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First off, let me say that I'm a big fan of Harmonix, Rock Band, and Green Day. But I can't help but be miffed about this.
As another reviewer has already said, where Beatles Rock Band was big, beautiful, and lovingly crafted, Green Day Rock Band feels slapdash and rushed out. I understand being locked into the real band characters, instruments, and venues...but do there have to be only three venues? There's even only one loading screen background for each transition, for heaven sakes! Lazy lazy lazy.
I love Green Day, which means I love the music on the disk, which is why I'm giving this four stars for fun. After all, it's cheaper than if they'd sold it as DLC, right? Might as well just pay the extra $10, add it to your RB2 library, and pretend the disk never existed.
But there's one other thing that really, REALLY sticks in my craw. You've made a real band Rockband title an homage to the look and music of Green Day, and then you CENSOR the songs?!? That's outrageous! Take the mature rating already! At the very least, put some sort of parent controllable feature to switch between "clean" and "original" modes. Yes, I know this isn't the first time we've been stuck with clean versions, but those were single tracks, and sometimes they were clean versions put out by the band (i.e. Creep) rather than blanked out.
The early Green Day catalogue in particular is now full of mysterious blank spaces in the lyrics that damage the rhythm and vocal play experience. I'm not a "go profanity in music!" person, but I don't mind at all if it fits the music's theme and other lyrics rather than simply being used for shock value. I am very annoyed that I am being forced to play the FCC approved versions of the band's music in a product that's supposedly built from the ground up for the fans.
I'm an adult! Let ME make that choice...and if I wasn't an adult, my PARENTS should be making that choice.
Thanks for protecting me from those bad four letter words Harmonix...you really, really shouldn't have.
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This is my review and game play video of Green Day : Rock Band.
The video quality will be a bit low due to it having to fit in the 100Mb requirements here.
Background:
I was into the punk scene back in the late 70's early 80's. The bands I grew up listening to all had a very tough time making any real money. Even the big ones like Minor Threat, 7 Seconds, Black Flag, all did pretty well but never were able to achieve any sort of real fame. Move ahead to the 90's and bands like Nirvana took some of the punk sound and changed it enough to become what we called Grunge. Those bands did well to get enough popularity to make it big on the college radios and eventually made it mainstream. It was not until Green Day came around did I hear what I enjoyed so much as a kid. By then I was an adult serving in the military over in the Gulf. It was really cool to hear those 3 chord progression riffs and wickedly fast drum beats that got my blood pumping.
Now I am a dad with 2 kids. I missed out on the real punk years and I guess I could be called a sell out poser or something. Instead, I think that I moved on, but my taste in music still has its roots in the old days of the Sx Pistols. Green Day adeptly captures this sound and because so many of us are now in our 40's we hear this sound on the radio.
As I was playing this game my mother was visiting for my daughters birthday. She watched me play it and commented on the fact she liked 4 of the songs. Thats pretty incredible considering when I was a kid, more mild music she said was awful and wouldn't listen at all...
About the game:
This game is very similar to what you saw (if you had it) of Playstation 3 The Beatles: Rock Band . You play different periods of time. You start in the early successful years of Green Day. About the time of Dookie. You can jump in each concert and play a few different songs from a couple of their early albums. Or you can jump ahead to their most recent release 21st Century Breakdown and play a 2009 concert. Each concert has a set list that you play through. As you get at least 3 stars you earn a sticker and can move on. The more songs you finish the more fan songs open up. What is cool is if you just like Green Day as a passing interest and know just 1 or 2 of their songs, you will probably find enough to play as a rental. If you are a deep fan, loving every song they have ever made, you can unlock almost all of them by finishing all sets and challenges.
Trophies:
The better you do the more stickers you can stick on Billy Joe's guitar. Also for hard core Rockband people you can do some really tough challenges to achieve trophies. Some are pretty easy like playing 10 songs at 3 stars or more, or, you can go and play left handed and score 100% on 5 songs in a row. There are like 300 different trophies from what I have seen and I have only unlocked 2 of them. So there is a bunch of replay-ability.
Rockband:
Like other real band titles you cannot change the look of your character. Instead you play as one of the real members of the band. They are stylized and pretty accurate models of the members of the band. If you have ever played a rock band game you will feel right at home here with this title. I do recommend doing the calibration right off the bat. I thought I would be ok and it took only 2 songs of me missing 95% of the buttons for me to see it needed to be calibrated. Manual calibration was pretty easy and there is an auto mode if you have a controller equipped with that.
Overall:
I really like this release from Harmonix. I was in a punk garage band with my friends back in the 1980s. We wanted to be big time. Alas it never worked out, but, with games like this I can at least pretend. That is what gaming is all about. Its a way to leave reality and be something you are not, and probably will never be. Thats cool.
Recommendations.
Hook your PS3 output up to a large amp receiver or system and turn it up to 11.
Thanks for reading / watching my review.e shredding.Green Day Rockband is great as a track pack for Green Day fans. As a standalone game, it is mediocre when compared to any of the other Rock Band games.
There is no customization for costumes, instruments, or venues like in RB1-2 or L:RB. Beatles RB didn't have this either, but compensated with the absolutely beautiful music video style visuals and variety of venues. Here you get neither. There are only three venues which show the standard Rock Band style visuals with a Green Day skin. The new motion capture technique used in the game looks awesome and authentic... until you notice that they use the same animations for every other song.
Completing songs unlocks photos, but there is no way to zoom-in and pan around them, nor is there any form of caption. There are also challenges that unlock music videos and rare footage, but only the biggest fans are going to sit and watch it. Anyone else would be better off getting a copy of Bullet in a Bible on DVD.
It really is NOTHING compared to what they did for the Beatles, which is both understandable and sad. If they were charging $40 for this, that would be OK. But it seems as if they rushed it out the door because they didn't want to have an RB2 engine game on the shelf with RB3.
If you're a HUGE Green Day fan, you've already got your copy. If not... pick it up in a bargain bin in a few months so you can export it into RB3.
Read Best Reviews of Green Day: Rock Band Here
Owing all other installments to the Rock Band series, I was really not sure why Harmonix was releasing a Rock Band solely dedicated to Green Day. Having played the game, I can say that I completely understand now why there is a Green Day Rock Band, but the game itself isn't what I would have expected from Harmonix.Pros:
1. Green Day music. If you weren't a fan before or weren't familiar enough with their music to call yourself a fan, this game gives you a greater appreciation and respect for a well-deserving band.
2. Gameplay: The difficulty doesn't appear to be modified to be easier like in the Beatles Rock Band so you'll have a more authentic Rock Band experience.
3. Three-part harmonies: Always fun to include more people in the vocal gameplay.
Cons:
1. The graphics and overall appearance: The characters seems a bit awkward in appearance. Even the Rock Band characters look more well put together than the graphical members of Green Day. The game itself isn't very visually appealing at all. Every "dreamscape" is 1 of 3 or 4 Green Day concerts. It's hardly creative or interesting to look at.
2. Three-part harmony set-up: I understand that the game is meant to be darker, but the three part harmony vocals especially are really difficult to see. Because all the colors are so similar (with the exception of lead being in blue), it's hard to tell whether harmony 2 is singing alone or with harmony 3. Also, the icons are so dark in color and look very similar so it's difficult to tell if you are hitting your harmony or someone else's.
3. Scenes: As mentioned before, the game takes place in basically 3 or 4 places and they are all concerts. There are very few videos that stand out as being visually interesting. Otherwise, the band is pretty much doing the same thing in every song.
Perhaps it is unfair to expect that Green Day Rock Band would have been anything like The Beatles Rock Band, but I certainly think this game could have been much better. The one thing I took away from this game is how great a band Green Day really is and Green Day does deserve a better game. The game looks like it was rushed into production and release and the fact that it actually LOOKS that way isn't a good thing.
The game is still worth having as part of your Rock Band library but not for $60. I highly suggest waiting for a price drop before purchasing the game.
Want Green Day: Rock Band Discount?
First I'd like to say, for hardcore music/button-mashing game fans, this is one to skip. Green Day songs aren't that challenging to play even on the expert setting. I was able to beat most of the songs on expert in a single try and I'm pretty average at that difficulty. A lot of the songs are the equivalent to "My Name is Jonas" by Weezer on GH3.Moving on to the actual review, I'm cool with bands going on to new stuff and considering that Green Day has like 9 albums (not including singles or live albums) and I can see that they aren't going put every song on the game, but why is every song on this game from 21st Century Break Down? There is no variety or even split of their other albums, it's just 15 songs from their newest, most of American Idiot, and I believe all of Dookie. Then there are traces from Warning and Nimrod, and Insomniac. Well what happened to Kerplunk, Shenanigans, 1039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours, and the singles from International Superhits? Not to mention there were only like 2 songs from Warning, Nimrod, and Insomniac. I mean, I would have really liked to see 2,000 Light Years Away in this game, it's one of my favorites. So instead of getting all the good songs Green Day has to offer, you get mostly average songs and a few good ones from the newer albums and Dookie. This was a major disappointment. It's like going to a concert from a band you've liked for 15 years and all they do is play every song off of their newest album in the order they come in on the CD (it adds to the disappointment of my expectations because Green Day plays everything at their concerts so it was a big let down to only see 3 albums of content on the game). I almost feel like this messes with the average Green Day fan more than hardcore fans. Since people have mostly forgotten about old Green Day music, wouldn't it be a huge treat to an average fan to learn that their old music is actually good to? Being that this is a Green Day compilation game, maybe they should actually have some variety.
Censorship wasn't a winner with this game either. I think the makers of this game think we all enjoy awkward pauses in our music every 10 seconds. Something I don't get is that if you can say all the words that were blanked out in this game in a PG-13 movie, then why can't you say it in a T-rated game? PG-13 and T are the same thing. You become a teenager when you turn 13, so they should allow the same content. If they really are that worried about selling copies, a Parental Control option isn't rocket science.
Graphics were little to be desired. It's pathetic to see PS1 graphics on a PS3. Being that there isn't much actual content on this game, they could have made it a little more visually appealing. All they had to do was put a bunch of notes to the rhythm of a song to which there is probably a really easy formula to follow so they couldn't have spent that much time on the game play and other stuff. The menus also make you feel like you are trapped in a very small box. I haven't played any other RB games but this game feels much more limited than GH3 menu. I also feel that as a hardcore green day fan, I don't really care to see a bunch of band photos. You can get stuff like that on Google. Show me something I can't see easily or something more interesting, like videos of them working on the game, a music video, a video with their opinions on the RB series or shots of them playing, or maybe a special live acoustic version of a one of their songs. It feels like little imagination is put into the unlockable content in these games and most of it's uninteresting. I didn't care to unlock all the video content yet, but I hear it's just stuff you can get from one of their live Albums.
I haven't gotten to quickplay yet but the Career mode is really dull and annoying. Do they really think I want to wait 15 minutes watching some stupid band intro EVERY time a song starts or you fail a song. And I thought RPGs were bad with redundant non-skippable content. There are only like 3 different things they do so you end up seeing the same stuff every time and that's really annoying. Why can't the song just start and is it also really necessary to reload the whole song when I want to change the difficulty? These loading times are ridiculous. On my can computer, I can just click as song and it plays instantly. My CD player can do that too. So why are the loading times so long on these games? It's not like the mediocre graphics take that much. Career mode is very unimaginative too. All you do is play the song and that is it. The game offers challenges but all those challenges are, are getting better scores on each song. Why can't I battle Mike Dirnt like in GH or be forced to play a song with the guitar behind my back or only be allowed to sing every 3rd word, just do something creative. This is a game after all.
I give this game a 4 in fun, because I am a huge, bias Green Day fan, but over all they did a terrible job with the actual game.
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