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At Game-Sammich.com we’re massive fans of Rock Band 2. We love bustin’ out the old instruments, pluckin’ the plastic and shrieking into microphones. But without a doubt there is room for improvement in the next iteration of this fantastic franchise. As Harmonix has said that Rock Band 3 “will innovate and revolutionize the music genre once again”, we decided to pool together our ideas which we want to see in the sequel.
- Cross-Platform DLC:
The Rock Band store in fantastic. It got even better recently thanks to the introduction of the Rock Band Network. But it could be better. When the original Rock band first came out, MTV hailed it as an iTunes competitor- a brand new platform for music distribution. Unfortunately history has proven that while very popular (tracks available across the Rock Band games now number in the thousands) the limitations of the store have stopped it being as great as it could have been.
What if when you buy a Rock Band track you also get a copy of the song as an MP3? What if when you bought a track on the Playstation Network you could also use it on the PSP version Rock Band: Unplugged? I resent double-dipping content and as a result the PSP game has received little DLC love from me. How awesome (and improbable, due to licensing issues) would it be if you could buy a track on the PSN and also use it on your Xbox LIVE account? There are so many possibilities for expansion on the store front which we hope Harmonix has considered.
- A more fleshed out campaign:
Rock Band 1 and 2 both feature the World Tour campaign mode and both versions are pretty much the same. We’ve also found that after playing it for long a long period it becomes very shallow and failure becomes of little consequence. There is a point in the game where gaining more fans didn’t matter at all as nothing else gets unlocked, so you really don’t care when you lose them.
Easier navigation would also be a needed improvement- the globe view is cool and all, but finding gigs you want to play can be a bit of a hassle.
More stat-tracking would also be good, recording your successes and failures. It’d be horrifying to see how many hours we’ve pumped into Rock Band 2.
- New instruments:
The Rock band franchise has not been known for being bundled with the best instruments- this is one area where the Guitar Hero franchise nearly always has an advantage. But Dhani Harrison, son of George of Beatles infamy, has said that not only is he helping to work on the new instruments but that they are “making the controllers more real so people can actually learn how to play music while playing the game”. We’ve already seen music games use real life guitars (see Power Gig Guitar, Guitar Rising) and the drum peripheral can already help you drum. None the less, it will be interesting to see how or if Harmonix will enable these new realistic features to work on older songs and if they go along the route of using a real guitar. It doesn’t seem like it, as it has been confirmed that Mad Catz are producing the third instalment’s instruments suggesting they will still be plastic. Colour us intrigued.
- Better character creation:
We much prefer Rock Band’s art style to Guitar Hero’s, but we have to admit that the opposition had the better character creator mode. I mean, you could turn your skin blue. Blue! Blue’s awesome, right? Just ask James Cameron. But for some reason you’re unable to make your character fat in either game- odd, considering many rock legends are pretty obese (Tenacious D and Meatloaf for example). Get to it, Harmonix! Bring on brownies! Wheel in the waffles!
- More varied animations, effects and locales:
The Beatles: Rock Band made the old vanilla game jealous. Why can’t our in game characters go for a balloon ride? Bloody Ringo Starr. Also- this is a niggling point- why do we have to make do with floating guitars? Is modern day technology unable to render a leather strap or something? Jesus.
- User Created Content:
One of Activision’s main selling points on the Guitar Hero games has been their music creation system available to its users. While the first iteration felt rushed thanks to the use of sounds which sounded like Midi files, it has been evolving into something far better.
While Harmonix now offers musicians the chance to develop for the Rock Band Network, this is expensive and time consuming. They have previously said that they will not do this kind of thing until they can do it right- will it be ready for Rock Band 3? We hope so.
- Harmonies:
Another feature from The Beatles that we’d love to have be made available in the core series. Vocal harmonies proved to be a great addition and allowed even more people (up to six!) to take part. What would be even better is if previously released songs used the harmonies, as many of them can be very confusing as you have to switch between different singers on the fly.
- Rip off Guitar Hero 5 please:
The Guitar Hero franchise isn’t completely void of originality- there were many great ideas implemented into the fifth instalment which we’d love to have in the superior game. Features such as new players being instantly able to join a song mid play, changing your difficulty on the fly and being able to play multiple sets of the same instruments are all great additions. The metronome/ count in after pausing introduced in Guitar Hero: World Tour (implemented later in The Beatles) would also be very handy.
- Cinema Mode:
This was one feature initially promised in Rock band 2 but was, for some reason, removed before release. This would essentially play footage of your band playing itself without the note highway overlay, allowing full view of your characters. It would be a pretty neat thing to run in the background at parties and we would have loved to have had it in the Beatles.
- Natal/Move integration:
With all the hype surrounding motion controls at E3 this year, it feels inevitable that Harmonix will cash in on it somehow. But when you really give it thought, there are some pretty neat implementations for this new tech. How cool would it be to map a photograph of your face onto your in-game persona, FaceBreaker style? How about a replacement for the stale ‘star power’ activation motion with a variety of poses and actions? Perhaps instead of choosing preset animations for your character during its creation you could record some of your own? Say what you will about motion controls, in a party game like Rock Band they could come into their own.
Check back after next month’s Electronic Entertainment Expo to catch the first glimpses of Rock Band 3!
Dan Richardson
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