Secret revealed: at the end of last week, Wired's Chris Baker and Lisa Katayama accompanied me to Electronic Arts, where we rocked out on a brand new build of Rock Band, which contained many of the new songs announced today at Leipzig.
We named our band 18 to Game|Life, of course.
Do I really need to tell you that Rock Band is still amazing and will totally rip your face off and eat it for breakfast this holiday season? I doubt it. You've already read piles of E3 impressions. You know the score.
But I will tell you about something that we didn't get to try in the chaos of E3: one person, singing and playing, simultaneously.
When the EA rep said that they had a microphone stand, meaning that I could sing with my hands free, I knew that I absolutely had to try it. Of course, we had to warm up first with a few numbers, but before long I found myself in front of the drums, mike stand pushed up to my face, playing drums on Nirvana's "In Bloom" while I screwed up the lyrics. As it turns out, you really should only do this when you absolutely 100% know the lyrics to a song already, because you can't look at both places on the screen.
At that point, what looked like the entire Spore team pushed their way into the demo room for what was apparently their first glimpse at the game. Having been witness to particular success with a group song before, I made sure to pick out 'Wanted Dead Or Alive' as 18 to Game|Life's next chart-topping hit. Thus proving the hypothesis that Bon Jovi will always, always, get a room full of people singing 'wanteeeeeeeeed' at the top of their lungs.
As the Spore team filed out, I performed Weezer's Say It Ain't So on guitar and vocals. I don't want to say I totally rocked ass, but: 97% guitar (medium), 91% vocals. And the only reason that vocals were low is because I couldn't hit the "tambourine" parts, where you bash the microphone with your fist during the guitar solo passages.
I think that Harmonix doesn't understand yet just how compelling this is going to be, as a feature. And it's not even a feature: there's no way to get the game to treat two instruments as one single player. It'll always think that you are two people. Now, it works just fine. And the people watching you will know you're awesome. But I think that Harmonix will find that they have to build in some kind of "combo modes" into the sequel.
Because this is going to be a very popular thing to do. I think they will be surprised to find how many people end up going online as two players, fronting half of a four-man band by themselves. Guitar Hero made you feel like you were up on stage rocking out. This, as if it were even possible, multiplies that feeling by a factor of something. Like, two.
They did make it so that missing the tamborine hits does not hurt your power meter as a singer. You aren't ever at risk of a game over for missing the tamborines. So they were thinking ahead. But there's no way to turn them off entirely and adjust the percentage scores to reflect that. Again: if this is as popular as I think it will be, they'll have to in Rock Band 2.
Anyway, details of my own exploits aside, let me just say that "Highway Star," among all the newly-announced songs, is freaking amazing. You might not really consider it to be a fantastic track, but after Elite Beat Agents and now this, I am in love. Also: "Are You Gonna Be My Girl", which works stupidly well. If you know the song, you know it's just full of moments where the singer sings alone, then the entire band comes back in. It's an amazing energetic moment when you've got four people playing in unison.
This game is going to be worth every penny of the $200*.
*no price has been announced yet but you know it's probably that
