Though the history behind Rock Band developer Harmonix reads like a Behind The Music special on MTV — complete with break-ups with major contributors — the only thing you need to know is their latest game is a far better experience than Guitar Hero III.
The experience is heightened because of the interaction of four people playing music, together, in a room. This goes beyond playing lead guitar while your friend plays bass. Rock Band introduces Karaoke Revolution-like vocals and a rather faithful drum kit to the mix.
I am sure it was hard for Harmonix to see their baby in another developers hands, but Rock Band is the new "it" music game, beating out Guitar Hero III in the all-important fun factor. That being said, I believe that Guitar Hero III slightly edges Rock Band as a two player game, as it has more music on the disc to play.
So what is Rock Band? Well, it is not Guitar Hero. It does have lead and bass guitar, the real fun begins when you add the vocals and drums. Rock Band also has a steady difficulty curve through all four of its settings, and that difficulty does not feel cheap.
The Solo Tour allows you to play through the 45 song set list (plus 13 additional bonus songs) in higher degrees of difficulty, just like in Guitar Hero. Solo Tour can be played three ways, guitar, drums, and vocals.
Multiplayer includes four modes, Band Quickplay, Band World Tour, Tug of War, and Score Duel. All have online counterparts with the exception of Band World Tour. Band World Tour is where this game blows your preconceived notion of what a music and party game can be. I only wish it was online, too. Regardless, Rock Band is the new high mark for party games.
With the help of MTV, most of the songs you play are master recordings, so "Detroit Rock City" is by KISS and "Enter Sandman" is by Metallica. The only problem with having "only" 45 main set list songs comes in Band World Tour mode, where you will be playing those same 45 songs over and over again. Thankfully the massive amount of Downloadable Content (DLC) that will be available will supplement the on-disc music in Band World Tour.
Song List
People have different tastes, but I believe the music chosen for the Rock Band disc is stronger than Guitar Hero III because it samples many genres of rock from different decades, and presents or more "classical" set of music, while still including rock from today. The bonus tracks, while not as many as in Guitar Hero III, are good tunes that I would actually want to listen to outside of the game — something I cannot say for the bonus tracks chosen for Guitar Hero III. Harmonix did a superb job compiling a wonderful cross section of major recording artists and indie bands, some of which are bands within the developer itself.
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