My quest for reviewing Rock Band 4 for the Xbox One has been almost as difficult as making it as a big time band. Well, maybe not that much, but it was difficult. I was under the impression along with most other people that the Rock Band older peripherals would work automatically with the game, but we were wrong. If you didn’t buy the game with any instruments, you needed to hunt down Madcatz’s Legacy Controller Adapter; This is no easy feat. Harmonix was nice enough to give us a review code for the game, but then it took about a week and a half for the Madcatz website to restock the adapter. Once I received the adapter it hooked right up to my Xbox One. After a little tinkering with my Aerosmith guitar and the adapter, I was rocking out.
The game is more of the Rock Band you remember from years past and that’s a great thing. With many people starting to moth ball their last generation consoles and the corresponding peripherals, it is nice to see that Harmonix gave us a new way to enjoy an old classic. The Rock Band formula holds true in the fourth incarnation of the series. The game has several modes: “Go on tour,” “Quickplay,” “Play a show,” and so on. Tour mode is essentially story mode, where you take a garage band all the way to stardom, but there are some twists; I don’t remember having a decision tree in the old Rock Band games that I loved.
After my first show I was forced to decide on a heavy question — Of course, it wasn’t Mass Effect heavy but heavy nonetheless. Will my decision affect the fate of the Universe? Doubtful, but I went with my heart. To progress in Tour Mode you have to gain stars to unlock the shows you will be playing. The better you are, the quicker you can play new venues. I was disappointed in the character creator at the beginning of tour mode — I couldn’t get my avatar to look either like me or the Joker. I’m hoping that as I continue to progress more options will unlock, but to start out your avatar looks pretty hum drum. Quickplay is pretty standard; If you want to rock out to one song and then go cook dinner, this will be your go to mode. Playing a gig takes a bit longer seeing as it’s an entire show. Instead of one song you’ll play two, possibly three songs if the audience wants an encore — Or you can say no and piss them off.
I hear everyone saying that Guitar Hero Live‘s tracks are better than Rock Band 4‘s, and I don’t know how they could say that. I’ve wanted to play every song I’ve seen, but I haven’t had the time to master them all; I’m very happy with the music selection. I went from playing one of my favorite Cake songs to rocking out to Brown Eyed Girl — Something I did not expect. Since this is a music game, I focused more on the sound and quality of the songs being played. The graphics look great, but while playing I rarely took my eyes off the conveyor belt of notes to ensure I didn’t fail. The music was crisp, perfect, and sounded great while I played. The only thing I noticed that I didn’t like was that the sound cue for messing up wasn’t as distinct as it use to be. Even while staring at the screen I really couldn’t hear if I missed a note, making me have to check my score multiplier instead. That didn’t really bother me, but in the older games the cue helped me know when I was messing up and about to be kicked from the band. It’s hard to get kicked out of a one man band.
Sadly, I cannot review the new instruments for you. I can only tell you that the adapter works very well. Once I figured out that I needed to press the sync button on the actual adapter after pressing it on my guitar I was in business. From some of the optional tutorials used I did see that the new guitar has buttons on the bottom as well. Since I was using an older guitar I used the bottom fret buttons for the lower buttons, and the game registered them as such and I continued on my learning. My old guitar can double for instruments as well. Once I 5-Star a song with the guitar, I can play it again and 5-Star it with the bass. Once Harmonix decides to sell the instruments by themselves, I’m definitely getting a mic and drum set. I’ll still be my own one man band, but at least I can sing and drum at the same time if I tie the mic around my neck.
There are countless hours of enjoyment to be had in this game. Not only can you play all of the songs on the game, but you can use your old downloads with the game. Unfortunately, some songs from Beatles Rock Band and other Rock Band games cannot be transferred over to your Rock Band 4 set list. There are hundreds of other songs that you can use, though, so not all of your DLC is lost. Harmonix also plans on keeping Rock Band 4 up to date by offering DLC in the future. They’re being nice enough to not release games yearly like other franchises, and I like that idea a lot. I’d rather buy a nice pack of Pearl Jam songs than a Rock Band 5 which may or may not have Pearl Jam songs.
I love Rock Band 4; I like knowing that anytime I want to jam out I can fire up my Xbox One and play with my old guitar. It’s a nice continuation of the series and a great point to revitalize your skills. It’s also a great point to jump into the series if you’ve never played a Rock Band game. It’s easy to pick up, play, and have some great nights with friends or family. The music genre in video games is back, and I’m glad that it’s Harmonix’s gem that resurrected it. Drops mic — Jerry has left the building….
An Xbox One review code for Rock Band 4 was provided by Harmonix for the purpose of this review