Rock Band (Harmonix)

[PapaZeb]

What's Rock Band, some of you may ask...Harmonix, the musically inspired video game developers that were responsible for Guitar Hero 1 and 2 before its purchase by Mtv and Activision, are releasing a new music game - this time you can play one of 4 musical roles.

Singer - any USB Microphone will serve for this role, but Harmonix will be selling a Harmonix branded mic with their game. Singing play will be similar to Konami's "Karaoke Revolution" with the player in the singing role looking to match pitch and lyrics. Early reviews of the singing features report some amazing voice recognition capabilities.

Drummer - No official drumset has been released, but prototypes showed 4 toms, a kick drum, and a variety of buttons in the center of the rack for the toms. Drum gameplay looks to be purely rhythm based, unknown if sticks will be used or hands.

Bass and Guitar - There's a new guitar, a 3/4 sized Fender Stratocaster with the classic body-style and white on black colour scheme. The frets have ten buttons - five of the standard Guitar Hero buttons, and another five at what looks like frets 14-19. During portions of the guitar game, guitar solos will allow you to use these higher frets without the need to strum - this means faster and more insane solos in my eyes. As it's based on a modern Stratocaster there's a five-way switch. As gameplay progresses you can purchase new pedal effects and this five-way switch will allow you to switch over to them in mid-play. There's no real bonus known at this time, but switching on a flanger or distortion box sounds brilliant to me.
The bass will use the same guitar and be more standard

Harmonix are playing the smart game - any previous Guitar Hero controller may be used to play Rock Band and they've been busy getting comfortable price points together for the other controllers.

Rock Band touts online as well as offline play for multiplayer - allowing people all across the globe to play songs together, share rock band avatars and band logos. No word on the recording capability, if it exists - to share video of band performances on YouTube or the like, but it is one of the features many people wish to see.

Currently announced song list:
"In Bloom" (by Nirvana)
"Paranoid" (as made famous by Black Sabbath)
"Say it Ain't So" (by Weezer)
"Won't Get Fooled Again" (by The Who)
"Mississippi Queen" (as made famous by Mountain)
"Suffragette City" (by David Bowie)
"(Don't Fear) The Reaper" (by The Blue Oyster Cult)
"Main Offender" (by The Hives)


song list key:
"by" = original master track
"as made famous by" = cover

Official site: http://www.rockband.com/
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Band_%28video_game%29

[Rev Scapegoat]

Heh.
What did I say, when Guitar Hero first came out?
Only a matter of time.

Called it

[darth_haggis]

"We are all going to die"

Called it!

[Zippy]

$199 though

[darth_haggis]

I love guitar hero so I dare say this will be purchased pending getting a shot o' someone elses first

[PapaZeb]

Originally Posted by Zippy

$199 though

No official price has been announced.

Rumoured prices for the rock band kit so far have been:
$150
$199
$250

This kit gets you
1 game - normally a $50-$60 value
1 guitar - normally a $40 value
1 mic - normally a $40 value
1 drum kit - nothing like it to compare a price, but we're talking a drum set that's gonna be a decently large size.

[Zippy]

I appreciate what it will get you, I still think it's a lot for the kit though.

[PapaZeb]

And it still isn't the final price - the last price kicking around the rumour mill was $150

In comparable peripherals though:
Guitar Hero 1.
$100 + tax got you 1 guitar + 1 game at initial release.

Steel Battalions 1.
$200 + tax got you 1 controller panel roughly the size of a concerto keyboard.

[Rev Scapegoat]

Donkey Konga

[Hammer]

The singing aspect of this game puts me off it.

[PapaZeb]

Originally Posted by Rev Scapegoat

Donkey Konga

only 2 drums, no kickstand, no 4-foot stand. Can't quite compare the Rock Band drumkit it to cheap-looking bongos.

Also - you don't have to sing if you don't want to, there are single+multiplayer games for all combinations of instruments. And it encourages multiplayer anyways, making you find a singer for a complete drunken wreck of a game.

[Hammer]

Engadget managed to get a scan which shows the mic and drums. Apoligies for the size, but thats the biggest version they've got.

[PapaZeb]

I've got that exact magazine sitting next to me...I could scan in the rest of the 6 page article, but that'd probably be illegal-ish.

[PapaZeb]

It should also be pointed out that those drums are an invention of GameInformer magazine based upon their recollections of the beta-version drumkit at Harmonix studios. The reviewers described to an in-house artist and mocked that up.

[PapaZeb]

Scanned a better copy of the article Seumas posted while keeping the filesize small enough for an attachment - if someone is actually that hardcore about wanting a 300dpi magazine scan, I can sort 'em out with the original 25mb tif files..