Love-Hate relationship

Rock Band is quite possibly the coolest thing to hit the video game world in a long long time. Its the only reason I bought a console as I generally have very little interest in them. I much prefer gaming on the PC. However, after playing Guitar Hero 3 at my Sister's place over the xmas holiday and then getting to play Rock Band at a friends house here, I was hooked. I love this game. Its fun, easy to get into, and is very challenging at the later stages. I mean who doesn't love the idea of being in a rock band? If you are not familiar with the game, you basically have one or two guitar controllers (lead and bass), drums and vocals. Each person gets their own queues on screen as to what they should be doing and the band does well or gets booed of stage based on how close everyone is to what they should be playing.

Getting a group of 3+ people together to play this just makes the game. It's a blast for me to play with the boys, and we do often, rotating between the instruments. It's a ton of fun to get a group of friends together and play. Alchohol only adds to the fun when people who normally wouldn't pic up the mic and start belting out "Wanted Dead or Alive" at the top of their lungs.

Rock Band gets another cookie for their DLC .. or DownLoadable Content for those not familiar with the XBox Live terminology. The company that makes Rock Band has commited to putting out at least 3 new songs for the game every week and they have released a ton of good stuff since the game came out late last year. They are now planning on some full albums as well from Nirvana, The Who and The Grateful Dead. Most packs are 3 song sets from a specific band. You can go here for the full list of what songs are in the game now and what is available for download. Interstate Love Song by Stone Temple Pilots.. need I say more? :P

So I mentioned this was a love-hate relationship. Why the hate? Two reasons. The instruments and the online gameplay. First.. the instruments. Go to any forum that talks about rock band and you will find quickly what I'm talking about. The instruments break... it just seems to be an inevitable thing. I have had my set for less than a month .. and last night I broke my bass pedal for the drum kit. I know people with faulty guitars, drum pads that stop responding etc. The only thing I haven't heard a lot of problems with is the mic, but then you don't do a whole lot to put wear and tear on the mic either. The drums obviously take a beating. The guitars are constantly being strummed.. and sometimes strummed pretty hard depending on the song. They are notorious for only taking a strum in one direction after a while. There is also an overdrive feature in the game that when you are doing very well that you can go into like a mini 'bonus' scoring phase by activating overdrive. This overdrive on the guitar is supposed to be activated when you tip the neck of the guitar quickly towards vertical and then back down. My rock band guitar is now so sensitive that if you are just grooving along with a song, barely moving the guitar, you will still probably set it off at random.

The company recognizes these problems and has setup ways to get people replacements in a reasonable time frame. If you are willing to put a hold on your credit card, they will ship advanced replacements to you and then you just return the defective part in the same box, postage all paid by them. However, this hold is $125 bucks now across the board even for something as cheap and simple as a bass pedal. They don't send refurb pieces either, it's a new one which is to be commended, but still you are getting the same kind of thing back. Its not like they have redesigned things and are sending better quality pieces back. Your only other option is to wait for them to send you a postage paid box, send your defective one to them, and then wait for them to receive, process and send you a new one.

Why were these items not constructed better? I mean its not the occasional piece breaking here and there, its basically guaranteed that you are going to have to fix/replace one or more of the instruments pretty quickly. I expect stuff to wear out over time under heavy use. I don't expect to break an instrument 3 weeks after I bought it with moderate use. I have read reports of them having done focus groups to see how much people would be willing to pay for RB and that is why they shot for the price range they did. Honestly though, the game is extremely fun and I am willing to bet that people would have paid another 20, 40, 60 bucks for it for higher quality instruments. Hell, offer two different packs even. One at the price point its at now and then a premium package with the instruments designed the way they need to be.. durable. I mean seriously, I understand I am a big guy and I have heavy legs, but the thickness of these pedals and the fact that a bass pedal is meant to be stomped on is just silly. Take a look how thin the plastic is:

Yes, it really is that thin. Silly isn't it? I can picture the powers that be sitting around thinking "If we make the bass pedal really thin, sure it will break, but we save 3.1 cents per box and I need that if I am going to get the yacht upgrade I want this summer!" I can't imagine that doubling the thickness of that pedal woudl have hurt the bottom line that much. I would think it would have been a helluva lot cheaper than staffing and paying for all the replacements theya re now. I have been trying to figure out what to do with my bass pedal. I don't relish dealing with an RMA on it to be without a bass pedal for possibly weeks only to get the same cheap plastic crap back again. In digging around online for solutions to the problem, I found that they make a metal replacement for the plastic pedal. For about 20 bucks I can order one. Why did they not use a metal plate for RB in the first place? If I can get it for 20.. you can be damn sure if Harmonix had bought them in bulk for the pedals, they would have cost a lot less. I would have paid another 10-15 bucks to have that metal pedal included in the first place.

The other thing I hate with RB is the lack of a world tour mode for online play. When you have 2-4 people in your house playing, you can go into whats called 'World Tour' mode in which your band actually progresses together. You start off with the easy songs, earn fans, money, items and unlock different locations to play. As you get further in, you get to do song sets. Some that you pick and some that are set by the game. Sets are fun and usually mean bigger rewards. The online mode for playing as a band only offers what they call quick play mode. You can jump in, pick any song, and play. Now don't get me wrong, this is a nice feature for when you just want to hop on, message someone and jam along with a couple songs quick. I like to play with my sister and bro-in-law in Phx. as well as various friends. It would be nice to have an ongoing thing with them via the 'world tour' mode. The mode already exists in the game, they just needed to offer it in the xbox live world.

So in summary, rock band pretty much ROCKS. It is fun as hell. Just remember, go easy on the instruments please. No one wants to deal with getting them replaced. If you all are lucky though, you can play with me while I'm a little tipsy and hear my amazing renditions of Interstate Love Song and Boston's 'Foreplay / Longtime' ! Unlike a certain other person I know that slaughtered Longtime into sounding like an angry cat was being disemboweled with a rusty spork. Good times!

For those of you unaware how RB works.. here is a video of a group of people doing Green Grass and High Tides on expert for all instruments / vocals. This is one of the hardest songs in the game and on expert everything comes at you crazy fast. On the screen you are seeing bass guitar on the left, lead guitar in the middle, drums on the right and the vocals are up top.