rock band game review
Rock Band 4: become a Rock Star, always as exhilarating?If the musical games, SingStar and Just Dance at the head have never really run out of steam, the rhythm games with accessories have meanwhile experienced a big period of scarcity. 5 years separate us from the previous Rock Band, which is releasing its fourth episode this year and intends to make you want to put on your most beautiful patch jacket and send big with the help of a formula known of course but, which has proven itself and which allows itself some novelties to try to generate a new wave of enthusiasm among the players.
If you have slept at the bottom of a cave in the past 10 years, we will briefly recall the principle of Rock Band. Using a dummy guitar or drums, you will play songs whose color notes will scroll across the screen. It will then be necessary to press in rhythm on the corresponding keys on your accessories in order to garner enough points to conquer the crowd and to feast on the aura of glory specific to Rockstars. On this point, you know without a doubt, Rock Band 4 has not changed its formula and the principle of the game remains the same, in the same way as the instruments which for the occasion simply underwent a small facelift.
MATERIAL AND RETROCOMPATIBILITY
Rock Band 4 offers like its most recent elders a guitar, a microphone and a battery. A second guitar can be added to the game if you wish to have a complete group and designate the poor unfortunate who will occupy the bassist's shoes (4-string lovers, I kiss you). The new instruments do not differ frankly from the previous ones with the exception of frets more pleasant to the touch and less noisy than before. On the drum side, the sound level has only been very significantly reduced on the pads, but the nuisance produced by the bass drum pedal is nonetheless more acceptable than in the past. A word of advice, however, if you hear barrels playing in an apartment, be careful because the propagation of vibrations on the ground could well lead you to definitively end up with good neighbors.Very important thing to know before tackling the thorny question of price: the accessories of previous rock bands are perfectly compatible with this new version. It will therefore not be useful to have to buy all the instruments to enjoy Rock Band 4, simply to buy the game alone. On the other hand, if you do not have any of the old accessories, the invoice is quite salty since you will have to offload 300 € for the game / guitar / microphone / battery combo. A 150 € pack is available but only contains the guitar, amputating Rock Band 4 from much of the fun in multiplayer. It will therefore take solid arguments to Harmonix to convince newcomers to spend such a sum and it is on these that we will dwell now.
Merry-go-round
If the progression of the previous Rock Band was based on a tour system, Harmonix chose to dust off its mechanics a little in this fourth part of the saga. Indeed, after having created your character (always in a cartoon and offbeat vein), given a name to your group and determined its city of origin, you can set off to conquer the world. However, you will have to start small and your first concerts will be given to a sparse audience and a modest hall. The set-lists are not all predefined and may be subject to a vote before the start of the concert. So, if you play together, you will be able to collectively choose the songs that you will perform on stage. At the end of each song, your performances will offer you a number of stars of up to 5. Once enough stars have been accumulated, you can unlock the next stages of the tour.These steps can take two different paths. For example, at the start of the game, you will have the choice of going around the world in a rotten van. This will allow you to choose your next set lists yourself, to gain more fans but to earn significantly less money. This is why if the lure of gain motivates your concerts, maybe you will choose to stay under the wing of this big producer who spotted you. If money should flow afloat thanks to its management, you will no longer have the possibility of composing your own set-lists yourself and may even be frowned upon by your most hardcore fans.
Unfortunately, the roleplaying side ends there, and we deeply regret the lack of real choices in your career strategy. Certainly, some of your choices will give rise to some funny situations (you will get lice by squatting shabby canapes on tour, forcing the whole group to shave their heads for example), situations that lightly take up the biggest pictures of life of Rock Star, the impact on your game is too anecdotal to upset what we already know about Rock Band.
THE FREESTYLE MODE
The big novelty of Rock Band 4, the one that was most highlighted when promoting the game is the introduction of freestyle mode. This is actually intended to allow you to improvise frenzied solos during your playing sessions. Freestyle works in a fairly simple and intuitive way. When the guitar solo intervenes, the notes disappear from the screen to give way to a color code. Blue will correspond to notes to be played at the top of the neck, orange will symbolize the bottom of the neck. Several pictograms will then be displayed and will indicate the actions to be taken to become an experienced shredder. Long notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes and tapping will be part of it while some portions will be left free to indulge in a little creativity.Beyond the actions to be performed, you will also be asked to stay in rhythm with the song to garner points. A little confused during the first games, the freestyle mode is quite easy to tame and provides a lot of fun and dynamism as you approach the song. The whole will give rise to solos of good quality if you apply yourself, even if unfortunately you have to recognize that the feeling of creativity remains largely relegated to the background. Indeed, if the freestyle solos rhythmically respond very well and most of the time adopt the sounds corresponding to the actions performed on the neck, it must be kept in mind that a feeling of random music hovers over these sessions. So don't expect to be able to fine-tune the perfect solo on your favorite song, two identical actions sometimes sounding different.
The most purist of you will see in the fact of covering the original solo an absolute heresy, this is why the freestyle mode can be deactivated if you wish to play the solo in the old way. Note that the song responds to the same general principle: you can improvise certain melodic lines provided you stay right, enough to satisfy aspiring singers that you are. On the battery side, once your success gauge is sufficiently filled after a succession of correct strikes, fills will be randomly sent by the game. It's up to you to play them properly to garner additional points. This feature replaces the improvisation sections of the previous Rock Band, which suffered a lot from the latency between the material and the game. Thus, these small sequences allow to offer to the ear something nice and audible, even if the surprise effect of random fills often causes a joyful mess in the song.
A COLOSSAL TRACKLIST IN THE ABSOLUTE, A LITTLE LITTLE IN REALITY
It's not just the instruments that benefit from backward compatibility in Rock Band 4. Indeed, all the DLC from previous episodes can be imported from this new generation version of the game. So, if you are a relentless and always you bought all the previous songs, you will benefit from a library of 1,500 titles sufficiently varied to satisfy music fans. So yes, it is absolutely disproportionate and the initiative is excellent for former players. But if you are a newcomer or you have never purchased song packs in the past, you will have to compile with only 65 titles or go through the wallet box (2 € per song) to flesh out little your library.If the tracklist does honor to musical diversity and still allows it to be a great vehicle for discovering new artists, it is unfortunately a little too thin to justify the purchase of the game alone.
Rock Band 4 is likely to suffer enormously from the prices it charges. Indeed, it will undoubtedly be very tricky to convince people to spend € 300 to equip themselves with all the equipment necessary to fully enjoy the experience of the game if you do not have the previous peripherals. This is all the more damaging since Rock Band 4, already very enjoyable in solo, takes on an even more fun dimension as long as you share your sessions with your friends.
The notes
+ Positive points
Unquestionably and instantly fun
Touring mode that humorously revisits rock clichés
Freestyle mode (vocals, guitar) well thought out and fun
Backward compatibility of instruments
Backward compatibility of previous DLCs
Great vector for musical discoveries
-Negative points
Basic tracklist of only 65 songs
Very expensive to get all devices
Not enough tour scripting
Still cheaper background animations
Without fundamentally upsetting the codes it has been reciting for years, Rock Band 4 introduces some refreshing new features, enough in any case to make you want to resume service. If the scripted tour lacks real management of your career plan or the freestyle mode, fun and efficient, relegates creativity a little too much in the background, Rock Band 4 reminds us of what we tended to forget, to know how fun this license is, whether alone or with others. Even if the basic track-list is a little thin, it remains a great opportunity to get a foothold in amplified music and to offer a generous dose of conviviality against a background of big sound. However, it could be the implacable law of finance that determines your purchase, the game alone does not bring enough upheaval for veterans, and the full pack being sold at a prohibitive price.
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