For far too long now, music, or "rhythm action" games have ended up being almost looked down upon, as a poor relative of a simply playing a real instrument.
"Why don't you just buy a real guitar", people would sneer, when you offered them a game of Rock Band - until, that is, they actually picked up the guitar, and realised just how much fun it could be. Yes, you were basically playing a glorified air guitar, but holding the relevant buttons, and strumming as the icon passed the bottom of the screen (or hitting the relevant drum, or singing the right note, depending on what you were playing) was both immensely satisfying, and a whole lot of fun.
And with five instalments under their belt, you could almost forgive Harmonix for being tempted to rest on their laurels. The rhythm action genre, it seemed, was sewn up - if you'd have asked us a year ago, we'd have told you it was as good as it could get, and, with the exception of a better tracklist, we really couldn't see what else they could do. The answer, it seems, is to not reinvent the rule book, but to entirely change the definition of what a rhythm action game could be.
Familiar enough, but oh so tempting.
If you buy Rock Band 3 looking for a similar party experience to the other games, then you'll be instantly familiar with what's on offer here. If you just want to pick the game up, hammer a few notes with friends and family, sing out of tune and have a good time, then Rock Band is still perfectly suited to you. With modes ranging from Beginner, which requires you to simply strum in time with the music, without having to worry about buttons, all the way through to Expert, which is about as close to the real thing as you can possibly get with just five buttons, there's a great range of difficulties here to ensure everyone can pick up, play, and jump right in. The guitar, bass, vocals, three part vocal harmonies and drum parts are all still there - but now there's so much more beyond that.
To start off with, there's a new instrument - the keyboard. While this may seem a bit out of place with many Rock Band songs (seeing as many of them don't seem to have an audible keyboard part), there's a decent enough mix of songs on the disk that you'll be able to put the keyboard to some good use. From David Bowie's Space Oddity, to Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting by Elton John, and even Rock Band 3's poster song - Bohemian Rhapsody, there's plenty to get you interested in tickling the ivories.
While playing the game's standard difficulty range, from Beginner to Expert, you'll be met with a similar looking note track to the guitar. Only having to worry about five notes (C to G, if you're familiar with keyboards), it's simply a case of pressing the right button at the right time - and with only five notes to worry about (and with you hopefully having four fingers and a thumb) there shouldn't be anything too tricky to worry about here.
Unless, of course, you really want a challenge. You see, it's not just a keyboard Harmonix have added this year - they've also come up with something called Pro Mode, which should hopefully silence the nay sayers forever. And, having finally had the chance to go hands-on with the game last week at the giant gaming convention, Gamescom, we're now more excited about Rock Band 3 than we've been about practically any other game, ever.
The only thing we don't like with Pro Keys mode is the way the note track shifts from left to right as you change octave.
Pro mode moves away from the standard five button controls, and tries to make what you're playing as close as is humanly possible to real life. On the keyboard, this is done by drawing a little diagram of a keyboard at the bottom of the screen, and basically making it so there's an entire octave's worth of notes you may have to play, as you can see above. It's fairly complex to explain how it works, but once you get into the game and try it, it's surprisingly easy to pick up. On easy, you'll be playing a very simplified version of the song, but it's intended to get you used to how it feels to really play a keyboard - the fingering, the hand movements, and the various other things you'd start to pick up if you actually learnt to play. By letting you play simplified versions of the songs, and move up at your own pace, this is an amazing way to actually learn to play what's effectively a real instrument.
Here's pro guitar - the numbers on the various strings tell you which fret you need to hold down.
Even more impressive, to the point of being mind blowing, is Pro guitar. As you may expect, the whole idea here is to let you actually play the song you're playing, whether its an incredibly simplified version on Easy, or a tab perfect version on Expert, but Harmonix have really pushed the boat out here. While it won't be available at launch, a few months after the game's release, a special guitar will be released which plugs into the game, and lets the game read exactly what you're playing. Press a string down, and the game tells you which fret you're holding - cover the entire fret with your finger, and it reads it as a bar chord. The general mechanics of the game then remain the same - notes come towards you down the screen, only now, there are six tracks, representing the six strings, and each note has a number on it, representing the fret that needs to be held down. Like keyboard, you can start at Easy, and work your way up to Expert, learning actual tabs of the songs as you go. It's amazingly fun, and it's easy to see the incredible potential this could have as a teacher.
Being fairly good at keyboard, but barely able to string two notes together on a guitar, we decided to pick up both Pro Keyboard (played by our own Sarah), and Pro Guitar (played by myself) - with Sarah playing on Expert, while I lulled around in Easy. Holding the Pro Guitar, which is an authentic Fender Squier, just with all manner of fancy bells, whistles, and if you believe the developers "pixies" inside, it definitely feels daunting, but once the familiar notes start making their way down the track, it all just seems so simple. The way the game tells you which fret you're holding down makes learning the positions of the various frets so simple, as you'll never have to sit and count the frets like you used to - helping prevent mishaps on the early levels, and helping you figure out where, and how to put your hand on the guitar. And even though, on easy, you're only playing an incredibly simplified version of the song, it still feels more realistic than using five buttons on expert - you feel like you're actually playing the song, you feel like you're learning, and you want to carry on.
So many parents want their children to learn to play an instrument, and so many parents wish they'd had the chance when they were young. Rock Band 3 lets you throw all your worries to the wind, takes you by the hand, sits you with a guitar on your lap, and tells you how to play. And like everything else, because it's a game, by its very nature, its encouraging, its rewarding, and it makes you want to play it more - the game egging you on with its in game rewards system, that sees you earn fans, and unlock clothing for meeting certain tasks on certain songs. Its an incredible piece of software, and if anything, we're not sure Harmonix have realised quite how revolutionary it could be. While no price has been announced for the "real" guitar yet, we've been told to expect a price not too much higher than an entry level Squier - the figure we heard banded about was around $100 more than the basic Squier, which may seem a lot, until you take into account how much music lessons would cost, and how much easier it's going to be to encourage either your children, or yourself, to play Rock Band 3, and learn an instrument, with the game doing its best to keep you going. Plus, you don't have to spend ages browsing the internet looking at dodgy tabs, or shelling out crazy amount of money for the official ones, either.
While the game's recently announced 83 song soundtrack is admittedly a bit disappointing, it'd be hard to argue there isn't something for everyone, and with plenty of new songs to follow as downloadables, the music catalogue will just keep expanding. While they could have just trotted out the same game with different songs, and while we admittedly had our doubts about the keyboard to begin with (even if we don't see how it's going to work with certain songs), Rock Band 3 has completely rewritten what we expect from a rhythm action game.
In fact, calling it that almost seems derogatory now, because there's so much more to it. Rock Band 3 is a music game, a game that reminds you how much fun getting your hands around an instrument can be - whether you're sticking with the familiar five buttons, or letting it lead you through the steps from being a complete novice to the next Jimi Hendrix. And that can't be a bad thing.
