Green Day: Rock Band Review
Game: Green Day: Rock Band
Developer : Harmonix
Published by : MTV Games/EA Games
Available on: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii (Reviewed on Xbox 360)
Less is more is definitely not an adage that can be associated with music games nowadays. Gamers have been saturated to near breaking point with the genre, some developers releasing multiple titles in the same financial year on all manner of gaming formats. Cupboards full of plastic instruments are already groaning in anticipation of yet another music game but The Beatles : Rock Band and Guitar Hero Metallica proved that if the band is good enough and the interest is there, the game will find it’s niche. Green Day have been going a while now but it could be argued that Harmonix’s choice to make a game based solely on them after The Beatles is perhaps an intruiging one. Is this a worthy addition to the music gamers already bursting at the brim collection, or is it one to skip? Read on for the full review.
GRAPHICS : Anyone familiar with previous Rock Band games will feel right at home here, especially if you’ve played The Beatles game. The user interface is pretty much a carbon copy of The Beatles one only with the style of Green Day, circa American Idiot/21st Century Breakdown.
Previously in Rock Band games, careful care and attention has been paid to the strumming of a guitar (even chord shapes) it’s noticable at points in this game that Billy Joe’s fretting arm isn’t actually moving, though the strumming arm is pretty spot on as usual. Also, it’d be nice if they started putting straps on the guitars, so they weren’t floating in mid air unassisted!
SOUND: As always, the music is the star of any Rock Band title and this one is no exception. Master tracks are the norm nowadays, but it’s still nice to see every track is from the original master-tapes, no live tracks or covers to be seen. The crowd will roar behind you if you have a 5.1 (or better) setup and having them join in with anthemic choruses when you are performing well, even now, just doesn’t get old. The songs sound as fresh today as they did when you first heard them.
GAMEPLAY: As mentioned, the user interface is carbon copy from The Beatles game, and also included is the new (ish) harmonies for the gamer who fancies themselves a singer. As usual, up to four people can play as a band (Green Day are a three piece with Billy Joe singing and playing guitar, but singing, guitar, bass and drums makes up the four inputs as usual) with the highways in exactly the same way as you’d expect to find them. At this point I think it’s fair to go ahead and assume that anyone with a passing interest in this title has played or seen a previous Rock Band title and talk about the songs included, and how the game itself plays out.
The songs included are a mixed bag, the full albums of Dookie and American Idiot (arguably the bands most commercially succesful work) are included, with a heavy portion of their most recent album 21st Century Breakdown for good measure. Sadly, there really isn’t very much else included, a few tracks from Warning (including the title track, as middle-of-the-road as the band have ever gotten) and a few tracks from Insomniac (Brain Stew/Jaded, Geek Stink Breath) and finally a few from Nimrod (Good Riddance, Nice Guys Finish Last, Hitchin’ a Ride). There is absolutely no pre-Dookie material on here. The remainder of 21st Century Breakdown is available as DLC from the normal Rock Band 1/2 store and whilst you can’t blame them for not including them, perhaps a one-time use code would have been a nice touch to download those packs, especially when one of the in-game unlockable challenge is to play that album in it’s entirety.
The biggest problem with this game is that Green Day as a band, well…..they just aren’t a very historically interesting band. Apologies for continuous comparisons here, but The Beatles: Rock Band was full of history, full of archive photographs, information and video footage. Unlocking photographs in this game isn’t so interesting since some of them are lifted straight from their album sleeves (those are the things that we used to look through before iTunes came along kids!) or are generic press-shots. Worst still there are three gig locations to play and thusly, three outifts that the band play in. It’s hard not get a bit bored with the same visuals for that long.
Aside from a nice looking intro, there are none of the wonderfully crafted movies to watch between “stages” that we saw introduced in The Beatles and frankly, the gigs are structured in a strange way, as though they knew they had a limited amount of songs and they didn’t want you to just play them in album order. You’ll probably start a career and end up just giving up and jumping into quick-play to choose the songs you want to play. Bizarrely you can’t even play the 4-5 song gigs in their entirety from the get go in career mode, yet if you go to quick-play you can play full albums that way!
What I’m trying to say in a round about kind of way here is that there are probably far more worthy bands to make a game about (Manic Street Preachers, even Oasis have a more interesting history!), and this is coming from someone who personally really likes Green Day.
Difficulty wise, it’s hard to say but the vocals seem much easier than any other music game to date (I play expert vocals/bass/guitar and medium drums) and pretty easy to gold star even on expert. Some of the rythmn sections of the guitar parts are far trickier than they are in real life, the bass sections are fun to play though as are the drums. Whatever your poison, aside from vocals there is a reasonable challenge here, and an enjoyable one at that.
Sadly all of the songs with any adult language are censored as well, as with previous games. In this modern age it’s absolutely ridiculous to think that there is no way the “real” versions of these songs can’t be on the disc with the use of parental settings. It’s absolutely nonsensical that “When masturbation’s lost its fun” is ok but “you’re fucking lonely” isn’t! Apparently “whore” and “piss” is okay too, but “shit” isn’t. Seriously, it’s admittedly too much to ask for two version of the game to be released, but if parental settings were actually worth having and worked properly, then surely both versions could be there. Given the band in question here, given how much censorship has to happen (Dookie, where there is a song called F.O.D. which stands for….well, Google it) it just feels ridiculous.
LONGEVITY: If you love Green Day, if they are you favourite band then this will keep you going for a long time. There is no word as to any DLC for the game, but Green Day have been featured as DLC in Rock Band games prior, so there’s plenty of reason to assume that those missing Nimrod/Insomniac album tracks may well turn up in the future. If you love Dookie and American Idiot, this offers you a new way to listen to the albums, playing along all the way.
VERDICT: So what we have here is a standard Rock Band game, with Green Day in it. If you love Green Day then you’ve probably already purchased it, if you don’t like them then this will not change your mind. If you have a passing interest in the band but love Rock Band…..well…..there we get to the difficult spot. The game showcases all over the bands biggest hits, but misses out on some of the lesser known classics and fan favourites, it brings nothing new to the genre in terms of gameplay and if you are looking for a band specific game, it’d be easier to recommend The Beatles one as that caters for almost everyone, whereas getting your mum, or grandma to play this one might be a bit trickier.
That said, if you are interested in this game then you probably like Green Day, so on that basis alone it’s hard not to reccomend it. Just be wary, this game is nothing more than a reskinned The Beatles: Rock Band, only without nearly as much love poured into it. Simply put, this is a Rock Band game with only Green Day songs and skins, if you want that, you should buy this game, but it does nothing more than that, though in truth, why should it?
Now Harmonix, about that Manic Street Preachers: Rock Band you plan to unveil to GodisaGeek exclusively…..right…..right?!
