When Guitar Hero III and Rock Band were both announced, I was curious to see which would end up being the better game. Neversoft was a newcomer to the rhythm game genre, but now had the license to the proven series, Guitar Hero. Though Rock Band also had the track record of Harmonix behind it, there still seemed to be a hesitation on whether such an ambitious game could be executed well. It seemed as though Guitar Hero III was a safe bet, while Rock Band had the potential to be terrible or fun; to be something amazing; to be something that redefined a genre.

Let’s start with the basics. Rock Band is comprised of four parts: guitar, bass, drums, and vocals. The guitar and bass parts work pretty much exactly as they do in the Guitar Hero series. You’ll have your fair share of notes, held notes, chords, and hammer ons/pull offs. The drums are a little bit tricky in the sense that they consist of four drum pads and a pedal, making the learning curve fairly steep. And last but not least (at least for me) are the vocals, which are unlike anything else in the game. The vocals chart scrolls horizontally across the screen from left to right, with the words at the bottom and their respective pitch bars, which you have to hit, above the lyrics. The higher the pitch bar, the higher you have to sing. Sometimes the words will still scroll across the screen without pitch bars, meaning it is a “talky part” and solely based on syllable recognition.

This all seems pretty straightforward so far, and it is. That is the beauty of this game. All four instruments combine to form a seamless multiplayer experience that is unmatched by any other out there. In other words, this game is not about graphics or even gameplay. It’s about creating an environment that allows you maximize the amount of fun you’d have with three other friends.

In this sense, Harmonix actually succeeds in the part where most developers have trouble: it innovates, and not through a gameplay feature or storytelling or art style, but on an emotional level. This game evolves the video game into not only a more accessible format, but something we’ve never even seen before.

Therefore, I can’t really give a technical review of this game. Of course, there are many problems. The hammer-ons/pull-offs are hard to tell apart, the Band World Tour mode is random and frustrating, the guitar note charts are fairly bland, the guitar isn’t very comfortable, the load times are pretty bad, bass is always the bitch instrument, I can’t fucking sing like Julian Casablancas, and Guitar Hero III is definitely the better single player game, but none of these things really have a significant effect on the what truly matters: the experience.

Of course, there will always be the most obvious criticism of “Why don’t you just start a real band instead?” Well, without going into the very heavy financial and emotional commitment to actually do this, that question can be answered very easily. Rock Band isn’t about starting a band, it’s about having fun with your friends. And while starting an actual band is no doubt the bigger achievement, the overall experience will probably not provide the casual, yet colossal fun that Rock Band does.