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Monday 14 January, 2008
SUMMARY
In the rhythm game Rockband, the player is given one of the various game controllers acting as instruments: guitar, drums, or a microphone; and is then challenged with the task of "performing" the song according to directions notated on the screen. The player then chooses a song from a list(generally the songs are pretty popular amongst the modern society) and plays the song tapping the correct colored buttons in rhythm to the colors shown on the screen. The user is then "graded" by his or her performance based on how many "notes" were played correctly.
GAMEPLAY
The phenomenon of rhythm games has taken the world by storm since "Dance Dance Revolution" hit the arcades. Then "Guitar Hero" was released and became one of the most popular rhythm games to this day. Recently, the rhythm game "Rock Band" was released and added to the simple but ingenious concept of interactive rock guitar in video games by adding bass, drums and vocals as well, all playable simultaneously, as if the participants really had a band in their living room. For those of you who do not know how the game works, the objective is to hit, strum of sing as many notes accurately notated by colors falling from the top of the screen. There are five colors acting as buttons on each of the instruments: green, red, yellow, blue and orange. Instead of having A, B, X, Y, etc. on a controller, you have these colors as substitution in order to make the game work. In the actual game, these five colors, in that order, are positioned at the bottom of the screen acting as beacons that light up when pushed down on the appropriate instrument. As the song plays, the different colors fall from the top of the screen at whatever tempo the song is, and the player's job is to push down and strum (or strike) the corresponding color (acting as a music note) when it is in line with the beacons at the bottom of the screen. If a note is missed, the song playing is interrupted by a "wrong note sound", meant to give the player the impression that you are actually playing the song. The vocals is a much simpler concept, and it is very similar to a karaoke machine. The only difference is that it grades the player's singing by a "pitch meter" that is notated by a line and an arrow. The arrow is the player's current pitch, while the line is the correct pitch. The object is to get the arrow lined up as close as possible to the pitch line.
I especially liked the gameplay of Rockband. The designers really did a good job of adding that sense of accomplishment to the completion of a song. It gave me the feeling that I was really playing a guitar, drum or singing in a professional group, and the music that I was making was genuinely "rock" material. I am currently a music major as a trumpet player in UCSC, and it was great to capture the essence of playing a guitar without the steep learning curve. Virtually anyone can pick of a Rockband instrument and pass a song playing on the easiest difficulty, and it still provides the feeling of genuine accomplishment. I've seen it in the eyes of our neighbors who consitently come over to play
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