Hurrah! Well done Kim.
I picked up
Rock Band Blitz last night. Been waiting so long for a Frequency/Amplitude replacement.
Rock Band Unplugged on the PSP came close, but it's too small.
I'll rewind a little to give some background (and to help you understand my feelings
). Frequency was Harmonix's first game. It was an octagonal tunnel you moved down while notes came towards you in time to the music. You had three buttons to hit three different notes. Then there were six tracks (one on each side of the octagon) split for vocals, synth, snare, bass drum, bass and guitar. The final two tracks on the octagon where for mixing and scratching. You could rotate right the way around, so you could actually take a "short cut" from the guitar track to the bass drum track through the scratch and mixing tracks.
The premise was simple, hit the notes and build up the tracks. Guitar Hero/Rock Band was the natural plastic progression of this idea.
Frequency was much more manic than Rock Band though, much more satisfying when your fingers seemed to work by themselves to pull of ridiculous button patterns and to hammer through to beat a hard song. It had powerups too which added a degree of random strategy to the game. It also had a very "dance/trance" sound track which seems odd now when you consider it's the game that spawned Guitar Hero.
It was a game that was a serious challenge (you'd find yourself failing even the easy songs just on medium difficulty), but so massively rewarding, deep and addictive.
In essence, if you ever get the chance, pick up a PS2 and Frequency (yeah, like you'll find a copy
).
To Rock Band Blitz.
It utilises as similar system to Frequency (or actually more Amplitude the follow up or Rock Band Unplugged). You have five tracks, only now they arranged flat across the horizontal. You use the left and right "flippers" to shift between the tracks, but... What witchcraft is this? Only two different buttons for the notes. This makes the game much simpler. Taking out that third button makes the game "accessible" and it's not the only thing.
Unlike the other versions (across the board), each track plays no matter what. So there's always a constant stream of notes and the music is always the full sound. Previously you'd get the drums going say, and when you'd "locked them in", they'd carry on while you worked on say the guitar. This meant you only got the full tune if you were doing well. Now, you get the full music and it makes things easier on the ear, but you lack that audio clue that you're failing somewhere... Only it doesn't matter
The song tracks that come bundled too are "accessible". Gone are the hardcore guitar shreds and wailing devil worshipping. I recognise the music supplied not from Kerrang or some pub, probably called The Highwayman or something (name written in Iron Maiden font) but from the wedding over the weekend and the "standard" club afterwards. It's mostly
modern* dance floor anthems, which seems to be another odd turn for the series.
So the entire thing has been "dumbed down"? Well, no. It really is just accessibility, there's a complex game going on behind it all. You can just play the game simply and enjoy the music and bright, flashing images, or you can try to "do it well".
At the basics, you have a multiplier system. Hit x number of correct notes on a track and you gain a step up on the multiplier. So maybe 10 drum notes hit correctly and suddenly any drum notes hit are worth 20 instead of 10. Hit another 10 and you get the next level and it's 30 points per drum note.
You can do this a maximum of four times per "section" (each track is split into about five sections of music).
The clever bit? If you can get a multiplier for each track (drums, keys, vocals, bass and guitar) then you raise the limit of how many multipliers you can earn. So on the first section, if you get a 4X multiplier (remember, you start on 1X), then you get the opportunity to raise all the tracks to a higher multiplier - in this case up to 7X). You can only raise it by up to three, whichever is the highest of all the tracks. So if you get 4 tracks on 4X multiplier and the last one only 3X, then next time around you can raise to 6X instead of 7X).
It sounds confusing, but it suddenly starts to make sense when you're playing. I mentioned lack of audio queues to help before, there are visual clues now. As you gain a multiplier on a track, it fills in a vertical bar of colour in the middle. Each multiplier widens that bar until the track is all coloured. So you can glance from side to side to see which tracks need work.
The fast paced strategy required really makes the game. You have to think about the song, will there be enough vocals or guitar in this section to mean you can miss notes and perhaps a multiplier? Should you try and gain the multiplier max on one track and then move on hopefully getting the others, or constantly shift? If you constantly shift tracks, you're going to miss notes, but you increase your chances of a better multiplier across the board.
It's frantic and all the time you're weighing it up against how busy the tracks are, your ability to hit complex patterns and... what power ups you have.
Yep, to add to the issue, you have power ups too. These can be "over drive" pattern based, note based or track based.
For instance, you can have an additional band member. Hit enough white coloured notes correctly in a sequence and it adds to your over drive bar (anyone who has played Guitar Hero or Rock Band will be familiar with this). You can then unleash it on a track and your "band member" will play that track for you flawlessly. So you can have double the notes coming in, and get two multipliers built simultaneously.
For notes, it may be an explosive note that automatically "hits" a random number of notes across all the tracks, or the "fire" note which makes random notes burn. Hit the burning notes and keep the fire burning for additional points.
On the track, it may be that the drum track is worth double points all the time, or you get a bonus for completing sections 100%.
It adds a mass of extra depth and tactics to the game that is already busy. On top of
that, you have to buy your power ups prior to starting a song. You win cash for completing a song and spend this on power ups. Obviously, you never win enough to be able to buy a full rack of power ups from one song. So you need to work hard making money and then carefully pick a song to use those power ups on. It's off-game tactics that make the actual game a little more tense.
Suddenly, unlike Frequency or Rock Band, failure isn't your concern, the game is all about high scores. It a score chasing game and it adds a social side to prove it.
The game can link to the Facebook Rock Band app, so you can keep track of scores and how you're doing against friends. You also get additional in game money for signing up. You can also issue challenges through the app to friends which again is worth in game money. In the game itself, you can issue challenges directly to your console friends, again the winner gains lots of spoils.
There's a lot of reasons for trying to get those high scores.
The game is only £9 or so and comes with 25 songs (listed below). All the songs are compatible with Rock Band 3 and all Rock Band 2/3/Lego songs you have in your collection will work on Blitz. So it's £9 to add to your collection and you have thousands of additional tracks to expand the game right away, which is actually brilliant.
It's a decent rhythm action game. It's a great game for playing music to. It's a very complex and deep score hunting game. It's a great game if you don't want to feel silly with a plastic guitar
Easy to pick up, hard to master, incredibly tough to really make your mark with, loads of music and only £9.
Am I sold? Kind of. I still want Frequency (I have Frequency, I want Frequency with my Rock Band music collection), but as a game in its own right, Blitz is well worth the cash and I'm pretty happy
Track list (because this post wasn't big enough):
"A Little Less Sixteen Candles, a Little More "Touch Me" -Fall Out Boy
"Always" - Blink-182
"Cult of Personality" - Living Colour
"Death on Two Legs (Dedicated To...)" - Queen
"Diamond Eyes (Boom-Lay Boom-Lay Boom)" - Shinedown
"Give It Away" Red Hot Chili Peppers Alternative
"I'm Still Standing" Elton John Classic Rock
"Jessie's Girl" Rick Springfield Classic Rock
"Jungle Boogie" Kool & the Gang R&B/Soul/Funk
"Kids in the Street" All-American Rejects Emo
"Bang Your Head (Metal Health)" Quiet Riot Metal
"Moves Like Jagger" Maroon 5 feat. Christina Aguilera Pop/Rock
"Once Bitten, Twice Shy" Great White Rock
"One Week" Barenaked Ladies Rock
"Pumped Up Kicks" Foster the People Indie Rock
"Raise Your Glass" P!nk Pop/Rock
"Shine" Collective Soul Rock
"Shout" Tears for Fears New Wave
"Sing" My Chemical Romance Emo
"So Far Away" Avenged Sevenfold Metal
"Spoonman" Soundgarden Grunge
"Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)" Kelly Clarkson Pop/Rock
"These Days" Foo Fighters Alternative
"We Are Young" Fun. feat. Janelle Monáe Indie Rock
"The Wicker Man" Iron Maiden Metal
*within the last 10 years