Rock Band 3 (Wii, 2010)

After playing Rock Band 2, I was interested in learning how to play real instruments. So I was quite excited to hear that RB3 would provide the ability to use 'real' instruments to play the game.

RB3 did several things right and some things wrong too. If you are looking for a casual musical game experience, RB2 might be a better choice, but if you have mastered everything in RB2 or are interested in the 'Pro' instruments, this version has real potential.

Any songs you have downloaded in RB2 will automatically be installed in RB3. You can 'transfer' many of the songs included with RB2, but it will cost you $10 and take quite a while to download them. RB2 instruments work with RB3.

The game seems to put more information on the screen, but as a result, things are smaller and harder to read/decipher, on my old tube type screen at least. Navigation is a bit confusing at times, being '+ key' menu driven in places rather than up/down/select/back in all places as in earlier games. Documentation is scanty, leaving trial and error or internet research as the means to figure out some of the features.

Creating your character is as good or better than before. You still have the 'store' to select attire from, but instead of earning money to buy the items, you 'unlock' them by completing challenges. I think the 'shopping' methodology in RB2 is more fun. You can select the non-player members of your band rather than the random choices you get in RB2, but the choices seem to be rather limited. The ability to design your band logo appears to be quite powerful, but I wasn't interested enough to spend the time to figure out how to work it.

There is a more powerful way to sort the songs displayed, and limit which songs are available (including a 'family friendly' filter). You also have the ability to put your own rating on the songs, to increase/decrease the likelihood of having it presented as a random choice. It requires 2 pages to display all the information for each song, due to the extra information shown. There are 82 songs, good and bad, provided, and you have immediate access to all of them rather then having to 'earn' them as in RB2.

There is no tutorial or training on using the 'old' guitars or vocals. Even if you are familiar with their use, there are some new features and options which are not explained. There are tutorials for drums, pro drums and pro guitar. The drums tutorial teaches you beat patterns and fills, with no indication 'how to play the game'. The pro drums one is the same, except with the addition of cymbals. In case you were wondering, they indicate drums with the standard targets (bars) and cymbals with cymbal-looking targets. You don't seem to be able to leave a lesson in the middle without throwing away earlier progress.

The practice sessions are pretty much the same as earlier versions of the game, but you can only slow it down to 70% instead of the previous 50%. 70% is sometimes not slow enough to figure out a sequence.

The guitar 'track' now becomes 'colored' when you reach 4x bonus, which is nice, but 'guitar solo' is then indicated by the track sides being colored, and this is not obvious enough to catch my eye when the progressions are at all difficult. Other things appear on the screen which I have not figured out yet.

I don't have enough characters left, or experience with game play yet, to get into the play here; see my review for the keyboard bundle at a later date for more info.

The included songs are quite limited, and some of the songs I really enjoyed in previous Rock Bands are no longer included. But that can be remedied by purchasing additional songs.

My main issue is that I'm a musician and I don't feel particularly musical when playing this game. The timing on the levels is always the same and the standard guitar controller feels a little sticky on the buttons. I find myself wanting to press buttons to a natural rhythm that the game doesn't satisfy. The easiest levels are too easy, but it's hard to deal with the latency of the controller on the Medium levels for quick button presses. I'm not sure if it's just my controller or if that happens with a lot of them, but I don't remember the controller for Rock Band 2 being this bad.

Some great things: Lets you play the actual music with PRO mode.

Some ridiculous things: Lets you rate inappropriate songs so they won't be included in random sets, but then won't let you filter those songs so they don't appear on the list. They're always there no matter what. Very disappointing. I am also disappointed that I can't sort by decade.

The new "profiles" are horrible. They make the whole navigation of the game very confusing, especially for playing the game casually with friends.

Very inappropriately dressed animated characters. Lots of songs with inappropriate lyrics. I would recommend this game only to someone who knows which songs to avoid and how to make the half-naked characters never show up.

Awesome, very nice graphics. Make my family have a very nice time togather. Thanx..! All we need now is to get the keynoard. The song selection is great and we specially appreciated the ones in Spanish, it gives it a great and rich variaty! Keep it up..!

Awesome game.Bought this game to up the challenge from the regular rock band games. This game has a wide range of songs to choose from with multiple genres. The new "pro" difficulty increases the experience for the player.