Rock Out With Rock Band

I’m sure you’ve all heard of Rock Band at some point in time. The game was released for the Wii system in June 2008. So you’re probably thinking, “If the game’s six months old, why is there an article about it now?” Well, Rock Band was just released in the deluxe edition. You can buy the Wii bundle for around $100 right now at Walmart, and another guitar priced at about $60. So altogether, we’re talking around $160, more or less.

The boxed special edition bundle includes: a drum set, a microphone, a guitar, the game disc, and the starter Track Pack with great songs by Bon Jovi, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The All-American Rejects, Ramones, The Who, OK Go, Metallica, and Foo Fighters. And with the extra guitar, you can have four people play in all four player slots at once for maximum fun. One of the guitars can be set to bass guitar and the other to electric lead guitar, so two guitarists play at once. Both instruments can be set to lefty position and “Lefty Mode,” to make the game a little easier for our left-handed friends.

Rock Band is pretty similar to Dance Dance Revolution in some ways. The notes come across the screen DDR-style, and multiple notes can be hit at once, depending on which difficulty level you set it to: Easy, Medium, Hard, or Expert. As you play the songs on Solo Tour or World Tour, you unlock more and more tunes. Once you’ve unlocked them all, you can go out to any store that sells Wii games and buy another Track Pack, like the AC/DC Track Pack or Track Pack Vol. 2, which has a variety of rock favorites. If you want to choose which song you play, you can play on Solo Quickplay or Band Quickplay Mode, but that doesn’t allow you to unlock anything new.

“It’s really fun to play, especially the drums,” says Megan Reichardt, “At times it is very hard. It’s addicting, too!” There are also tutorial levels for each instrument and practice modes to play on, so you can warm up before you rock the world from your living room.