This franchise remains my personal favorite because it is more flexible than its predecessor Guitar Hero and less un-cool than Band Hero aka GH for the Miley Cyrus crowd. You probably wouldn’t know it lately. I never got off my behind to write reviews over RB, RB2, RB: Beatles or RB: Lego. When RB3 hits the shelves I promise to cover it on Picayune and explain why it is the coolest marriage of video games and music ever.
I am grateful Harmonix took 2009 off after releasing Beatles, the extra year gave them the opportunity to really make significant improvements/changes in the game.
The Good:
- Harmonizing vocals which they introduced in Beatles and Green Day.
- Keyboards are now a playable instrument. This opens up DLCs for bands with prominent keyboardists: Elton John, Ben Folds, and Tori Amos quickly come to mind.
- Combining the two from above means the game can now accommodate SEVEN players!
- As always, all the songs on my PS3’s HD that are DLCs will continue to work. I figure they’ll go through a conversion process to add the algorithms for what RB3 has.
- This version will have some means to actually teach the users how to play the real instruments.
- Of the 83 confirmed tracks, many are ones I dig: Them Crooked Vultures, Metric, Dio (finally!), Spacehog, Cure, Vines, Rilo Kiley and Huey Lewis & the News. More will probably revealed as the release date gets closer.
The Bad:
- It will have the drop-in/-out feature GH/RH has. I find that trivial and not a strength worth emulating.
- Rumor has it Madcatz will take over the peripherals for RB3 won’t have a big “kit” as the predecessors. As much as I love the Fender bass replica, it has problems communicating accurately with my PS3 and it completely failed with a friend’s console.
- I’m going to need a larger TV to handle all four instruments’ tracks racing down the screen.
Read more about it here! This got me to check up on what they’ve added to the DLCs. Spoon! Smithereens too!