If your concern is that the plastic music instrument genre might be dying, you can at least be satisfied that it lasted until Rock Band 3 came out. If no more of these games ever come out it won’t matter because there just isn’t anything more to add. Of course I hope that tracks keep getting released onto the store because there can never be enough music for the platform, but in terms of features Harmonix have gone so far beyond any other simulation music game that I can’t see how they can outdo themselves again (apart from adding trumpets or saxophones, but there has most certainly been reached a point of diminishing returns).

Rock Band 3 is thus, the plastic instrument music game to end all plastic instrument music games. We (being the El33tonline crowd) adore Rock Band 2, but this supersedes it in every way. We now have the option to play with a plastic keyboard as well as the guitar, bass, drums and vocals. Also included are the multi-part vocals first added in The Beatles: Rock Band, so now there is space for seven people in the band: three singers, a drummer, a guitarist, a bass guitarist and a keyboardist. I can only imagine the greatness of playing Bohemian Rhapsody with seven band members.

Not only are there more instruments, each instrument (except vocals, which gets harmony mode instead) has a brand new mode – Pro Mode. For guitar this means a whole new instrument complete with over a hundred buttons and six strings to strum. For drums this means three cymbals added to the four pads and bass pedal (as well as support for another bass pedal). For keys there is only one version, which works for normal and Pro Mode. None of the new peripherals are out in South Africa, so I haven’t had a chance to give them a go – if we do then we will report on them in separate reviews. But the Pro Mode is an example of just how far beyond Harmonix have gone with this game – we’re basically talking three more new levels of difficulty above Expert and a much closer match to the real instrument. Until I get the chance to play them I can’t say more on that.

The standard instrument modes are roughly the same, but the shell of the game is massively improved. There is now drop-in, drop-out play, so players can join in a song at any time on any instrument they want, although this does understandably stop your band scoring anything for that song. This is a huge improvement over the Rock Band 2 system where you had to set up your band before you went in to song selection and had to go back a whole bunch of menus just to get to your band setup. Song selection is also fantastically overhauled. Firstly, all songs are available from the start – hoorah! Secondly, there are lots of ways to sort the songs you have – by song name, artist, difficulty, date acquired, play count, stars (number of stars achieved), leaderboard rank and review.

Review is a great concept – you can now rate each song on a scale from 1 to 5 and this rating will be taken into account when you select a random playlist. A song reviewed with one lighter will never show up and a song with 5 lighters will appear twice as often as a song with 3. This makes selecting Random a decent option when, like us, no one wants to decide a song for everyone else. The list also includes the latest songs available on the Rock Band store, a nice addition (although thankfully this can also be turned off for those of us who can’t access the store…). In addition to sorts you can also filter on lots of things – genres, keyboard support, number of vocal parts, you name it.

The career mode is also hugely better. I can’t overstate this. I liked the Rock Band 2 career mode when I first played it, but the amount of repetition in it got really frustrating after a while. It was also a pain to try and find a new song to play at one of your gigs. Rock Band 3 includes all play into your band’s career – so even Quick Mode play adds to your career goals. In fact, the career is a just a set of goals for you to achieve. You can choose to meet those goals by just playing songs and have the goals take care of themselves (i.e. just ignore them and have fun), or you can select a goal and play towards it.

You can also choose to take on a Road Challenge. These are sets of gigs that follow a band’s progression – as you get more fans (by completing more goals) you unlock more Road Challenges that take you further and further afield from your hometown. The Road Challenges have a number of gigs in them, each with a few songs in the set. In most cases you can choose your set, or at least choose from within a genre – which is great! They also have some extra rules which spice things up. For each song you can earn up to 10 Spades – one for each Star you get and one for each Spade you collect in the Spade meter. This meter is filled up in many different ways. For some gigs it will be all about hitting note streaks – each note streak successfully hit will add some amount to the meter. For some it will be using Overdrive lots of times, or activating Overdrive when it’s full, or at full multiplier, or nailing each section of the song. There are quite a few variations and they serve to keep things interesting instead of just playing for score. Of course all of them simply require you to play your instrument as perfectly as possible, but it still adds some variation to the performance.

As you play Road Challenges you will be working towards your Career Goals and once you get to the end of the challenge you will be rewarded with new gear and lots of new fans. The reason I like this new career mode is the ability to play whatever you want, however you want and have it count towards your goals. The trophies are linked in to the goals, but there are a lot more goals than trophies, so they’re a great way of tracking your progress. For each goal you can also see what you still need to do to complete (for instance, it will show what song, or how many songs, you still need to play).

Rock Band 3 really is the ultimate music game of its type. All the clutter has been wiped away and the game is now a near-perfect interface to your collection of Rock Band music. You can once again import from Rock Band 2 and Rock Band (and Green Day Rock Band, Lego Rock Band and most of the Track Packs) for a once-off fee in each case to have them all in place. Why on Earth can’t other music games allow this if Rock Band can? The options of instruments and difficulty levels are vast. The quality of the visuals and the game engine is superb – all in-game tracks are lip-synched and drum synched. I haven’t been able to check but I wouldn’t be surprised if even the guitarist is playing the right notes at the right time on screen.

I haven’t mentioned the track list. It’s big, at over 80 songs. It’s also highly varied with all sorts of pop, new wave, rock ‘n roll, metal, nu-metal, alternative, and…rock. It’s clear that there was a bend this time towards songs with keyboard parts, but Harmonix have generally been great at selecting songs that are interesting to play and listen to, and haven’t disappointed this time. Plus, there are over 2000 songs (and counting) on the Rock Band Music Store, with everything from Lady Gaga and the Bee Gees to Bon Jovi and REM to Megadeth and Metallica. If you are looking for one music game to last you then this is the game. Now to try and get those new peripherals!

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