Riffing On Success: Hands On With Rock Band 4

Though it’s safe to say that I’m a musical person, I’ve never been in a rock band, neither real nor virtual. For one reason or another, I never picked up a plastic guitar to rock out and play along with Guitar Hero or Rock Band, which puts me in an interesting position when it comes to doing just that for Harmonix’ shot at reviving the genre with Rock Band 4. To top it all off, my maiden performance was in front of a room filled with other press, and not just for the adulation of the digital audience in the game.

With a good five years since Rock Band 3 first graced consoles – albeit with thousands of songs by way of DLC – I wasn’t the only one feeling unsure or a little rusty and naturally a touch intimidated by the prospect of standing up on an actual stage to play. This is really a game destined to be played in living rooms or before a party with friends gets too boozy, but that feeling of awkwardness quickly faded into the background as I actually started to play.

Of course, as the novice of the group, I was happy to take the more simplistic bass guitar part and stick the difficulty down on easy. Though it took a little while to get used to the button placement, it lived up to its setting and I even found the slightly more rhythmic medium difficulty quite easy to tackle for my second – shifting from Jimmy Hendrix to The Darkness, I think it was – before we gave up the stage to another budding band. On the plus side, this also gave me a chance to watch the bafflingly difficult-looking drum part, and marvel at the player’s clear skill in the role. I’ve got a long way to go before reaching those heights.

Yet there’s still that lasting appeal which is clear to see throughout the game, and it really highlights the need for the music rhythm genre that Harmonix perfected to make the leap to the new generation of consoles, as the ebb and flow of the console generation sees the PS4 and Xbox One rise to ever greater prominence. Those PS3s and Xbox 360s have been sold or put into storage, and there are many peripherals out there gathering dust as well.

Harmonix have been keen to promise that as many of these peripherals as possible will work with Rock Band 4 as well. On the PS4, it will be as simple as plugging in PS3 cables and dongles, while the Xbox One will need an adapter that is being worked on in tandem with Mad Catz and Microsoft in order to get that up and running.

While I played with a Rock Band 3 guitar, Mad Catz, who are co-publishers alongside Harmonix this time around, are also creating new peripherals that make use of more modern technologies and tech. Though yet to be revealed – keep an eye out at E3 – they’ll work to the template of the Rock Band 2 controllers, but with modern technology for tilt sensors, better buttons on the fret board, truly analogue symbols on the drum kit, a much better microphone, and so forth.

It’s also very encouraging to see and hear that, while the game will come with 60-odd tracks on the disc, all of the old DLC packs will also be compatible within a console family, so that you can revisit your potentially very extensive collection of songs.

It would admittedly be very easy to stand still and simply use the exact same formula for the game as before, and conversely it would be easy to try and start from a fresh slate and branch off in a different direction, as we’re seeing with Guitar Hero Live. Rock Band 4 instead intends to refine and expand upon the existing formula in meaningful ways, with the key goal of keeping you playing rather than squabbling over the next track, as well as allowing for more freedom and self-expression.

The vocalist in particular will have more freedom to stray from the beaten path and ad lib with their own lyrics or harmonies, which the game will be able to interpret and continue to award points for as long as you stay in tune. In a similar vein, drum fills will draw from a randomised pool of pre-created fills for when the drummer has an Overdrive. This is really a platform for Harmonix to build upon though, and they quite clearly state that this will be the only Rock Band game for this generation, focussing on adding new features and adapting to the community via patches.

Throughout it all, it feels as though Mad Catz and Harmonix have a deeply ingrained respect for their fans and an understanding of what people would want from a new Rock Band game. Backward compatibility is naturally a big selling point, but with lots of small but meaningful tweaks and changes to the formula, it seems that this is just a little bit more than a straightforward generational leap.