Review: Rock Band Unplugged
Portable music games always seem like an odd duck. Guitar Hero On Tour for the Nintendo DS had to create an attachment so you could press down on the usual buttons while "strumming" on the touch screen. But all the PSP has are some buttons and a thumbstick. So how in the world did Harmonix think they were gonna pull off Rock Band Unplugged without any guitars, drums or microphone? Well, it turns out by skewing the gameplay back towards their earlier titles Amplitude and Frequency.
And you know what? It works better than it has any right to!
The first thing you notice when you start playing Rock Band Unplugged is that it looks great. They've done a fantastic job of condensing the entire visual experience onto the portable. From menus to characters to outfits to logos, it's all dead on. Sure, you won't have quite as many ways to customize your band members, but that's a small quibble. There's still enough variety to play with. And the sound is actually very impressive — at least when you're using your headphones! Trying to play it through the PSP's external speakers is just asking for trouble.
Gameplay starts out like the traditional Rock Band tour. You select a starting city and get going playing some small gigs, working your way up to the arenas until you're a star. It's the actual playing of the songs where things take a severe left turn. There are customizable control options, but the defaults work pretty well. You use the left and up directional buttons in conjunction with the triangle and circle buttons to play the four notes when they hit. It may sound easier to just press a button instead of having to strum at the same time, but the catch is that you have to play all four instruments at the same time, using the L and R triggers to shift left and right through the tracks. This is where things can get tricky. For traditional Rock Band enthusiasts like me, there's a bit of a learning curve getting used to having to switch instruments mid-song, but you get the hang of it pretty quick.
The only problem with switching between instruments is that it's hard to get a groove going. Also, because the rhythm of the drums, bass, guitar and vocals are often quite different, that can pose a challenge as you adjust on the fly. There is a new gameplay mode in addition to the usual Quickplay and World Tour mode called Band Warm Up, which allows you to play through one instrument if you like, but I thought it was annoying that while playing drums, it forced me to switch to the guitar solo rather than just waiting my turn. The other game mode is called Band Survival, and it's basically the regular gameplay, but this time the instruments you're not actually playing start sliding down the meter the second you switch off of them. It can be quite challenging to keep all the plates spinning at the same time!
Rock Band Unplugged is a faithful and surprisingly entertaining adaptation of the music game onto a portable platform, and I really only have two complaints with it. First, there are only a small handful of new songs on the UMD, with all the rest being from either Rock Band or its DLC. And while 41 master tracks sounds like a lot, they repeat a lot. There is some DLC available through the PlayStation Store, but I'm not sure how I feel about paying $1.99 for a portable version of a song, especially if I already paid for it as an extra for my console version. The other complaint is the complete and total lack of multiplayer. Rock Band is at its best when played with three other people (and an audience), but they didn't bother to use the PSP's WiFi either through local or internet, and that's a shame. It would've been a ton of fun to link up with three friends and each take on one of the instruments to put on a portable concert.
Still, those are minor quibbles, and Rock Band Unplugged is still a whole lot of fun, and with the track switching addition to the gameplay, a new challenge, even for skilled Rock Band players. Honestly, the best review I could give this game is to reveal that this was the title that got me to pull my PSP out of mothballs and charge it up again for the first time in a very long time.
8 out of 10
Wootini
Posted to Hot Stuff, Reviews, Video Games on 30 June 2009
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