So last night (until the wee hours of the morning) my wife and I were rocking out with my brother- and sister-in-law (and their friends) on Rock Band for the Xbox 360.

Awesome.

Seriously, this game was a blast to play.  Despite the guitar strummer being defective (could only sturm up) and the drum's foot petal snapping (we fixed it with a ruler and some hockey tape), we rocked out hard.  My brother-in-law's friend had an extra guitar from GH3 so we had the full band.  I played guitar, bass, and drums (with drums being my favorite - even though I have no rhythm).

Bass was the easiest, guitar can get crazy hard but is still easier than the crazy hard drums.  But, I enjoyed the drums more because, even though I lack any sort of rhythm, I have even less manual dexterity.  My wife loved the vocals (and was quite awesome).  She wants a PS3 now so that she can play Rock Band and Singstar.  We'll probably pick one up (I have to jump on any opportunity for a new gaming system whenever I can.  Plus, might as well get a blu-ray player for my HDTV).

My only complaint was that there weren't enough songs, or song variety.  And no Weird Al.  But, with Downloadable Content, this is being address.  Also, Feb 2008's issue of Official Xbox Magazine will include a free bonus disc with three exclusive songs for the Xbox 360 version of Rock Band.

Has anyone else played this game yet?

PS. Boogie sucks.

I wish i had  (Damn, I can't wait for this to be released in Europe, or is it???)

As you were saying, it looks to be a seriously awesome party game! (Even if i didn't have any friends i'd buy it to try out the drums!)
It's good to know the foot pedal can be fixed, I was worrying about that after reading IGN.

And with Song's like Enter Sandman to begin with, golly.

If you don't mind me asking, how much did you have to pay for the whole package?

I've not played it, but from what I know about it it's a good party game if you have the exact number of people needed for the game.  Anything over that is no good.  My brother went to a New Years party one of his friends was at and they were doing NOTHING but playing Rock Band, and he left about an hour into it because it gets old to watch.

But like I said I've not played it so I have no idea if this is true or not.  So yeah if you are having a party (or just a group of friends over) think about that ahead of time.

Man, this game is so much fun.  Like, my roommate, two friends of ours, and I have our band set up (called Griff and the Narwhals) and we are rocking out almost every other night or so.  Words cannot explain how much fun this game is, and I don't think that they ever will be able to.  The game is not perfect, by any means, but the options it gives you and the fun that can be had playing a game like this with your friends is just phenomenal.  I love it to death, and I do not feel bad at all spending the decent amount of money it costs to have.

On top of that, they already have a CRAPLOAD of extra content, something I am very happy that they (finally) got right.

do they have any weird al then, yet?

i dont really like guitar hero but id love to try the drums and vocals on this, haha

I want to play this game so bad. I don't have no friends who own it and/or are regular gamers, nor anyone in the area. I'd buy it, but it's not worth playing by myself(+ cost).

Yes, it is great.  I wouldn't buy it because (a) it's $170 and (b) two of my friends already have Rock Band at their apartment where they have all the songs unlocked and have made it through the Hall of Fame already.  How could I possibly convince half of the usual band to go out of their way to come over to my house and use a fresh set when they already have it and could just play at their house?  Other than that I've seriously logged a lot of hours on this game and was not kidding when I said it was game of the year material.

I played it with a couple of my friends and I wasn't really impressed with the song choices... I know that this is ROCK band, but I just wish there was more variety in genres.. perhaps in a future installment.. Anyway, I'm not a huge fan of playing guitar since I just can't get used to holding the guitar and being able to hit the four buttons without looking. I just can't differentiate which finger is on what button and therefore I suck at it.

Anyway, drums and vocals are great for me. I'm used to playing DDR both with my feet and fingers on Stepmania, so hitting drums is so much easier since I can see what I'm hitting at all times. I'm comfortable with vocals since I do own all four PS2 Singstar games and we all get together and sing like there's no tomorrow. But yeah, since all the songs in Rockband are rock (which isn't a genre I enjoy listening to) unfortunately I don't know close to even 6 songs in this game, which makes singing them more difficult.

my friend bought this, and since my apartment came with an HDTV, he just left it at our place... right before finals. Needless to say, we were all taken completely aback about how awesome that game is and for a straight week got noise complaints almost every night.

A few cool things:

1) If you play on the higher frets for guitar, there's no penalty during normal parts, and during solos you get double score. Also, just on those frets, you don't have to strum, meaning you can two-handed tap the entire solo just like a regular guitar.

2) If you play the drums on expert, you are actually playing the drums. You should be able to go to a real drumset and crank out a decent beat with confidence if you master rockband drums.

3) The guitar tracks are a shitload easier than any of the guitar hero games. Except for Green Grass and the High Tides, which will rape you regardless.

4) Don't even worry about singing the words. You can de doo doo doo doo all the way through a song on expert and still get 100% if you're in tune.

can you do the doo dee doo thing on the singstar games? i found out you could on boogie and i was kinda surprised, i thought voice recog technology was better than that

Rock Band is the greatest game ever made.  I'm completely addicted to it.

Oh, also, the Strat is a piece of shit.  True story.

You'd be way better off if you can acquire an Xplorer somehow, or if you wait for the wireless instruments supposedly coming next month.  At first, I liked the Strat.  It felt good in my hands, it felt good to strum, had those high fret buttons, and generally just looked classy.  Then it started only registering half of my downstrums.  I also had to hold it vertically in order for it to even REGISTER Overdrive.

We haven't had any problem with the drums though, although the kick pedal is starting to cave in a bit.  If you're an early purchaser, you probably have Gen. I drums.  You can send those to EA to exchange them for the Gen. IIs, which are really sensitive in comparison.

Having said what I needed to say about the instruments, I think that EA/Harmonix's exchange program is one of the best return programs I've ever seen.  You fill out a form, you get postage to send the broken instrument back, and you get a new instrument.  Now, all that needs to happen is they need to fix the bugs in the instruments, and they'll be good.

The Strat is a peice of shit, i hate how its barely noisy. its hard to tell at first if youre strumming imo it just botheres me

<3 xplorer

Okay, my roommate just got Rock Band so I have some questions/comments.

Our guitar didn't seem to work, wouldn't connect at all.  So I had to order a new one.  Still shy of the microphone, so all we are left with is Drum Band at the moment. 

What is the Rock Band/Guitar Hero guitar compatibility situation for the Xbox 360?  Does the Rock Band guitar work with guitar hero?  Or only vice versa? 

I'm embarassed to say that the drums were a lot harder than I anticipated.  Maybe I just suck.  But the hard parts is when you have to hit the drums in a long rhythm sequence very quickly.  Now I can get the rhythm right but I'll be drumming at just slightly off of where the beats are supposed to hit (hard to explain).  So I'll miss like a hundred in a row at these parts even though it feels like I'm doing it right.  Does this get easier with practice?

How exactly are new songs unlocked?

You can use the guitar hero guitar with Rock Band but not vice versa, afaik.  The vocals and stuff are a whole lot of fun, and I really recommend you try them.

Also Ballroom Blitz, Blitzkrieg Bop, and Run to the Hills are probably my favorite songs right now.  Apparently I sound really good singing them all (according to my friends) and that makes me really happy

I played it with a friend the other day. It was pretty great. The only problem is the singing....you've really got to feel comfortable with your singing voice to do the singing, even at a party. That's the same problem with karaoke, I guess, so obviously it's not going to affect everyone.

With singing, certain combinations of difficulty level and song can actually produce strange results in this game.  There are songs where the vocalist scoops a lot and if you don't scoop in exactly the same way, you can fail the song if you aren't playing on Easy or Medium.  Other times, the game wants you to hold a steady tone when the recording has the singer scooping.  It doesn't seem very consistent and it sometimes it seems like the more comfortable you are with your singing voice, the worse you'll actually do.  A few of my friends and I, who are all musicians and can definitely sing in tune, were pretty frustrated by a few of the songs.  The game has a very strange and sometimes finicky way of determining whether you are singing the right notes.  Conversely, on Easy or Medium, you can just scoop random sounds up and down without any regards to the actual part and you'll do very well as long as your pitch matches the music for at least a split second.  WEIRD.

Anyway, this game is the worst thing that has ever happened to me because my girlfriend plays it literally without interruption.  She's smitten with the drumset, which makes it worse because I hear the constant CLACK-CLACK-STOMP-CLACK-STOMP-STOMP of her vigorous playing.  Curiously, the guitar accessory is much more quiet than Guitar Hero's, so when she plays that instrument it isn't nearly as annoying as it was when she was obsessed with the original Guitar Hero.  It gives me a chance to catch up on the stack of PC games I haven't been able to play (she previously had taken over my computer), but if I hear that stupid OK Go song one more time I am going to snap the game in two.  Also, my friends Dustin and Alex have stopped being my friends and have become Kyrsten's friends because she invites them over to play Rock Band and drink until three AM and I'm the LOSER who won't play with them.

I hate these stupid BE A ROCKSTAR games because my girlfriend loves them so much and they've ruined all sorts of really good songs for me

Also:  I am suddenly interested in playing this game at some point simply because Ballroom Blitz has always been one of my favorite songs of all time.


Except I can't imagine there being anyone playing this game who can sing that song well, you really need a...different voice for it.

oh wow ballroom blitz

i could totally down the vocals for that

I imported this fucker from the states, and parties are yet to be the same again