Thursday, October 18, 2007

Rock Band (More)

There's a detailed preview of Rock Band over at Gamespot.

Here are a few of the highlights:
--in addition to individual song ratings and career scores in "World Tour" mode, you also have a fan counter. How many fans you win or lose at a concert will be influenced by both how you play and the size of the venue. And yes, the number of fans you have will be reflected in the attendence at your concerts.
--the game is far more open-ended now. Instead of playing a song at a venue tied to that song, each venue has a set of activities, and you can pursue any of them. So if you want to play one song, you can, but you can also accept challenges like playing sets where you don't know the song list in advance. With more risk, your potential reward goes up.
--there are also venue-independent activities, like finding an agent, getting signed by a record label, even poaching roadies from other bands.
--there are special events. Gamestop specifically mentioned "Battle of the Vans," where you're competing against other bands to win (you guessed it) a van. Winning that van lets you drive to out-of-town gigs.
--when you purchase downloadable content, you can play all of those songs in World Tour Mode as well.

The full preview is here.

Here's what Harmonix has been doing for the last several months, apparently--they've been establishing a direct connection with my brain in the "WHAT I WANT IN THIS GAME" area.

I think that's called the hippocamel. Or something.

Seriously, this is EXACTLY what I wanted--more depth and choices to make, but without disrupting the core gameplay. It's still skill-based, it's still focused around "playing" the songs, but there are more choices to make when you're not rocking.

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