Game Review: Rock Band 3

Rock Band 3 was a long time coming. Rock Band 2 was released way back in 2008. Unlike the Guitar Hero franchise which has a seemingly endless amount of sequels and spin-offs, we only had The Beatles: Rock Band and Green Day: Rock Band to tide us over. After such a long development, will Rock Band 3 be the pinnacle of music gaming it's supposed to be?

In some ways yes. Consider that I haven't played with the actual stringed Rock Band guitar or the other advanced guitar. I have had experience with the Rock Band Piano Keyboard (smart ass EB Games employees). Well let's start with the piano then. It's fun. A lot of fun actually. The keyboard itself is well-made and the charting is stupendous. Two complaints:

1. The bar to activate overdrive and effects is way on the left side, which more often than not causes you to lose focus.
2. This is a big one, upgrading songs from Rock Band 2 and DLC for Rock Band 3 Keyboards costs the FULL PRICE of the song. Yup, apologists can "but they have to re-license the songs" to the cows come home cause that's horse shit. Sorry there's no way I can be nice about this. If they had been up front about it, say, a year ago and said "Yup your going to have to re-pay for the songs for Rock Band 3" then they'd have my sympathy. Instead they didn't announce shit and waited until two weeks after Rock Band 3 was released and the first DLC came out. Fucking cockbites.

 Okay I have to calm down. Let's get to the good part, the music and game play. If your a metal lover than your probably going to be disappointed with Rock Band 3. Thankfully I hate metal, so Rock Band 3's soundtrack was amazing (albeit confusing: Who the fuck asked for Rock Lobster? Or that llama song?). Huey Lewis, INXS, J Geils Band, Joan Jett, Dire Straits, Ozzy, Police, Who, Doors, Hendrix, Bowie and the Beach Boys? HELL YES!

I thought the feel of Rock Band 2 couldn't get any better. I was wrong. Rock Band 3 feels so solid its unbelievable. The menus are much better (although switching users is still a pain in the ass) as well. What about the campaign? It's a disappointment. The idea behind it is great: go to different cities on Tours playing your choice of various setlists with different challenges. That's totally fun. The problem is it's too damn short! I never completely finished Rock Band 2's campaign, but Rock Band 3's campaign can be done in a day! They spent way too much time on their goal system when they need to expand the campaign. This is inexcusable when they've gotten rid of other various player modes.

Overall the game is a shame. A shame that they had such good bands and good game play ideas that they cocked up the best single system multi-player game with too much other crap and (to me) shady tactics.

7.5/10

P.S. Where the FUCK are the goddamn pianos? I have not seen one single Xbox 360 Rock Band 3 piano at any store I've been to (including Buffalo and Toronto). What is this shit? I'm sure we all thought that Mad Catz would be on top of this but it's FUCKING JANUARY! And now they're just talking about not having enough MIDI connectors? And they're only shipping 4000? How many games of Rock Band 3 were sold? I'm pretty sure they sold more Stage Kits than that!

MADCATZ! PIANOS! NOW!