Posts Tagged ‘Rock Band’

My collection of music games. Rock Band 3 is just a case though. Luckily, I have the Games on Demand version!

My father wouldn’t let me get Rock Band when it was announced for the Wii. This made me super disappointed, because to me, Rock Band seemed like Guitar Hero (which I had just started to get hooked on), but with singing (something that I REALLY loved doing). The main reason was that he though the drum kit was too big. The other big reason was that I had just gotten Guitar Hero III, and he wanted me to fully enjoy that first. That was 2008.

I would eventually get to play Rock Band when Rock Band 2 came out for Wii, and I’d managed to convince my parents to let me buy the Guitar Hero: World Tour Super Bundle. I was hooked instantly. It was everything I’d hoped for, and it took my massive obsession with music games to a whole new level. I had no idea how amazing the DLC library was until I took a look for myself, and at the time, a lot of the tracks weren’t even ON Wii! My excitement for Guitar Hero World Tour was killed when EB Games screwed up my pre-order and I had to wait a good 4 months to actually get it, so The Beatles: Rock Band was the first music game that I was super hyped for. Man, it seems weird saying that now. I even rushed home to play it, and my god, I loved it. That was 2009.

My passion for music games eventually (among other things) led me to pick up an Xbox. This was around the time that the RBN was launched. I saw how much better the support was on Xbox, and I figured that since the games I played the most were Rock Band and Guitar Hero, I should move over to the console that would provide the best experience for me. I bought the Rock Band 1 Band Kit, partially because it was cheap and partially because I’d never played RB1 before. I also rented LEGO: Rock Band about 3 times because I couldn’t afford it, but I REALLY wanted to play Ghostbusters! It was also around this time that I began to really care about the weekly DLC, so RockBandAide became a site I regularly visited. When Rock Band 3 came out, I bought it instantly because the thought of missing out on free Doors songs was unbearable! It was on Rock Band 3 that I was introduced to the band that would soon become one of my all time favourites: The Flaming Lips. That was 2010.

I, like many rhythm gamers, was shocked to see that Guitar Hero was shutting down. It amazed me that such a giant franchise was going to end. It had such a huge personal connection to me that I actually felt sad to see it go. When Rock Band put out the Soundgarden pack, it was the first time in a long time that I’d gotten everything. Then the next week was Yes, and I got everything again. It came to the point where awesome release after awesome release was coming, so when the first week that wasn’t awesome came out, I thought to myself “Well, I’ve been getting everything anyway, so I’ll get this too”. This was not cheap, so I thought of a way to make it productive. I thought “What if I were to do a podcast where I review this DLC? That’d be awesome!”. These plans were put to a halt when I, being an idiot, forgot my bag at school. I used to carry all my games in one of those cases for holding multiple CDs, and I was going from one house to another. When I realised that I forgot my bag, it was too late to go back. When I came in the next day, all my games (including Rock Band 3) were gone. I was absolutely devastated. That was the day Coldplay came out. I wasn’t able to replace it until late November because that game is impossible to find up in Canada. That was 2011.

I never did get my podcast going. Too many technical issues came up, but because I had already told people I was going to do a review, I decided to just write down what I was going to say. Because of my incompetence with technology, my blog “The Rock Hero” was born. My very first review was for Huey Lewis. That blog continued for a few months, until out of the blue, I get asked in a DM from @RockBandAide for my e-mail. When I got an e-mail asking if I’d like to come help out with the site, I didn’t even know what to say. Reading RockBandAide gave me my first taste of what it was like to be in the Rock Band community, so the opportunity to help out was like a dream come true! It inspired me to actively try and peruse becoming more active in the community. That was 2012.

It’s 2013 now. I’ve been a fan of Rock Band for almost 5 years, and the news that DLC production was ending filled me with legitimate sadness. The thought that the thing that I loved so much was actually ending was a difficult thing to process. I still don’t know what to say about it. Instead, I’ll just talk about how much Rock Band actually means to me. Unlike literally every other video game I’d ever played, I felt a true passion with this game. It ignited a passion for music in me, and thanks to that, my intention is to peruse a career in it. Either in the performance aspect, or in the production aspect. It gave me a sense of community that I just never really got anywhere else. It’s meaning to me is more than I could probably ever put in words, so I’ll end with this. Thank you Harmonix for all the amazing memories, and just remember that you’ll always live on in my heart no matter what. You may be gone, but you will never be forgotten!

As presented from @Harmonix:

Picture relevant. You try picking only five good songs from the last year!

Looking back at the last year, we saw some amazing content added to the store. And while some out there keep up with the weekly announcements and reviews we have here (and so you should!), we understand some of you may have missed some of them. We’d like to do a short recap and showcase some of our favourite content from the last 366 days; it was a leap year after all! Playthrough videos of the tracks are provided by the always awesome thenewnoelisoncruz. Definitely check out and subscribe to his YouTube channel!

Without further ado, our top picks of the last year are after the jump!

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It looks like the initial story FIRST featured here on Tuesday, and subsequently everywhere else on the web yesterday, about the Rock Band iOS app being “no longer playable” at the end of the month got the attention of EA. They contacted several outlets , including us, to let us know that apparently the message was “sent in error.” The app will continue to be playable after the original May 31st expiration date.

According to an official statement sent to us directly from EA:

Rock Band for iOS will remain live – the in-app message users received yesterday was sent in error. We apologize for the confusion this caused. We’re working to clarify the issue that caused the error and will share additional information as soon as possible.

And if you go in to the app now, you are also greeted with the new message above.

Nice job to everyone that spread the word, and a respectful thank you to EA for doing what’s fair in the end.

Sunday’s are pretty slow both on the site here, as well as on the rest of the Internet, so when we saw that this year’s April Fool’s Day landed on Sunday, we decided to take a year off, but Harmonix sure didn’t. Featuring all the members of the community team, Harmonix produced a pretty hilarious video of a “new game announcement,” that can be seen below. Even if the video is just for April Fool’s day, they’ve clearly painstakingly recreated much of what makes the real Rock Band game so unique, including the lack of availability of Australia!

And yes, I would probably buy this.

High res image of the boardgame available here.

[via RockBand.com]

Like throwing fuel on a fire...

For those that may have missed it, last night the official @RockBand twitter account tweeted out the following:

Next Tuesday we’ll be releasing the single most requested song in 3+ years of tracking RockBand.com/request. Any guesses?

So we thought, with the help of the community, lets see if we can crack this nut and figure out what song will be arriving next week as DLC.

We read through a plethora of tweets and RockBand.com forum posts and attempted to pull songs that were mentioned the most, and included each one below along with a brief analysis of why or why not each song may be dropping next week.

Led Zeppelin – Stairway to Heaven

Okay, so this is probably the most iconic song in rock history, so why not start with this. We have known for quite a while that Led Zeppelin hasn’t been interested in any music games. In 2009, Jimmy Page mentioned that people getting their music from a video game is “a little sad,” and that no one is going to be able to duplicate John Bonham on drums anyway. Last year, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick told Forbes magazine that the Guitar Hero franchise approached Led Zeppelin, as they were the “number one thing” fans wanted, but were unable to get things done. But sometimes, things change. Fellow Led Zeppelin bandmate John Paul Jones is featured in Rock Band as part of Them Crooked Vultures. Harmonix has requested community feedback on popular bands, including Led Zeppelin, suggesting that the possibility may be there. And finally, Rock Band NOW has Pro features that let players accurately replicate playing the real thing, rendering Jimmy Page’s criticism moot. If you combine all these factors, it just might be enough to thaw Jimmy Page’s icy grip on Led Zeppelin licensing.

The Eagles – Hotel California

While the Eagles have yet to make their Rock Band debut, they have been featured in Guitar Hero. In fact, Hotel California was featured in Guitar Hero: World Tour, so technically speaking, it shouldn’t be too difficult for this song to make it into Rock Band. The problem with this is licensing, as the Eagles reportedly were exclusive to the Guitar Hero franchise. With Guitar Hero more or less out of the picture at this point, it’s easy to simply say that they are free to come over to Rock Band, but typically licensing agreements don’t just evaporate. More than likely, similar to Sony’s grip on the Spider-Man film franchise, it may be a situation where if Guitar Hero doesn’t do anything with the Eagles’ content over a set time, the licensing can possibly go back up for grabs, making this a distinct possibility. It looks like there hasn’t been any content from the Eagles since a DLC pack in December of 2008, so an exclusive licensing window of three years would be completely plausible.

Boston – Let Me Take You Home Tonight

While I have serious doubts as to whether this song is truly “the most requested song” in Rock Band, it would complete Boston’s self-titled album on the Rock Band platform, so it may be plausible that a high number of requests have been made for this song if only to complete that album. For those that may doubt just how popular this band is in Rock Band, they handily won a poll we had here on the site asking which DLC should be upgraded for Rock Band 3, beating out Queen, The Who, and everyone else. The band has an achievement just for 5-starring one of their songs and is one of the best selling artists in the game. While it may not be the most exciting track listed here, it would bring closure to many die-hard Rock Band fans.

Rolling Stones - (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

We saw a cover version of  Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’ in Guitar Hero 2 and we had the master version of Gimme Shelter in the original Rock Band, and that has been the extent of Rolling Stones from Harmonix games. Despite former Rolling Stones guitar Bill Wyman calling out Guitar Hero and “Rock Star” in 2009 for making people “less and less dedicated to really get down and learn an instrument,” Guitar Hero did feature Rolling Stones DLC (albeit live versions) for Guitar Hero 5, so again the technical possibility is there. I haven’t heard any rumors of licensing exclusivity for Guitar Hero, it is entirely possible considering their deep pockets at the time, but as we’ve pointed out above, even with exclusivity in the past, that doesn’t necessarily rule it out now, especially when you notice that Rocksmith was able to snag a few of their songs for their game (although they don’t require master stem files for their game, and thus have different types of licenses). With the Rolling Stones arguably the second most iconic band in rock history (after The Beatles), it wouldn’t surprise me to see them coveting the “most requested song” slot.

Guns N’ Roses – Welcome to the Jungle

Fans that have been with the franchise since the beginning, and many that have even been around before that, may remember an early demo video of Rock Band that featured this song performed by members of Harmonix (we’ve included it below if you haven’t). The song obviously never made it into the game, and we could easily understand why it could be the top requested song. To date we only have content from Guns N’ Roses’ latest album, Chinese Democracy. RBA contributor Brian Shea was able to touch base with former Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash in the past, who claimed that songs from Appetite for Destruction “will never happen,” despite both Slash’s likeness and Welcome to the Jungle featured prominently in Guitar Hero III. Slash claimed that Axl Rose still holds all rights to Guns N’ Roses licenses (not sure how Guitar Hero III got around it… oh, that’s right). And if you remember during the Harmonix Halloween livestream, John Drake tried to (diplomatically, of course) address the situation again, saying that former members of the band may be preventing older tracks from making it into the game. A common trope from Harmonix is that licensing is hard, and this is a perfect example that has played out much more publicly than most situations. While not impossible, it’s hard to see things being resolved at least to a point where this song (or Sweet Child O’ Mine or Paradise City) could be released as DLC, unfortunately.

Metallica – One

This band could obviously have any number of songs that could be highly requested (Master of Puppets could easily replace One, for example), but the biggest roadblock I see here is… again… licensing. Activision was quick to lock down the band, first in an arrangement of releasing their Death Magnetic album as DLC for Guitar Hero: World Tour, followed quickly by their stand alone Guitar Hero title. In fact, Activision basically hired Metallica as their house band, performing at Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops game premiere. As a result, Rock Band lost the ability to export Enter Sandman from the first disc and Battery from the second. Not all hope is lost, as Rock Band has been able to keep Metallica DLC from disappearing in the game (unlike a few rare others), and several noticed that a Metallica t-shirt was available for purchase for your in-game players in Rock Band 3. It has been awhile since Metallica has showed up under Activision’s banner, so they may be “free agents” again.

Rick Astley – Never Gonna Give You Up

OK, I REALLY didn’t want to feature this, but several people are CONVINCED this is going to happen, so I begrudgingly have included it. There haven’t been many clues, besides @RockBand retweeting an @HMXHenry tweet reminding everyone it’s Rick Astley’s birthday a few days ago. Frankly, this isn’t nearly enough evidence to go on as proof that the song is coming to Rock Band. It may be heavily requested as a joke, but I think a lot of people would be disappointed to see this revealed after Rock Band’s tease.

Muse – Knights of Cydonia

Did you really think we would write this without including Muse? The simplest explanation is that a single Muse track may be FINALLY dropping next week. There has never been any proof that Muse has been exclusive to Guitar Hero or any other franchise (again, they appeared in Rocksmith), so we could possibly see something… ANYTHING… from them. They could easily fit the bill of “most requested” in Rock Band, considering they have their own inside joke among the community (MOAR MUSE) and are currently featured as the top requested band on the Rock Band Facebook app. Knights of Cydonia was featured in Guitar Hero III, which would explain why the song has been requested the most since the beginning of the franchise. It’s entirely possible that we could also see their most commercially successful single, Uprising, featured instead. Hell, it could be their least successful song and people would simultaneously be immensely ecstatic that a song from Muse has arrived and ridiculously pissed because it wasn’t insert-other-song-name-here. Still… I think Muse is the most requested BAND in Rock Band, but may not have the most requested SONG (if I recall correctly from some PAX East panels in the past), so I’m not holding my breath for Muse next week.

OK, so there you have it. There are several other songs that could be included (I personally have my fingers crossed for Elton John’s Tiny Dancer), but we had to draw the line somewhere, and the songs above seemed to come up the most. Now we’ll let you decided. What do you think is coming? Vote below, and let us know why you think that way in the comments.