Lego Rock Band Review

Last month for Techpedition I reviewed Band Hero, the latest attempt by Activision to capture new players and convert them to Guitar Hero fans.  Their direct competition, Harmonix, has a similar tool and its called Lego Rock Band.

If you take Lego Rock Band for face value, it seems kinda dumb.  Lego has nothing to do with music and definitely nothing to due with rhythm games.  When you break down the elements in the actual product its easier to see the motivation behind the crossover and even the novelty of it’s existence.  However, with Travelers Tales doing most of the interface development, many of the mistakes that were corrected by Rock Band 2 (the best rhythm game to date) pop back up and with the family friendly direction a whole slew of new problems pop up as well.

LRB plays exactly like other Rock Band games; everything from overdrive, to guitar solos, to the x6 bass multiplier are all present. Rock Band veterans will know exactly what they’re doing.  What has changed are the set pieces, characters and story progression.  All characters in the game are Lego, and the notes falling down the track are Lego bricks.

Instead of earning cash, you earn studs, and rather than dying if you fail a song, you loose studs and are allowed to continue playing.  While the characters and backgrounds are all Lego, the lighting effects and general tone of the performances still carries a mood like that of Rock Band.  Graphically I would say that LRB is a perfect mixture of the two properties and one of the things that Travelers Tales got right.

Included in the story mode are the opportunity to play as Lego-fied versions of Queen, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Blur. With none of these characters having too much of a signature look, its hard to justify their inclusion. Artists that really would have benefited from the Lego-fication would have been Elton John, Kiss, Slipknot, Gwar, Michael Jackson, or even Devo. As it stands, Lego Iggy just looks like a custom character made in the character creator.

The song list is okay, and doesn’t stray as far from the base Rock genre as Band Hero, but still contains a number of songs that I’m not sure will appeal to the its target audience.  The following songs have a pretty wide appeal to them, but alot of the soundtrack is filler:

“Crocodile Rock” – Elton John
“Dig” – Incubus
“Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” - The Police
“The Final Countdown” – Europe
“Fire” – The Jimi Hendrix Experience
“Free Fallin'” – Tom Petty
“Ghostbusters” – Ray Parker Jr.
“Girls & Boys” – Good Charlotte
“I Want You Back” – Jackson 5
“Kung Fu Fighting” – Carl Douglas
“Let’s Dance” – David Bowie
“Life is a Highway” – Rascal Flatts
“So What” – Pink
“Song 2” – Blur
“Summer of ’69” – Bryan Adams
“Swing, Swing” – All-American Rejects The All-American Rejects
“Two Princes” – Spin Doctors
“We Are the Champions” – Queen
“We Will Rock You” – Queen
“Word Up!” – Korn
“You Give Love a Bad Name” – Bon Jovi

That’s only 21 top shelf songs, and with only 45 songs…that’s right 45 songs…there’s no room for filler. Putting bands like Lostprophets, Kaiser Chiefs, and Vampire Weekend next Queen, makes it easy to see the holes in the soundtrack. The good news is that all of the songs are exportable to your larger Rock Band library (I can finally play the Bon Jovi trifecta in the same game). The bad news is that it costs an additional $10 to do so. This kinda makes sense since the game retails for only $50 but I’m not sure the casual fans will take this into account.

My biggest problem with the whole music library is the severely truncated amount of DLC that is currently playable in LRB. My Rock Band 2 music library is up to 550 songs and of those, only 237 are playable in Lego Rock Band. This is a terrible percentage. Technically there is no reason why all DLC songs can’t be played in LRB and the warning at the beginning of the game stating that “downloaded content is not rated by the ESRB” keeps them from getting sued.

The choice to pick and choose compatibility is solely based on how “family friendly” the songs supposedly are. I’m sure its all done to ensure that they are granted the status of “Family Game” in the Xbox 360 Library. It’s called perpetual advertising. It also slightly breaks the game. On the flip side, one of the first songs Band Hero asked me to purchase was “The Beautiful People” by Marilyn Manson…….hmmmm.

With all of that said, LRB still looks like a pretty enticing package that’s pretty light on content, but wait I haven’t gotten to the structure of the career mode. First, there is no online play at all and I’m sure that’s also an attempt to get the the green family game dot on the packaging. Who knows what the crazy restrictions are in place for that.

A lot of the streamlining that was added to Rock Band 2’s menus is gone and rather than having a quick way to reach your destination in the career, all songs are spread across 9 or so vehicles that you have to scroll through each time you load the career. Something as simple as a mechanic that remembers where you were last would have greatly helped.

The load times in LRB seem longer than your standard Rock Game and many of the menus don’t make it clear how to get to your desired section of the game. This leaves you surfing back and forth with double and triple times the load. Each vehicle gives you access to about 3-4 new songs to play and about eight setlists that unlike Rock Band 2 have little personality. Luckily, I have a decent amount of DLC to play through, otherwise I would have had to play every song like 5 times to finish the career.

I don’t fault LRB for not having online play, and I don’t have a problem with it bringing little (if anything) of value to the game play, but its DLC filter, and patchy abbreviated setlist combined with an almost unfinished vibe to the structure makes me really want a proper Rock Band 3.

If you are looking for a quick 720 Achievement points Lego Rock Band is the way to go and the Lego Charm never lets you down. I say the cheaper you can grab this one the better. Remember to buy it new because the download code on the inside can only be used once.

Verdict: A Few Bricks Short of a Bionicle