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Move over, Activision. There's a new portable rhythm game in town, and while it may not come with a snap-on guitar peripheral, it's got the musical chops to hold its own. Rock Band: Unplugged is different from the Rock Band console games we're used to, but that's not a bad thing.
As we saw in the first Rock Band: Unplugged trailer, there are four instruments (bass, guitar, drums and vocal), each with four notes, which are by default assigned to the PSP's left, top, triangle and circle buttons. Notes scroll down the screen, and the corresponding button has to be hit on beat in order to score points -- if you've played any music beat game in the last three years, this won't be new to you.
Songs are divided into phrases, and perfectly completing one phrase will signal the player to switch to another instrument - done with the PSP's left and right shoulder buttons. Each song starts with just one instrument lane open at any given time. If players do poorly, more lanes open up -- so if you're really blowing that guitar section, you can switch to drums for a while. Good to great players will only see one track at a time.
Quickly switching lanes after completing phrases and continuing to hit notes will build up score multipliers as well as Overdrive, which like previous Rock Band games doubles the existing multiplier for a limited amount of time. The instrument health meter on the left and the star rating on the right should also be familiar to fans of the series.
The new Band Survival mode gives you no cue to switch tracks, but unlike the regular mode, the health meter of any track you're not playing will continue to fall. Imagine playing all four instruments in Rock Band at the same time. It's challenging to keep an eye on every lane while staying on beat -- time management games have prepped us well -- but since each track isn't too difficult on its own, Band Survival is actually more entertaining than the regular mode.
Check out the nine Rock Band songs that will debut on the PSP.
Warm Up mode allows players to practice songs by opening up every instrument lane -- i.e., players don't have to switch tracks unless they want to. In addition, the World Tour mode spans 24 cities, each of which has a single venue and is unlocked in progression similar to World Tour modes on the console Rock Band. Character customization is also available, although the virtual rockers won't look as graphically pretty on the PSP.
Unplugged will also feature the PSP's first in-game music store, which will offer 10 DLC songs at launch. Unlike the DLC for consoles, PSP tracks will not be released weekly, although Harmonix does have plans to add to the library throughout the lifetime of the game.
This isn't Rock Band that most gamers know -- it lacks the satisfaction that comes from collaborative play as well as the full illusion of jamming that comes with instrument mimicry. That said, the game has the level of polish we've come to expect in Harmonix games, a kick-ass 41-song soundtrack that can be expanded via DLC and portability -- we could see ourselves playing Unplugged in lieu of listening to our iPods. Rock Band Unplugged may not be revolutionary, but we're certainly looking forward to picking this up when it releases on June 9.
Reader Comments (1)
wow thats stupid. is there anyway to make an attachment o*****uitar neck or something? totally defeats the purpose of guitar hero / rock band