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After much time believing that the Guitar Hero franchise was not for him, my pal Maxator recently folded and picked up Guitar Hero III. This event was one in a handful of links that lead him to write about his love of Rock Band, which is a logical step in the progression of playing rhythm-matching video games.

Yet here we come to the, arguably, ultimate music title developed for this generation’s consoles, and I can’t help but be disappointed somewhat in my time playing Rock Band thus far. In many ways, it’s superior to the Guitar Hero franchise, though in other ways, it falls behind. Nevermind for a moment that the quality control for Rock Band’s hardware apparently skipped some key beats (word is out and about that many guitars are not functioning properly). Instead, let’s focus on the core gameplay, which introduces some non-linear gameplay in that players open up venues during their career. These venues each contain songs to play, or sets of songs to play. Even early on, players can have two or three venues open at a time, giving them some selection in where, and what, to play.

This runs contrary to Guitar Hero’s gameplay, in which venues are opened up one by one, and are played according to a set iteration of songs. What’s nice about this is that as players progress through the game, they are immediately introduced to new songs once they reach a new venue. Rock Band, however, maintains many of the same songs across multiple venues. While arguably more realistic in terms of what a real band might do, this gets annoying quickly.

I’ve started two different bands thus far. In the first, I’m playing a drummer, while my girlfriend is on the axe. After playing for a decent amount of time, we quickly found ourselves playing the same songs over and over again. Ultimately, we started our second band, with me on the axe and her on the mic, and this was a nice change of pace which really showcased the game’s replay-ability. Yet, that’s where the redundancy started anew. By the time we had three venues unlocked, we found ourselves playing many of the same songs over and over, with not many new songs in sight. It could just be the fact that we’re not unlocking events appropriately, or missing a key component in the gameplay, but if that is the case, shame on the developers for not shipping something very intuitive.

It’s a strange thing considering how customizable the rest of the game is. From character physique to clothing to instrument choice, the only major complaint is the lack of available songs along a reasonable progression. I’ll have to play a bit longer to see how things change, but we’re at a point where my girlfriend (a non-gamer) went from being super-excited about the game to being “meh” about touching it all night. That’s sad, considering that Rock Band has all the makings to be a real Guitar Hero killer.

Anyone have any insight into this?

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