Rock Revolution (Game)

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List Price: $19.99
Sale Price: $4.99
Today's Bonus: 75% Off

Since all the Rock Revolution songs are covers I would never have never bought it if it was more expensive. Pleasant surprise though, the covers are generally very good quality, they're not much more different-sounding than live recordings by the original artist would be. Kudos to the cover band(s). If you're picky about songs sounding exactly like the album or radio version, the cover songs will probably bother you.

You can play drums, guitar, or bass, there are no vocals on Rock Revolution. I played with a Rock Band Guitar and Rock Band Drums, also tried Guitar Hero World Tour drums as described below. The Rock Band guitar worked fine with this game.

The vertical note scrolling isn't great, but I got used to it. The circular shape of the notes was ok and they were bright, better than the "Chinese hats" or whatever those Guitar Hero notes are, but the bright clear rectangles of Rock Band are the best in my opinion.

As far as drumming, the kick pedal notation as "just another note" is jarring, I did get used to it but never completely liked it. I was using the Rock Band drums and they work well for the most part, but the Guitar Hero World Tour drums weren't great with this game, the note mapping was too far off (especially on the cymbals), much like using the Guitar Hero drums in Rock Band.

On the guitar side, it seemed like there were more chords and I felt like I was actually playing Electric Guitar more than Rock Band. There's also an occasional notation in certain songs when you're supposed to just wail on a note; you just have to strum a certain speed or above and hold the note. That was a nice touch and seemed somewhat realistic.

As far as the actual gameplay, you're really just playing sets of songs, there is no character creation or tour. Playing the basic songs was fine, but I found most of other things like avoiding "poison" notes or playing without the notes visible were much more frustrating than fun. So I found myself staying in quick play mode more than the career.

I played this game a few times but ultimately, like after playing Guitar Hero World Tour, went back to Rock Band 2. But if you don't pay much for it, it's worth it for an alternative take on a music game, and to play songs like Heart's "Magic Man."

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When I saw the song list for this game, I figured, what the heck? How could it possibly be as bad as all the gamers claim? So I bought it, since it was only twenty bucks. I wish I had my twenty bucks back.

The game itself isn't that bad, but it is not even in the same zip code as the far superior Rock Band and Guitar Hero titles. Once you've gotten used to seeing the 3-D scrolling of the notes in RB and GH, the vertical scroll in Rock Revolution is a major downgrade. It is also much harder to get a feel for exactly when the notes should be strummed; I got used to the GH timing almost immediately, but this game was much more awkward (I'd swear I was hitting the notes in rhythm, but kept missing them).

Then there is the calibration. When I played my very first song, I noticed that there was at least a half-second lag time, and I had to strum the notes early or I'd miss them. After trying to calibrate the lag three times (a process which was in itself difficult), it was only slightly better, and there's nothing as freaking annoying as playing a game like this and missing notes you KNOW you hit.

Another feature that sounded like a good idea but ended up being nothing more than irritating was the "poisoned notes" sprinkled throughout each song. These are notes that are thrown at you along with the "real" notes, but they are hollow instead of colored. If you hit these "poisoned notes," you lose your score multiplier, and even worse, if you hit too many of them, the song ends immediately (like getting booed off the stage for missing too many notes). This sounded like a novel idea, but I found it very frustrating. I mean, the whole point of these types of games is to hit every note you see; imagine playing Space Invaders, but being penalized for shooting certain aliens. Not as cool in practice as in theory, in my opinion.

The final strike against the game was the fact that the awesome track list includes almost no original artists. While the cover bands do a more than capable job of performing the songs, it just isn't the same; very few people can accurately mimic the vocal stylings of legends like Geddy Lee and Bruce Dickinson, and it's largely their voices that make those songs rock as hard as they do. Kudos to the other games for realizing this and now having almost all original artists on their newest titles.

Overall, a very disappointing 2/5 stars from me. I only hope and pray that some of these songs may someday find their way onto the Guitar Hero set list. THAT would be worth a helluva lot more than twenty bucks.

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Well ,this game arrived in the post yesterday,I had ordered this game before reading editorial reviews cos i was pretty sure it was gonna be an o.k game, and generally speaking it is.

The songlist consists of cover versions of some pretty decent songs and they are generally executed very well.

The vertical 2D guitar display isnt that difficult a hang of,and isn't that bad.There is a tutorial which helps u to get through the game and is pretty intuitive.

The graphix and animations are passable, but being the type of game it is ,its not that crucial to the gaming experience,what is , is the gameplay and here is where rock revolution can decide whether u love or hate it!

I personally first time played 2 hrs pretty much non stop and generally had no problem with the game, ther was the general overall feeling of playing a guitar ,being that alot of the songs consist of chords as opposed to notes , meaning that your sliding your fingers up and down the neck of the guitar quite alot, notes are more difficult to hit especially when they come in groups and and are moving pretty fast down the neck.

Difficulty levels are overall accurate , each song has its difficulty level as well ,so for example if you play a song with a low difficulty level ,it's still gonna be pretty easy to pull off even at the games medium difficulty level and obviously if you pick a song with a hard difficulty level its gonna be quite a challenge to pull off at the games medium difficulty level.Now this brings me on to the frustrating part of the gameplay , because of the aforementioned the chords and notes come down in way that makes it very difficult to play this is not entirely due to the games difficulty level , but more of a flaw in the games structure, this is not the case with all songs ,but there a afew that u feel just haven't been layed out right, but being this is konamis first attempt at this, we can cut them some slack and hope thta RR2 will correct these issues.

I was expecting a better game from Konami considering they had done "Guitar Freaks.Dance Dance revolution and Karoke revoltion". All in all it's not to bad definately worth a rental, and for some a purchase.

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I bought this game by risk because there are some reviews with very low score to this game when compared to Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour.

Critics said it has only 40 cover songs, no singing part when compared to the other 2 games. But there is no problem because I bought this for playing drums and it is much cheaper. The best thing is I can use my compatible RB1 drumset to play with this game (the drumset does not work with RB2!).

Critics said its kick pedal notation is not compatible with other 2 games. Yes! In the first day when I played it, it is quite hard as I am used to see vertical bar as kick pedal. However, in the second day when I played it, I am already used to its kick pedal notation style.

What I like most is the Career mode. It has funny and challenging missions like avoiding the poison notes, complete a song in 3 difficult levels, the song speeds up when the multiplier increases, learn and play the song without markers, and play the songs without error. This provides much more fun than RB!

Though there is no gimmick features like choosing my own clothes, instruments, tattoos,..., it is a funny game to play if you already have a guitar or drumset and you want to play more songs and face some new challenges.

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OK, I don't think this game merits spending even twenty on, but with its current wide availability for less than ten bucks shipped from a number of Marketplace sellers it's definitely worth a look. There are some nice variations (vertical scrolling, challenges, studio) for RB and GH veterans, and, although all songs are covers, after two hours of play I've discovered three songs unavailable elsewhere that alone may justify the price of admission:

Spirit Of Radio

White Room

Magic Man

I expect to find some others exclusive to this game also. A couple further notes: Calibrate your instruments! My system had massive lag with this game, whereas I play GH and RB with zero lag. Also, I don't believe you can do tour mode with bass only, which is a bit of a bummer for us bass fans. Oh yeah, sound fidelity is pretty awful. But still overall a good value or less than ten bucks. Charting is good, albeit easier than GH or even RB.