The developers of Rock Band have noticed how the marketplace for music games has gotten stale in the last few years.
Thankfully, they feel that Rock Band 3 does enough things new to re-spark interest.
“Rock Band 3 is the big sort of kick in the groin to the music game industry to sort of get it back in shape and get it up and running,” said John Drake, manager of communications for Harmonix, developers of Rock Band.
Demoing the game on stage at the MTV Games booth, Drake and other Harmonix employees showed off some of the new features of the game.
They started things off by playing “Just Like Heaven” by The Cure, included in the final setlist, in full instrument mode, giving the seven players onstage the chance to rock out all at once.
“It’s pretty unbelievable to have seven people playing in one room making music together,” said Drake. “We’re really proud of that, it’s super hard to get all that stuff running at the same time and we’ve managed to make it work.”
The new additions that bump that number from four to seven are vocal harmonies, as seen in Beatles: Rock Band, and the new Keyboard controller.
The Keyboard controller can be played on a flat surface or with a strap, keytar style, and according Drake, it plays similarly to the guitar sections in game.
The controller is also a full MIDI keyboard, affectively making it a legitimate instrument.
This is the same for the two new guitar controllers as well, the Fender Mustang PRO-Guitar by Mad Catz, which features 102 buttons on the neck to simulate the real instrument, and the Squier Stratocaster by Fender, which is a fully functioning guitar in addition to a game controller.
To illustrate this, one of the Harmonix presenters plugged the controller into an amp and rocked along to “The Hardest Button to Button” by The White Stripes while still playing it in game.
Drake says this is part of the PRO mode in the game which will help the player actually learn how to play any of the instrument.
Other smaller improvements shown were smaller menus each player could call up at the bottom of the screen to manage their settings.
Drake says they call this new menu system an “over-shell,” and that it makes getting into a song easier than in previous Rock Bands.
“The shell is totally different for the game, so before we had sort of a bunch of text that you would navigate through and it was like a choose your own f***ing adventure,” said Drake.
He gave out a scenario to illustrate where a bunch of friends are having a party, and everyone is ready to play a fun song when your friend Billy decides to start hammering on the drums and goes back to the main menu.
“Who invited Billy?” said Drake. “What a douche.”
The new shell allows the players to disable anyone from accidentally or intentionally backing out of a song.
“(This) solves another little problem that fans have been complaining about for a long time,” said Drake. “Again, Rock Band 3; douche proof.”
Little details like that are what can make a game like this shine.
Fender Mustang PRO Guitar Controller (Photo by Kenny Redublo)
