Review – Rock Band Unplugged (PSP)

Having already written my impressions on the game’s demo, I’ll make this one brief and focus on the question you’re like asking if you’re here to read this – is Rock Band Unplugged worth buying?

My answer is that it is. If you’re a rhythm gamer, then you should look into this, particularly if you also like Rock Band – and even more so if you like Harmonix’s previous games, Amplitude and FreQuency. That would be because the game-play’s roughly the same between the three games.

As this is a portable game, you might be wondering how the ‘Rock Band’ system works –there are no instruments, and no multiplayer, so you’d think that the ‘band’ part would be out the window, right? Well, no, that’s wrong. You ARE the band – you on your lonesome. You control each instrument one by one – playing a phase without missing a note will make the instrument play itself for a short while, allowing you to turn your attention to another instrument. You’ll then move back and forth between note tracks, playing phases and so on and so forth. It’s a system that takes a little getting used to, but there’s a set of tutorials which handily guide you through the ropes and easy mode is a good start for total beginners. Most of this is covered in my impressions, so I’ll cut it off here and move onto other aspects now.

The game has about 41 songs, off the top of my head, and it’s a pretty solid selection. Sadly, most of them have already appeared on either Guitar Hero or Rock Band games, with the exclusion of a few timed exclusives which will be seen as DLC for Rock Band on the consoles. Speaking of DLC, Harmonix is continuing to display their strength in the area with regular DLC for Unplugged – in fact, a week or two before launch, there were already about 8 DLC songs available. Talk about being prepared!

The selection of songs, whilst largely good, can become a bit repetitive. The Rock Band tour mode returns, and it’s where that you get to customise your band and buy instruments and do all the band simulator stuff you’d expect. The customisation aspect is ok, but it’s nothing too special – I found a lot of the options were limited, and the selection of clothing and colours were a bit poor. Still, it’s a nice option, I just think it could have been better. Anyway, returning to the main point – the tour mode can become repetitive. There are occasional challenges, like doing a gig for the press to get double money, or doing a benefit gig for triple fans…but that doesn’t stop those gigs all containing ‘Buddy Holly’. You’ll find that as you go through the rather big selection of cities, you’re playing a lot of the songs over and over…this is supposed to be helped out by the inclusion of mystery/random set-lists and sets where you get to pick what song you play, but the mystery/random sets have a habit of yielding a song you either can’t play or don’t like. I guess that’s down to cosmic forces, though, rather than the game’s programming – but still, it doesn’t help relieve repetition as much as you’d like. I played ‘Buddy Holly’ 3 times in 3 sets – once on its own, once as a mystery set, and then again in a random set. And I really don’t like ‘Buddy Holly’.

The presentation maintains the style of the console games, and it looks ok. I’d say it looks good, if it weren’t for a few things…first, the character models are a bit odd looking at times. It doesn’t help that they repeat a lot of animations, some of which don’t loop correctly, leading to an awkward jump between the start and end of an animation. Secondly, the customisation of the body is…well, the selection, as I said, is poor. There’s about 6 or 7 pieces of clothing I really like. Now, spread that between 4 characters. It doesn’t add up without repetition – so much for making them all unique! Besides that, the face choices are mostly ugly, the hair-dos are largely bad…and I find it odd that I made one character the minimum height and one the maximum height and couldn’t tell the difference. And finally…why are there 2 special guitars, but about 10 special basses? Especially when the 2 guitars are just clones of basses. And why can’t I choose the colour of all my guitars, not just one or two? It’s weird, and it means I’m limited because a green guitar doesn’t go with my band’s red and black colour scheme.
But this is all nit-picky really. It doesn’t actually affect the gameplay at all – it’s just something that bugs me.

So, the game looks ok, it plays great, and the music selection is pretty solid. But what’s keeping you coming back once the tour mode’s done? Well, there’s obviously higher difficulty levels to master…you know, this is the first game to congratulate me at being so good at it that it thinks I should try a higher difficulty? Yeah, I was pretty shocked when it said “Great job! Try hard now!”
Besides that though, there’s a couple of modes to keep you going: Warm-up mode, where you can play just one instrument through the whole song, and the sadistic Band Survival mode, where you don’t get phases – all the instruments are under your control at all times. It’s…a nightmare. Really.
There’s also expansion potential in the form of DLC, which I’ve mentioned. So far the selection’s pretty good, though I did find myself disappointed that it was so difficult I couldn’t play it. That’s one thing I should note – some of the songs are a bit too hard to be fun. Some riffs or drum beats don’t translate very well to the RBU format, sadly – and it’s usually crucial parts that repeat throughout, meaning you’ll be screwing up a lot. Isn’t it odd when the main riff is much harder than the solos?

All in all though, Rock Band Unplugged is a great experience for rhythm gamers who need an on-the-go fix. It’s also much easier to play in a car than say, Elite Beat Agents on DS, which requires precision with the touch screen that’s difficult in a moving vehicle. That makes it ideal to take with you on journeys…and funnily enough, if you don’t have time to play Tour mode for the songs, there’s an easily located ‘unlock all songs’ option. So it’s perfect for portability, it’s a solid rhythm game in its own right…and it’s a lot of fun, with a big potential for growth,  what with Harmonix’s sparkling reputation for good DLC offerings.
If you’re not sure whether to take the plunge and buy it, try out the demo on the Playstation Store first. It’s a good taster, and it left me wanting more. And if you’re anything like me, you’ll probably find the full thing vastly satisfying.

~Scott

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