One of the best games made!

And I mean it!

We bought Rock Band for PS3 in January of 2008 and we've been playing it almost daily for 2 months! So what is the deal with this fantastic game?

Pros
----
Rock Band has some great music. Classics such as "Mississippi Queen," "Detroit City" by Kiss, "Green Grass and High Tides" by The Outlaws, and if you splurge on the downloads, and of the Queens of the Stoneage. There are also relatively new songs (but GREAT songs) by Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and REM. The Police are in there and so many others. So regardless of your playing level, you get to rock to GREAT music while you play!

Rock Band's peripherals are easy to use! The guitar is a bit of a change from Activision's guitars, but once you get used to Rock Band's beautiful Fender, you'll never want to go back. The buttons on the neck of the guitar are more closely related to sliding your fingers on a real fret, opposed to mashing buttons - and that equals a MUCH better time when you're zooming through a hammer-on solo. The drums are very color coordinated and quite sensitive to the touch, therefore, they're easy to get on and start your career. The microphone is weighted very much like a real microphone, and with the ability to change the sensitivity and vocal tracks, it's fun to play with and durable!

Game play itself is crystal clear. The fret board (or drum track or vocal track, depending on what you're playing) is always black (with the exception of when you have a solo), and that makes it very handy when seeing the notes. Depending on how many people you have playing, the fret will either take up the whole bottom of the screen, or be split with the drums, while the vocal is on top. The crowd meter is easy to read, as is the energy meter, and the score board. Unlike the confusion I experienced when first playing Guitar Hero 3, Rock Band was like an amazing dream.

Along with game play is the incredible amount of customization you can choose. You can create a character, dress them, give them tattoos, face paint, make-up, change the colors of their guitars/basses/drum sets... it's a lot of fun.

You can also have a solo career (which mimics Guitar Hero 3, where the more difficult songs are further down the list), or you can group play where you rock out to gain a van, a plane, roadies, a PR firm, and fly all around the globe and play in many different venues. In each city there is a small venue, a medium venue, and a large venue - and you can tell not only by the size of the building, but the size of the crowd. Do really well in your playing, and you'll get the crowd singing along with your song, just like a real concert! (And it's most hilarious when they sing it badly, just like a real concert.)

The graphics on the game are such a step up from Guitar Hero 3. The animations are spectacular - your character if singing is synched to the music, so it looks like they're singing! The characters playing the instruments are in time as well, so if you're playing a high note on a guitar, the guitarist is actually lower on the fret (higher notes)! The set effects are also synched, so if you're playing "Long Time/Foreplay," you can watch the lights actually strobe in time with the music! Everything is fully rendered in 3-D, including the crowds in large venues. There is such a wide variety of effects too, that anyone just *watching* has something worth viewing.

So those are the major Pros, how about some Cons, since there always are some.

Cons
----
There are not tons of songs until you start to download from the store. I'm not saying that you can't get on quite well without downloads, but if you want challenges, you'll need to buy new songs. Depending on the artist, you can pay up to 5.99 for a 3-song set. (The positive to this con, the songs available are well worth the buy.)

Guitars have reportedly been quirky. Some people have had issues with the strum bar not being responsive or the whammy bar breaking. I, personally, had to have a guitar replaced because my whammy bar spring snapped. (The positive to this con, Harmonix replaced that guitar free of charge within 2 days.)

Drum kit takes up major space. Unless you're willing to take them apart after you've finished playing, the drum kit stands over 2 feet tall and is about 2 feet wide. If you have a place to put them, all the better, but it's not the prettiest accessory to have sitting out in your living room.

Customization is still a little limited. While it's great compared to GH3, there could still be more customization with the characters and the clothes. Call me a true woman, but I like to have a wide variety to choose from!

Additional guitars are still not out! While it is supposed to appear on the market April 8th, Rock Band only comes with one guitar... so if you have 4 friends, someone will have to wait and take turns. There are shady ways of gaining a second guitar (some people have used that return policy to do so, but I'm not paying 120 for an additional guitar), but, at the time of this writing, no second guitar.
-------------------------------------------------
Overall, this is one of the best games I've ever played. It is engaging, it is tons of fun, it is challenging (with downloads), and well worth the cost.

I highly recommend it to anyone wanting a game that they can play alone or with friends for parties, or even just having people over and giving everyone something to do.