RockBand Unplugged

 File Size: 714 MB

File Type: CSO

If it has happened to me once, it has happened to me a hundred times -- I am getting ready for some industry trip, I'm packing my bag, and I can't fit my Rock Band drums in my suitcase for the life of me. I leave my plastic instruments at home, head to the airport, and cry for the entire flight because I have nothing to strum and nowhere to store Overdrive power.

Well, friend, those days are behind you and I because Rock Band Unplugged is headed for the PSP. 

 

Yes, Unplugged brings all the red, green, yellow and blue notes you know and love from the home versions of the Rock Band franchise and crams them onto a tiny UMD. Instead of playing with mini-bass guitars and tiny drumsticks, you'll control the onscreen action with the Left, Up, Triangle, and Circle buttons on your PSP. Yes, the bass, drums, microphone and guitar are all here, but you'll play them one at a time. Notes fall on a specific instrument's track, you tap them out as they cross the indicator line, and you score massive points. When you're done with one instrument, you'll use the shoulder buttons to scroll to the next one.

Now, as you're tapping out the tunes, you'll notice a white box around the track you're on. This is the phrase indicator. When you hit every note in the phrase indicator, your multiplier increases by one and the track you were on plays by itself for a while so that you can jump to the next track that has notes falling on it. If you flub a note in a given phrase, the indicator moves further up the track so you can start again in a second. Of course, flubbing means that one of the other tracks is about to get notes on it and you're going to be missing them. So you flub and get closer to failing on the instrument you botched, and then you start getting closer to failing on the instrument that now has notes that you're ignoring because you're trying to nail the one you just botched.

Whew.

Just like every other version of Rock Band, you can save an instrument that has failed out by deploying Overdrive (white energy you've amassed by hitting a series of glowing white notes) and you're allowed to fail three times in a song before the music is cut short and you're deemed a loser. Unlike the other Rock Bands, if the drums are too hard for you at one point, you can jump to another track and try to wait out the insane beat on the skins or whatever instrument has you stumped. If no one's failed out, you can deploy your Overdrive energy (via X or Down) and get your multiplier doubled. This is key to getting a five-star performance.

UMD Songs (Stars are PSP Exclusives)
AFI - "Miss Murder" *	Lush - "De-Luxe"
Alice in Chains - "Would?" *	Mighty Mighty Bosstones - "Where'd You Go?"
All-American Rejects - "Move Along"	Modest Mouse - "Float On"
Audioslave - "Gasoline" *	Motörhead - "Ace of Spades"
Billy Idol - "White Wedding Part 1"	Nine Inch Nails - "The Perfect Drug"
Black Tide -"Show Me the Way" *	Nirvana - "Drain You"
Blink 182 - "What's My Age Again" *	The Offspring - "Come Out and Play (Keep 'em Separated)"
Bon Jovi - "Livin' on a Prayer"	Pearl Jam - "Alive"
Boston - "More Than a Feeling"	The Police - "Message in a Bottle"
Dead Kennedys - "Holiday in Cambodia"	Queens of the Stone Age - "3's and 7's"
Foo Fighters - "Everlong"	Rush - "The Trees"
Freezepop - "Less Talk More Rokk" *	Siouxsie & the Banshees - "The Killing Jar"
Jackson 5 - "ABC" *	Smashing Pumpkins - "Today"
Jethro Tull - "Aqualung"	Social Distortion - "I Was Wrong"
Jimmy Eat World - "The Middle"	Soundgarden - "Spoonman"
Judas Priest - "Painkiller"	System of a Down - "Chop Suey!"
Kansas - "Carry on Wayward Son"	Tenacious D - "Rock Your Socks" *
The Killers - "Mr. Brightside"	3 Doors Down - "Kryptonite" *
Lacuna Coil - "Our Truth"	Weezer - "Buddy Holly"
Lamb of God - "Laid to Rest"	The Who - "Pinball Wizard"
Lit - "My Own Worst Enemy"

First Wave of DLC
30 Seconds to Mars - "The Kill"	Mute Math - "Typical"
Belly - "Feed the Tree"	No Doubt - "Just a Girl"
Disturbed - "Inside the Fire"	Oasis - "Wonderwall"
Lynyrd Skynyrd - "Gimme Three Steps"	Paramore - "Crushcrushcrush"
Muse - "Hysteria"	Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Under the Bridge"

I'm actually a huge Rock Band fan, and I feel like Unplugged is more challenging than any version of the franchise before it. When I first started playing, I was performing admirably and getting multipliers in the 3x region, but I wasn't getting close to five or four-star performances. Turns out, success in Rock Band Unplugged comes down to maxing out the multiplier -- nail four phrases in a row and you move into "Band Groove" and get a 5x multiplier that then becomes an 11x multiplier when it's combined with overdrive. Basically, you need to be playing flawlessly, flipping around the tracks, and staying on the beat. It's awesome but definitely challenging.

Making the transitions between tracks and their different note configurations a bit easier is the fact that whatever instrument you're playing at a given moment is a bit louder than the rest. For tone deaf people like myself, it's incredibly helpful to hear the guitar booming in my ears rather than getting lost in the vocals. Now, this isolation is a double-edged sword at times. When you start to suck and miss notes, the track you're screwing up (or the track you're ignoring) drops out. It can be a bitch to try and play one of your favorite songs correctly when you're only hearing two-fourths of it. I'll get back to more gameplay stuff in a second, so bear with me.

I'm the king of Boston.

 

The game looks great -- there are bright colors, different venues to play in, and plenty of action on screen -- and the customization options for your band is here in haircut, logos, and more. However, fans of the previous Rock Bands might be a bit disappointed to find that the dynamic animations of the band members don't exist here. Instead, the guitarist will strum along and the drummer will pound at random no matter what buttons you are or aren't hitting.

 Keeping with content, we need to talk about the music of Unplugged. Sure, there are 41 songs on the UMD and that's a healthy number, but only nine of them haven't appeared in a Rock Band game before. I love "Livin' on a Prayer" and "Chop Suey!" as much of the next guy, but I would've loved to have seen a lot more new stuff on here. I mean, most videogame fans have played Rock Band, so I would think giving them some new tunes would be a good idea.

Helping with this track list problem is the fact that Unplugged is packing an in-game music store -- a PSP first. Yup, just like on the consoles, you'll be able to connect your handheld to the Internet and download the latest songs. At launch, there are going to be 10 songs, but even some of these have been in Rock Band games already. On top of that, the songs cost as much as the DLC on the home consoles (.99 cents to $1.99). I could see the cost being the same if the PSP songs carried over to Rock Band on the PS3, but as a stand alone, that seems a bit high -- especially when I'm only going to want to play in World Tour and I'll probably have bested those gigs by the time more tracks show up.

Making setlists makes me happy.

 

And now we come to the biggest sticking point with Rock Band Unplugged -- there is no multiplayer in this game. No Infrastructure, no ad-hoc, no nothing. The absence of any head-to-head play and the ability to team up is a bit mind-boggling seeing as how the PSP is a wireless gaming device; even just being able to play one track while your friend plays another in Quick Play would've been something. This omission hurts the game's lasting appeal for me (After I complete my World Tour, am I going to come back to the game?) as well as the reason to download new tracks (With World Tour finished, will I be booting up Unplugged to play a new track in a way that doesn't benefit my band?). The console Rock Bands were all about getting together and jamming with your friends, and it sucks that Clements and I won't be able to do that on our PSPs when we head to E3.

Rock Band Unplugged is a blast and I highly recommend it to people looking to jam on the go, but you do need to examine the cost/benefit side of things. Yes, the gameplay is amazing and a ton of fun, but this is well-worn territory of fans for the franchise. If playing World Tour gigs and hitting up Band Survival Mode every now and again is good enough for you -- and it is for me -- great. However, without any multiplayer you lose the true incentive to download new music and to keep this game forever and ever. Again, the game is impressive, but it falls a bit short of the bar the franchise has set in the past.

Review Source: IGN.com

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