You'll see the screen in your sleep!

I was addicted in the first 5 minutes of playing!

My son's friends were staying over one night and asked me if I wanted to play this game. I had never heard of it but I love video games, so I said "sure". They ran home to get the game, leaving me wondering why the heck all three of them were going.

I found out when they re-entered the house carrying a bunch of equipment on top of the game disc. "What is that?" I asked. They laughed and started setting it up. A few minutes later they were explaining the game and giving me a choice of singing, playing the guitar or working the drums. The drums looked pretty cool, so I chose that.

It took a few tries to get used to using the drums as a controller, but I got it eventually and we were on our way to playing our first song.

Of course, first we had to set up our rock persona. The game has a character creator so you get to choose what you look like, what clothes you wear, even what type of guitar you play.

The game offers a few different modes where you can practice, do a quick-play, play by yourself in solo mode or go all out and do the rock band tour mode. We played the last mode.

To begin with, in tour mode, you get your choice of about 4-5 songs. The purpose is to get through all of the songs on the list with high scores and move on to different play-lists as your band gets bigger and bigger (popularity wise). The more notes you miss, the lower your score goes and eventually you get wiped out of the game. The guitar player, during solos I think, has a chance to "rock" the guitar up and down and get you back in the game.

I thoroughly enjoyed the song list. "Don't Fear the Reaper", "Enter Sandman", "Creep" and "The Hand That Feeds" to name a few. There are tons more and though I don't know much about this, the kids that owned it said you can download more. ??

I found out pretty quickly that the drums are harder than they look and your foot gets really tired from pumping the pedal so often but it was SO much fun. The original intent of the sleepover was for the kids to watch some movies on our projector, but we ended up playing this game ALL night long.

The drum set is made up of 4 "drums", each color coded so that you know which drum to beat. On the screen there is a string of notes flowing towards you throughout each song, each one matching one of the 4 colors on your drums. When the note reaches a certain point on the screen, you beat the corresponding drum to "hit" that note. When a yellow bar comes up to the same point on the screen, you press the pedal to hit that note. I know real drums have a pedal, so I'm assuming this is fairly close to real playing although I have no experience to justify that statement. It was good enough for me though.

I eventually gave up the drums for the guitar and definitely prefer that instrument much more. This instrument is set up in the same way with five color coded buttons for your fingers and a bar that you strum in order for the note to register. In addition to the notes at the top of the guitar, there are smaller, closer together notes located at the bottom of the guitar for those with little fingers. Same concept on this one, you have to hit the right color note and strum at the same time when the note hits the certain part of the screen. This can get pretty hard when notes start going faster! We were in easy mode too, where it only gives you 3 of the colors. I don't think I could quite work my way up to difficult where all 5 of the colors are coming at you!

The microphone part was a bit disappointing. The words are going across the screen for those that don't know the songs, much like a karaoke machine. The problem though is that you don't actually have to sing the right words to have your performance count, if you hummed in just the right tune, you could still get a good score. I thought this was a little unfair. I didn't actually use the microphone, since I can't sing, but that's what my son used and his scores were better than mine.

The next day, I ended up keeping the system and playing by myself in solo mode with the guitar. I played all day and beat the game in easy. I absolutely loved it and couldn't wait for each play-list to be revealed. That night I dreamed about notes flying towards me all night long but that was o.k. The game is worth it.

When I visited my niece and nephew this summer, I got another chance to play and introduced the game to my brother who is also now addicted and thinking about purchasing it. The funny thing is...he doesn't even own a system that he can play it on, so he'll have to invest in the entire shebang all because of this one little addictive game.

Now I just have to decide if I want to invest the money into one for myself or not. The drums are a bit bulky and we don't have the room right now, so I might just go ahead with guitar hero instead, which is pretty much the same concept and a little cheaper. The whole Rock band set for ps2 runs about $150-$200. It's $160 in Walmart. I'm thinking about it.

All in all, this is an innovative game that brings play to a whole new level. I imagine it would be really fun to play with a crowd of people, maybe at a party, where you can challenge each other for high scores.