The Drums

The drum set presents one of the greatest quandaries of Rock Band. On the one hand, I’d say that it’s probably the most involving and enjoyable section of the multiplayer rhythm game. On the other hand, it’s also one of the most repetitive, frustrating, and challenging instruments to be played. The drums have the steepest learning curve and that’s because it most closely mimics what a real drum set would be like. This is in sharp contrast to the fret button system found on the guitar and bass.

Unlike DrumMania (Bemani), the drum set for Rock Band is only comprised of four pads — a snare, two tom-toms, and a crash cymbal — as well as a kick pedal for the bass. With DrumMania, you get five pads. A small difference, to be sure, but one that must be noted.

I found that that the most challenging aspect to playing the drums was trying to balance my attention between the four color-coded pads and the kick pedal. It’s hard using both your hands and your feet at the same time, especially if they happen to be slightly off-time from one another. Whereas I can handle some songs on “hard” using the mic and the guitar, I’m nowhere close (yet) to mastering the drums on this level.

Conclusion

Make no mistake, Rock Band is the real deal and if you’re a fan of rhythm/music games, you can’t go wrong with this purchase. The multiplayer “band” career mode is certainly much more enjoyable and less linear than the solo career, the latter of which is closer to Guitar Hero in styling, but you’ll have fun playing both. The “feel” of the virtual performances also seems better than Guitar Hero, because they provide for more interesting “camera” angles and so forth.

When you have two guitars, one drum set, and one microphone all going at the same time, the screen can get really crowded, so I highly suggest that you play this on a larger HDTV. The challenge of the guitar portion isn’t as high as Guitar Hero III, because Rock Band is supposed to lower the barrier to entry and introduce more people to this wonderful genre of video games.

So much fun. Now, if you’ll excuse me, “Enter Sandman” awaits me. For more high res shots of all this fun in one box, check out the Rock Band Photo Gallery.

Pros

• Excellent song list
• Arguably the best party game to date. Multiplayer is a blast.
• Fantastic implementation of peripherals
• Cool extras like the crowd singing along
• Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld

Cons

• Wired peripherals can be cumbersome
• Learning curve on drums can be steep
• Single-player career not as entertaining
• Issues with both guitar and drums reliability

Overall Rating: 9.0 / 10.0

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