We can't help thinking that music games are like buses - you wait years for a new one to come along, and then two turn up at once. When we waved goodbye to Guitar Hero and Rock Band some five years ago, we hung up our plastic guitars, drum kits and microphones and our Friday nights started to feel somewhat empty without the rhythm-action musical button-pressing we'd come to love. Our band effectively disbanded, and our multiplayer sessions moved on to new things - some Mario Kart, a spot of Smash Bros - that sort of thing. But none of them captured the co-operative camaraderie you get from managing to make it through a particularly tricky tune with no casualties (Green Grass and High Tides we're looking at you!) on the Rock Band of old.
The good old days...
So, needless to say, the recent reveal of both a new Rock Band and a new Guitar Hero fills us with excitement - but they're both still a way off, unfortunately, due out sometime later this year. But that doesn't mean everything's gone quiet on the music game front - far from it. Yesterday we wrote about the next few tracks revealed for the upcoming Guitar Hero Live - today it's the turn of Rock Band 4 to spill the beans on some of the songs we'll be playing this autumn. The first six tracks are as follows:
- Avenged Sevenfold - Hail to the King
- Fleetwood Mac - You Make Loving Fun
- Jack White - Lazaretto
- The Killers - Somebody Told Me
- Spin Doctors - Little Miss Can't Be Wrong
- The Who - The Seeker
Compared to yesterday's Guitar Hero tracks, we think we have a new high score - we know a whopping five of the seven songs! Fleetwood Mac, The Killers and The Who are pretty decent songs we suppose - and as we all know, it's impossible to have a Rock Band game without a song by The Who, even if it is one that appeared on Guitar Hero 3 all those years ago. Avenged Sevenfold probably makes sense too, as a towards the end of the game shred-fest, while a quick YouTube reveals the Spin Doctor's Little Miss Can't Be Wrong to be a fairly catchy tune that might be fairly fun to play - if your idea of fun is a load of irregular, syncopated rhythms, anyway. Jack White can go do one though.
Still the only Rock Band 4 shot we have...
As for the game itself, Harmonix are hoping to expand on the winning career mode of Rock Band 2 - where you and your bandmates travelled across the globe, rocking cities with various setlists of set songs, randomly generated selections of tracks or just a bundle of your favourite tunes - with a brand new feature known as Gigs. Aiming to replicate some of the feelings of live band performances, Gigs try to capture the "ebb and flow of the arc of a performance over successive songs", perhaps "the crowd coming with you, or potentially you needing to win them over", working that into the pacing of the songs in each setlist. What this appears to mean in English is that Gigs have a bit of a break between songs, where vocalists can role-play a little, cracking jokes and interacting with the crowd - and in the interim, you and your band mates will get to vote on the next song to play.
Choices are drawn from your music library and the theme/genre of the set you're currently playing, and everyone has a limited time in which to vote for their pick of the five possibilities. According to the folks at Harmonix, this may well cause a few awkward arguments and premature band splits - for example, your guitarist could fancy taking centre stage in The Darkness' I Believe In A Thing Called Love, but your vocalist may not be able to physically go that high. Likewise, an exhausted drummer might prefer a laid-back track next, but their bandmates plumb for one rife with drum solos instead - it's essentially a troll's dream.
While Gigs obviously play into the whole free play, party setting well, they'll also be an intrinsic part of Rock Band 4's career mode, which promises to be a rather interesting branching story - although details are pretty scant on that at the moment. More details are promised throughout May though, so make sure you keep checking back!
