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In late 2007, Cambridge, MA developer Harmonix Music Systems released a game that expanded on all of the concepts that the company had developed prior. The company’s earlier titles – the very underrated and overlooked Frequency and Amplitude games for the PlayStation 2 – were built upon the idea of a person recreating music by blasting little beats representing notes of the song. The games tracks (the songs) were broken up into pieces – Vocals, Guitar, Bass, FX and more- that would be put together again by the player. The games were reviewed very well but didn’t sell well, meaning Harmonix had to drop the beloved series and look towards the future.
As time went on, Harmonix took a look at their older games and decided to focus on certain aspects of these. The first to come of it was their Karaoke Revolution titles that used a microphone peripheral to allow the player to sing into a microphone and be judged by the game. The series sold remarkably well and showed Harmonix that focusing on individual instruments would be the way to go – similar to how Bemani and Konami were creating music titles in Japan. Eventually, Harmonix got tired of working on countless sequels to Karaoke Revolution and once again had to go to the drawing board of specific instruments to create titles from.
This new philosophy of thought led them to the creation of Guitar Hero, a music game utilizing a peripheral in the shape of a guitar which the players would play along to popular rock songs. Initially Guitar Hero was a under the radar game, just like the aforementioned Frequency and Amplitude titles, failing to find a user base. But it seemed almost overnight that the series bloom into a mega hit and spawned two more sequels from Harmonix. But – getting tired of having to pump out annual sequels and expansion packs – Harmonix decided to look towards the future and decided that, now with their new knowledge of creating individualized experiences, and put together their ideas of past games into a smorgasbord of all.
Rock Band is that title. Going back to their roots, Harmonix decided to revisit the idea of breaking a song up to parts and putting it all back together by the player, creating a feeling of actual composition. The basis was all there, as Harmonix smartly hanged onto the ideas and fundamentals behind their previous games Karaoke Revolution and Guitar Hero meaning that they could – in a rather genius move – stick those two games together and try to emulate the experience of being in a band.
While singing and lead/bass/rhythm guitar would certainly be fun, Harmonix knew that something was missing. They knew that while people really enjoyed rocking out on guitar with a fake instrument, there was certainly something that people wanted, and that was playing the drums. People didn’t want to work; they wanted to bang on the drums all day. Certainly, this was a perfect match for video games, as unlike Guitar Hero they couldn’t really replicate playing guitar, but you can absolutely get the feeling that you’re playing something and learning how to apply these video game talents into something material.
Rock Band is a great game. The song list is diverse and interesting, where the title leads you to believe that there’s a significant focus on pure rock, Harmonix managed to throw in genres that were built around rock and utilize it, instead of just pure up rock. Evident of this are hits from “Wait, what?” artists like The Beastie Boys, Faith No More and long time Harmonix fan favorite band Freezepop who supply tracks that question the title. While there is certainly a respectable amount of rock songs that people identify with, it’s nice to get a change in variety and shows that Harmonix really are masters of the music genre.
The game itself is beautiful in an odd way. Instead of competitors Guitar Hero III which focused on being at a concert and watching the musicians, Rock Band has a live video recording feel to it, making use of effects like grayscale and such that sometimes will take your attention away from the screen as to how cool the game looks in the background. This is a pleasant change as Harmonix effectively calibrated the effects to certain songs in the game to really nail down that mood. For example, Black Hole Sun - the popular grunge song by Soundgarden, shows the rockers rocking in the background normally when the slow part in the song would come in and the screen turns into a black and grey visual display of the band rockin’ slowly and getting into the music. The feeling of watching this in the background is amazing and really adds to the atmosphere of the song. This, combined with synched lighting to the songs and realistic band animations, creates an atmosphere that if you’re a fan of any music game ever, will really love and want to be implemented into other games.
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