I’m about as huge a fan of Rock Band as you’ll ever find; I said before that this game was why I got a PS3. (Well, that and Time Crisis 4, but I don’t wanna talk about that…) So you can imagine how thrilled I was about a month ago when I lucked out and found a copy of Rock Band 3 that Gamestop was doing a $10 off promo that day.
I’d heard about there being new controllers, of course, but I wasn’t concerned. My Beatles guitar was working like a dream, the old RB2 drum kit was perfectly adequate, and to be honest, just the idea of keyboarding brought up nothing but bitter memories. (I also happen to utterly loathe singing, and IMNSHO Neversoft making it required to unlock a lot of things in Rock Band 5 and Band Hero is the worst thing they did by roughly 25,000 parsecs, so don’t ever get me started, thank you. Gah. I’d rather run the Honolulu Marathon in ski boots than sing Wannabe again.)
So anyway, I saw something called “Pro Guitar” (and Pro Bass, naturally), for which my Beatles guitar was somehow ineligible. I quickly learned that this, indeed, required a very special controller…one with six strings on the body and whole bunch of string-shaped buttons on the neck. Each of those buttons corresponds to a location an actual fret a guitarist would press down on, and the strings work exactly as they would on an actual guitar. (I understand that there will be an even more realistic-looking controller in the near future.)
Let’s get one thing clear: Nobody actually wanted this. All that talk about “Learn a real instrument!” was just that, talk. Bravado. Bluster. Trash. The same numbnuts who bleat “I can do that!” after seeing some speed run they couldn’t pull off in 20 years. Nobody had any illusions that Rock Band was about anything other than pretty music and having a blast with friends.
Bear with me for a bit. Here. Don’t worry about the language barrier, just click around a bit. If you own a Wii, you may have seen something called this, and while the mechanics may be totally different, the concept is the same. That being that you’re supposed to tap the buttons corresponding to the objects (“popkuns”, they’re called) as they hit the line.
“Wait a minute,” you may be asking. “What is this? What’s this supposed to simulate?” Nothing. It’s a game where you push buttons to make pretty sounds. It’s a great big colorful pile of mindless fun which will not prepare you for anything.
It’s one of the most popular video game franchises in the history of Japan. Tune Street is the nineteenth installment.
Now think about how Rock Band was marketed from day one. Those instruments? The guitar looked like a child’s toy. The drum set consisted of a pedal and four vaguely drumhead-like pads (not even a cymbal!). And vocals, heck, you don’t even need words. None of these instruments bore the slighest resemblance to the real thing. Therefore, that never became an issue. If anything, it brought players into the game who would’ve been frightened by the prospect of having to learn an instrument. And the music? Well, don’t read too much into the title; all that means is that the songs use guitar, bass, drums, and vocals (or reasonable facsimilies thereof). Just because you’re a Rock Band doesn’t mean that you can’t play anything else. Thus freed of that albatross, Harmonix was not only able to get a tremendous variety of music, but far more artists willing to sign on. Rock Band Network could never have taken off if there were any hangups about nu-metal or emo or country.
Contrast that to Guitar Hero, a game that’s virtually identical in every way (and it was first!). From day one, RedOctane flogged the gritty, rancid, disgusting, property-damaging rock star lifestyle. Expectations were set. Lines were drawn. Flags were raised. As a result the game that almost singlehandedly made music games viable in America and has undergone phenomenal improvements and innovations gets…nothing but criticism. Seems like everyone hates this. Oh, I don’t like that artist. Oh, I don’t wanna do guitar battle. Oh, this song isn’t loud/bitter/angry enough. Oh, I don’t like how that remix sounds. Especially ridiculous is the contention that there are too many games, something which will have even a moderately serious Bemani aficionado howling with laughter. (The culmination of this, of course, was the decision to expand their base with the pop spinoff Band Hero, meaning that they had to find artists even more fluffy-bunny vanilla than Kiss, Queen, Bon Jovi, Scorpions, The Police, Boston, Pat Benatar, Michael Jackson, and Willie Nelson, to name a few.)
Before Pro Guitar, I found NO criticism of Rock Band. Anywhere. Ever. Even legitimate problems (like the outrageously flimsiness of the standard Stratocasters) were glossed over. Now do a search for “Rock Band Pro Guitar” and watch a few videos. Note how much of a firestorm there is now, and it’s all about whether this can prepare you for a real guitar, how much this is/isn’t like real guitar, how nothing compares to a real guitar, this is easier than a real guitar, harder than a real guitar, etc. etc. The “Learn a real instrument!” crap hasn’t gone away, it’s EXPLODED. On top of that, a lot of players who do play the real thing are giving this a whirl for the first time, and for the most part it’s been an unpleasant education. (There’s no way scrolling notes on a highway can substitute for an actual chart.) Oh, as you may have deduced from the videos, it’s really freakin’ hard. When you see someone who plays rhythm guitar for a living get stomped into the ground by a routine solo, you know you’re in for a world of hurt.
It won’t teach guitar skills. It won’t inspire anyone to learn guitar. It’s not the next big thing in videogaming, not the next step up, not the future. It won’t make us realize how incredibly unsatisfying our current instruments are. It’s stirring up anger and divisiveness and crap where none should have existed. I just don’t see any upside to this whatsoever. Anyone?
(P.S. Yes, I’m aware of Pro Drums, Pro Keyboard, and Harmonies. Harmonies is a lot of fun for the right kind of players, Pro Drums has the same pads, just more of them, and keyboarding is a colossal pain regardless of how many keys are involved.)
). Looking at it, can you see anything that puts it head and shoulders above any other dancing game? Hell, In The Groove, the complete ripoff, is by pretty much any measure a superior product. But you see, Konami had a simple plan. Use lots of different kinds of music. Mix up the stepcharts as well. Introduce party modes to bring everyone in the game. Raise the bar as players get better, but not at the expense of the easier difficulties (this was Andamiro’s biggest mistake). And, most importantly, NEVER address the issue of whether this was real dancing, or how to make it like real dancing, or how to dance for real on it without failing the song, etc. etc. Anyone asks, say it’s classified information and change the subject.