreds of challenges more than make up for it.

The new characters look more "plastic," but they fit the brighter theme and animate well

The character creator is much improved, with lots more options and a (slightly) better method of sorting your clothes. Attire/costumes are no longer bought through money, instead you unlock certain pieces by completing challenges. It's a cool system, which gives a bonus for beating certain challenges aside from just the fans. An annoying part, however, is that in order to unlock everything you'll have to own all the instruments, as a lot of the challenges are based on the Pro instruments. Meaning if you don't shell out the cash or just suck at real guitar, you'll never unlock some stuff. Ever.

They slightly changed the quickplay song select UI as well, which is...sort of for the better? The information on the main screen has been decreased (it still has artist, album, and both regular and pro instrument difficulties) but you can hit "x" (or "square") on any song to get more information about it. The sorting options for your library is vastly improved, with tons of options that let you filter just Family Friendly songs, songs with keys, harmonies, by decade, etc. Useful!

Plus I can see how much country music my wife has bought

Leaderboard integration is also much improved. After each song it gives a score breakdown for each instrument, as well as an individual star rating in addition to the band's star rating. It also gives you what number your band is on the leaderboard, as well as what each individual instrument is rated on the leaderboards. This can get pretty addicting, especially with harmonies, as the fight to get to the top of the leaderboards gets strenuous (we were #1 on a few songs for a while...then some jerks overtook us).

Normally it would say leaderboard rank under individual scores

Lastly, the game is much more drop in/drop out friendly, with instruments able to jump in on the fly or even mid-song (which Guitar Hero has been doing for a while). Another awesome feature is the fact that you can change which instrument your signed in profile is in really easily; the game just switches it over so you can keep earning leaderboard rank and achievements on a different instrument. No Fail can be turned on from the start and it doesn't disable achievements anymore, making this more of a party game than ever. It's extremely accessible, finally really easy to bounce around between instruments, and basically just streamlines the system to make it more enjoyable.

You can even play with all four instruments and three singers at once, though it does come with a price. During the "All-Instrument" play, singers are no longer scored and are set on "easy," meaning they don't really contribute to the band. This is especially annoying for score hunters: singing on expert very often scores much higher than any other instrument. It's too bad they couldn't find out a way to get five people signed in at once, but this is more a limit of the Xbox 360 hardware than anything.

Oh, how far we've come. 

So we've come to the (current) end of our Rock Band review adventure. I'll finish by sharing one last story: when we got the game in January of 2011, my wife was deathly ill with a killer stomach bug. I still had to go to work, leaving her home alone with the new game. Over the next two days she learned The Sounds' Livin' in America on expert pro keys to nearly 100%. And that isn't too easy a song, especially considering the game had just come out! Which means that my wife beat me to a new game (for once) and is still better than me at most songs on singing and pro keys. So the circle has come...full circle. Or something. I don't know.

The point is Rock Band 3 is awesome, and is the best music game I've ever played. It also is probably the single most played game on my Xbox 360 (assuming it overtook Rock Band 2) and again, I own like 600+ songs for the stupid thing. When it boils down to it, your enjoyment of these games still depends on how much you either like singing or playing plastic instruments. While Rock Band 3 blurs the line a little between toys and reality, that isn't why you buy it. You buy it to have a fun time with friends and family, and on that end the game is completely successful.

The game is $20, and the instruments have been priced (roughly) above. I'll probably be playing this game even after the next generation of systems comes out (unless they find a way to port all my songs to the next Xbox). It really is quite the phenomenon.

Five out of five stars.