Harmonix rocked the game industry with the announcement of Rock Band’s return this year in the form of Rock Band 4. At first I wasn’t blown away by this news; I was under the assumption that music games went extinct due to over-saturation and wouldn’t be any fun. I pined over music games for some time – while I was driving to work, while I played Zelda, and I decided to dust off my Aerosmith guitar (I know, not a Rock Band peripheral, but all I could afford back then) and popped in Lego Rock Band.
Suddenly, even though I was terrible for want of practice, I remembered what made these games so much fun and engaging. My excitement for Rock Band 4 immediately blew through the roof, and these are five things that make me the most excited for the game’s release.
5) Players Vote On Music
Along with the announcement of a new game, Harmonix also let gamers know that they have a chance to chose some of the songs on the set list. Of course, voting for a song may not ensure the song’s availability in the game, but it is an inventive idea to get people talking and interested in the game.
If you have a song that needs picking go here and vote for Better Man by Pearl Jam, that’s what I voted for seeing as it is one of my favorite songs ever. Player decision showed me that Harmonix cares about the fans and wants to get them involved to help make the best game experience for all players out there.
4) 5 Years Of Untapped Music
The music game genre died out about five years ago, and yes Harmonix kept up with copious amounts of DLC but that narily scratched the surface of all the music that has been released since then, plus all the songs they never got to adapt. Here‘s a list of the top 200 songs from the last half decade for reference.
Harmonix could shuffle through all these tracks and have a huge setlist for Rock Band 4 and personally, I’d like to see epic gems like Weird Al’s Tacky and Daft Punk’s Doing it Right. I’m sure Harmonix will surprise me though with their choices and that I will love rocking out to all of them as a lonely one man band.
3) New Periphials
Harmonix will be releasing shiny brand new peripherals to go along with their shiny new game. This allows for new adopters of the series to hop in unencumbered, or it’ll allow people who couldn’t afford the whole set eight years ago a chance to relive some of their better years by actually having the full band set. There will be no additional changes to the instruments, which is something of a bummer, but it beats the expense of unused, full-priced sets.
Personally, I’m one of those people that couldn’t afford the whole set, so I had to make do with my Guitar Hero guitar (don’t hate me Harmonix) and enjoyed Rock Band as a bass and guitar artist. This time, I’ll be buying the whole set and driving my neighbors crazy by singing, drumming and strumming all night long.
2) New Gen Versions
While the tech specs are yet to be revealed, gamers everywhere will be playing Rock Band 4 on their Xbox One and PlayStation 4. This begs to ask: just what will songs be like coming at us in 60 fps and so on, and if so, will this effect the calibration?
I don’t know yet, and I’m sure more will be revealed at E3, but super high definition rocking out sounds right up my alley. It’s kind of sad that the Wii U got passed up for Rock Band 4, but it looks like Harmonix is ready to go big, rather than go home.
1) Backwards Compatible Peripherals
Many people opted out of the continuing versions of their favorite music games due to the fact that they couldn’t afford to keep buying more and more peripherals. Harmonix has been very kind to allow backwards compatibility on the last gen peripherals. This very nice hat tip to early adopters will definitely allow people the ability to jump onto this game. I was worried that I’d have to buy a whole new set, but I can wait, enjoy some guitar and bass solos then when the money is right buy a mic and a drum set and invite all the ladies to my house.
That’s why I’m excited for Rock Band 4. Are there any things that I may have missed? If so, please sound off in the comments below.
