The Music
Rock Band 3 ships with 83 songs (see the full list here), including several piano-centric numbers to make use of the new keyboard controller. The songs run the gamut from Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody to Primus’ Jerry Was a Racecar Driver to John Lennon’s Imagine. They’re all relatively rock-inspired, which I prefer over Guitar Hero’s more doughy, poppy tracks.
Drawbacks
The game’s one glaring, heart-breaking omission is the lack of crowd sing-a-longs. In previous Rock Band titles, if you really got going on a particular song, the crowd would start singing along to the song. It sounds like a simple feature, but it’s one of the things that made all of the Rock Band titles, in general, replicate what it’s like to be in a real band.
I’m sure it’s probably plenty resource-intensive for the game’s developer, Harmonix, to get a crowd of people together to sing along to 83 songs, but the non-singing crowd was the first thing I noticed; “Where the hell’s the crowd this time? That was the best part of Rock Band!”
A smaller gripe is that, as mentioned above, the pro guitar interface is a bit confusing for anyone who’s played guitar in real life. The keyboard interface is a bit confusing as well. Instead of showing all 16 key positions during gameplay, the scrolling track will show only the portion of the keys that are used in whatever song you’ve chosen.
The keyboard part in the above photo (lower left) starts at the far left of the actual keyboard while leaving out five of the keys on the far right. In the next song, the on-screen keyboard layout may include only the middle section of the actual keyboard. It’s just not consistent from song to song, and on the more advanced pro modes the scrolling timeline actually shifts from left to right mid-song to make use of all the keys. This is undoubtedly to conserve screen space, especially in multiplayer mode, but it’d be nice to have the option to see the entire keyboard in single player mode.
Overall
Rock Band 3 is a win-win for just about everyone. If you want to play it the old-fashioned way, it’s plenty fun and there are enough music tracks to keep just about anyone happy. Single player mode is a blast and multiplayer mode now supports a whopping seven people at once—guitar, bass, drums, keys, and three singers, each with individual harmonizing.
If you want to take things more seriously, you could actually teach yourself to play the piano with a little patience, or the guitar with a lot of patience.
The omission of singing crowds is a huge minus this time around, but it’s not necessarily a deal-breaker, and the scrolling real-time song layout for the Pro Guitar and Pro Keys can get a bit confusing.
All in all, though, Rock Band 3 has brought enough new features, songs, and—most importantly—instruments to warrant the purchase. If you just want to play for fun, you could get along just fine with older versions, but you won’t feel like you haven’t gotten your money’s worth with this one regardless of whether you play for fun or try to learn a new instrument.
Techland Score: 9 out of 10
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