On the face of it, I can think of several other bands which are considered bigger, better, louder and more prolific than Green Day that would be suitable for a Rock Band title. Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin or The Who? All legends of their time, pioneers of music and idols to many. But Green Day? Surely the mainstay of a 15 year old’s “punk” years, but not exactly considered musical royalty.
Regardless, they certainly have legions of fans and know how to make a catchy song or two. Ultimately, Rock Band lives or dies on its set list and Green Day Rock Band will not disappoint the discerning Green Day supporter. Here you get two fully playable albums: Dookie and American Idiot. You also get a large selection of everything in-between, including tracks like Minority, Warning and Nice Guys Finish Last.
There are also a lot of songs from the 2009 album 21st Century Breakdown, but the rest of the tracks here do show up this album somewhat. There are little exceptions and only the most hardened Green Day-er will miss a couple of pieces.
In terms of gameplay it is exactly what you expect. There is literally nothing here that surprises or innovates. You either play the lead guitar, bass, the drums, sing or play all across 4 players. Green Day Rock Band does not push the music genre, in fact you could argue that it further devalues the rhythm and music type of game by being yet another retail release that could arguably been released as a DLC add-on for Rock Band 2. Indeed, you can rip all of the songs from Green Day to your hard-drive to play from within Rock Band 2. If you were to do this, however, you would miss out on the presentation.
The band is modelled in their younger forms (at a 1994 gig at a place called The Warehouse) and more recently at the 2005 Milton Keynes and 2009 Fox Theater gigs. With that you get animations that are uncanny, with Billie Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool all moving around the stage, singing and generally performing in a manner very close to real life. It does add to the authenticity and the attention to detail throughout is excellent. You also unlock various pictures from Green Day’s career as you play through the career mode.
While it may be nothing new, as you play through the game, the little details like Tre Cool pulling a face to the camera or the crowd singing along to When September Ends make you smile and added to the standard, addictive Rock Band gameplay, it comes together to provide an enthralling experience.
But make no mistake though; this is not as good as The Beatles: Rock Band. There are only the three gigs/stages on show here and no fancy visual effects as you progress through the career of the band. Rather than a story of the band, it’s more the start and the end, with the middle bit missing. The Beatles had simply more material to pick from and as a result offered much more variety.
If you are a big Green Day fan, you will find 47 songs for Rock Band with some nice touches and your heroes actually playing along with you. Let’s be honest though, you have probably already bought it. As a casual fan however, you have to way up the price of this game against how much enjoyment you think you will get from the package based on how many of the songs you will know.
Pros:
- It’s that great Rock Band gameplay that we all know and love.
- Great fan service and attention to detail.
Cons:
- It’s that great Rock Band gameplay that we all know and love.
- While Green Day are great at times, are they really big enough to warrant their own game?
As a standalone game, Green Day Rock Band doesn’t quite offer enough content to warrant a full price release for most people. While it is fun and a very polished game, it just needs that extra spark to make it a great game like The Beatles: Rock Band.
Jack_napier1318
why why why why why???????
in my opinion (and this is just MY opinion) rock band is for 7-10 year old kids hardly any of who listen to green day
3shirts
What?
Rock Band is fantastic and I, and loads of my mates of similar age (mid to late 20’s) are massively into it. If anything I would say it is aimed at my age with current bands and classic metal and rock from people like Guns n Roses, Iron Maiden, Metallica and Nirvana.
I’m a massive Green Day fan as well.
FoxHoundGabe
“…7-10 year old kids hardly any of who listen to green day”
Are you sure about that? That seems right about the age of their average fans nowadays… :P
Lorcan
I’d second that :P
Ryan1991
I’m 18 and I play Rock Band. It even says 12+ on the box!
Mick939
Are you on drugs? Rock bands the business, and so are greenday for that matter.
3shirts
Excellent. Sounds just what I was hoping for and I was AT that Milton Keynes gig so that will be brilliant.
tom_lord
Oh man, if you were actually there, then you really need this!
Lfc-Gaz
I like Green Day, especially the stuff off Dookie but I really don’t think they deserve their own Rock Band game. Their songs on guitar are just a chordfest, hardly fun to play at all.
FoxHoundGabe
Its acctually easier to play them on a real guitar than on rock band’s guitar XD
seriously.
SpikeyMikey23
I hate greenday, i bought dookie, and sold it for a pack of fags lol
sesameseed
My garden furniture is more punk rock than Green Day. Saw them live in 1992 at Wigan Bus Depot Social Club. They were crap then and have only gone downhill since then. Shameless sell-out sh*te!
mrbojangles
Fags? Now thats just offensive.
SpikeyMikey23
hope thats a joke matey, as this is primarily a european gaming site, and in europe, or at least the uk, ‘fags’ is a slang word for ciagrettes. if your not joking, could you explain how anyone can buy a packet of homosexuals? (if thats what you think im referring to?)
kevatron400
Yeah I was thinking the same thing, there’s not much rocking to be had on guitar, but then – it is rock band, not guitar hero, so I guess I can let them off.
Guyers94
This is a decent review but in my opinion you missed out on the most important thing about a rock band game. How fun the songs are to actually play. You commented on Green Day’s popularity and the quality of their songs but when playing RB, the variety and complexity of the chart means just as much.
In terms of that, guitar and bass have very little variety so if you only have a guitar I wouldn’t recommend this, but for us drummers out there, this game provides some of the most intricate and most fun drumming on RB yet. I’d imagine the vocals are pretty fun too, not like I’d know…
Severn2j
I think it says a lot about the popularity of Green Day that they include Dookie and American Idiot, as most people only know those about those ones (myself included).. Personally, while I like Green Day, I’m holding out for Pearl Jam: Rock Band.
Guyers94
There’s already quite a lot of Pearl Jam available as DLC, including the whole of what I think is their best album (Ten)
BrendanCalls
I’m a like some of Green Day’s tunes but I am so fed up of Rock Band and Guitar Hero it’s not even funny
bunimomike
Jesus… really? What are they going to bring out next?
‘Sing-a-Long Karaoke with Jean-Michel Jarre’
BIGAL-1992
Rock Band:Hannah montana version. My idea of Hell.
cc_star
Day1 purchase mutha-funna
Rockband Hannah Montana FTW
(my daughter would love it, and I like playing games with my daughter)
BIGAL-1992
Oh god……
DJ-Katy
What the… I am half-way through writing a review. Grrrr!
bunimomike
If you’re going to score less than a seven, we can always swap it out. :-)
DJ-Katy
I was going to give it 8 or 9. There’s nothing wrong with it and it’s an incremental improvement on the Rock Band 2 engine.
DJ-Katy
Ok well here’s my feedback that was missed in the review, off the top of my head as I don’t have my notes to hand:
– Easy mode always has no-fail on
– Loading times and menus have been streamlined and improved
– No access to DLC or the store
– Unpausing the game now gives a count down before it continues unlike Rock Band 2
– The songs can be exported for £5
– Green Day Plus Edition has 6 extra songs which you can also download as DLC for Rock Band 2
– Band videos are disconnected from the main game rather than being integral
– Band videos are in 4:3 and badly compressed
– Multiple progressions can be stored
– Trophy difficulty has been toned down
– Many songs contain the same notes repeating over and over in rapid succession due to the style of the music so you’ll need to be fairly good at that or it gets frustrating
– You don’t have to be a Green Day fan to enjoy this, I knew hardly anything about the band and I had a great time playing this
– The Career mode has been dumbed down to Guitar Hero / Band Hero level with a straight list of 3 sets to play through
– There are unlockable album and set challenges
– Online modes are present and correct
– Song selection screen now shows your friends’ scores in the top-right corner automatically
– Song selection screen now shows the difficulty level at which you achieved your best score
Sorry to be a bitch, but, yeah, I would have liked to see some proper details in the review.
DJ-Katy
Forgot something:
– Game has 3-part vocal harmonies like The Beatles Rock Band
cc_star
Vocal harmonies & Green Day? I don’t get it o_O
tom_lord
Yup, they’re in there and completely pointless and not accurate in any way to Green Day. Would seem it was developed for The Beatles and just stuck in for the hell of it.
BIGAL-1992
If that’s true, then this is just a port of beatles with green slapped over the name.
BIGAL-1992
*Green day
Guyers94
Trophy difficulty has been toned down??? :S
The tre beats are ridiculously hard, as is getting 100% of kick notes on Brain Stew, and some of the songs are well difficult to gold star.
I’d put this as harder than RB2 (That just needs 6 hours straight of your time and for you to be quite good at bass) and on a par with The Beatles, which also had some incredibly hard drums and vocals trophies.
Guyers94
Oh I forgot about Lego RB, Green Day is a hell of a lot harder trophywise than that, Lego only has one hard trophy.
I also forgot to say well done on the exhaustive list of features and improvements that weren’t present in the review.
DJ-Katy
There are a couple of trophies that will make it impossible for most people to plat the game (like A Very Troubled Teenager that you mentioned), but RB2 has trophies that require 100% on expert on each instrument, and the career mode trophies take a very long time to get due to how long it takes to get through everything, eg. Challenge Savant, World Tourer, Endless Setlist 2. On balance I still think the GDRB ones are easier with a couple of exceptions.
Guyers94
Fair enough on the time side of thongs but the vast collection of RB DLC means you can find a couple of tracks that will basically give you those trophies.
Still I suppose it depends on each person and how good they are on the different instruments.
DJ-Katy
Another thing noted incorrectly, at least for Europe, is that this is not a full price title, here it is £15 cheaper than normal titles, putting it in the budget range. So it’s good value IMHO.
bunimomike
Even though the game is not for me that’s good to know. I’d like to see far more flexibility with pricing of titles instead of this “PSN” or “disc” price we tend to get.
tom_lord
No doubt somewhere is doing a deal but the RRP is £49.99 and HMV & Play.com are both selling at £39.99
tom_lord
Hey there, If I’d of included everything then the review would have gone on forever so it needed to be reasonably snappy for a game that’s more of an add-on than a stand alone title, that will hardly reach the top spot of the charts and for the most part, have already been purchased by the “hard-core” Green Day fan. For this sort of game, most people already know what they are getting (e.g. they know how it plays, that online will be included and guess what it will play like based on simply ever hearing a Green Day song). Also, you wouldn’t see a magazine give this a “full sized” review just because it’s really nothing new. I think what you have picked up on are tiny little things that are useful but perhaps not best suited for a review. Anyway, thanks for the feedback!
DJ-Katy
So what you’re saying is, if I review a game like Demon’s Souls, which will hardly reach the top spot of the charts because it has a niche appeal to hardcore RPG gamers who will know what they’re getting and already purchased it anyway, I shouldn’t bother writing it up in detail? What about Oldboy, the excellent Korean movie that will never set the movie charts alight and most people who were going to watch it already have? Should we just pass on it?
GDRB is not an add-on, it’s a full standalone title, and all releases deserve a proper review, whether they are big or small. What you wrote in the review is what a player can basically surmise by looking on the back of the box. There are PSN games that have received longer reviews on TSA, it would have only taken another 3 or 4 paragraphs to cover everything, and I’d hardly call differentiating the play style between RB2 and GDRB a tiny little detail that’s not useful for a review. Did you try it with the drums? Vocals? Bass? How was it?
Spotter5
Still waiting for Rockband: Rammstein :(