Rock Band 3 – review

Rock Band 1 : yeah, good harmless fun. Rock Band 2 : interchangeable with RB1 . Rock Band 3 : an extraordinarily comprehensive, multifaceted music game of such scope and ambition as to take the breath away. Seriously. There's nothing like the required space here to do RB3 justice, so let's deal out some stats. There are 83 new songs (of wide-ranging vintage and merit) and disc-import support for the previous two RB titles giving a total of 250-odd, even if you haven't downloaded a single add-on. The new interface manages to make reasonable sense of the provision for a seven-piece band comprising three vocalists, drums, bass, guitar and keyboards – the new keyboard is a proper Howard Jones-esque keytar , velocity-sensitive and with a two-octave, 25-key board. Where it really impresses is in the variety. As well as extensive, multi-difficulty party and "career" play, its new Pro mode takes RB3 away from the frivolous and towards the tutorial – it requires that you learn how actually to play musical parts. Primers teach the basics and from there on it's really a question of how dedicated you want to be. In any event, though, if being in a plastic band appeals, don't look any further. Game of the year so far, no question.