Green Day: Rock Band Review
Another year, another music game. The latest band centric game comes from the always solid team over at Harmonix and MTV Games. This time the focus is Green Day. That’s right, the pioneers of 90’s Pop-Punk have found a new way to show just how punk they really are (by selling out)…just kidding. Green Day has been around for long enough and has the library to support this kind of release. Their ability to be both current and have a strong list of classic tracks to pull from makes them an ideal candidate for the next Rock Band game. I’m a huge Green Day fan and have been since 1995, and with my unhealthy obsession with Rock Band this game might as well be crack.
Harmonix’s last band release, the well received “The Beatles: Rock Band”, had its share of problems, but was still by far the best band centric game released to date (including the Guitar Hero releases). Sadly, despite a healthy amount of hype and mountains of potential behind Green Day Rock Band, The Beatles will not be dethroned anytime time soon. First things first, if you don’t like Green Day then why are you reading this? This game is not for you. If you think this will turn you into a Green Day fan, you are probably mistaken. If you are a Green Day fan, expect this to be a nice tribute to the biggest punk band ever and right up your alley.
A lot can be said about the presentation and execution in Green Day: Rock Band, but the final quality comes down to the song choice. Interestingly Harmonix chose to go with a complete album angle with this release. On the disc there are essentially 3 complete Green Day albums: Dookie, American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown (to complete this album you must purchase the 6 songs currently available though DLC).
I strongly agree that Dookie and American Idiot are perfect selections for complete album inclusion. They are both turning points in both the band’s career and Punk music as a whole. Including them in full, is a tribute to the band’s history and influence. The same can’t be said about 21st Century Breakdown. Its not a bad album, its just not nearly as important as the other two. Its also very long, so its inclusion of 18 tracks should have been 18 tracks pulled from the entirity of their career.
This brings me to my first and only major complaint with Green Day: Rock Band. The whole game seems to be short changing itself. It has 47 songs (about the same amount that the Beatles had) but only contains 3 venues. The 3 venues are set in 3 different years 1994, 2005 and 2009, basically one venue for each album included. As you can see, there is an 11 year gap that is not represented at all. Yeah there’s a measely 7 songs pulled from that era, but this time period is treated like a black hole in the history of the band. The unlockable photos, barely touch the period and multiple hit songs are missing from the song list.
By only having 3 venues and a huge gap in the band’s history, the game feels unfinished. I personally love the three albums that get almost ignored: Insomniac, Nimrod, and Warning and wish that they were highlighted a bit more. Notable hits from that era are completely absent. Examples include, “Walking Contradiction”, “Redundant”, and “Waiting”, not to mention the singles “Stuck with Me”, “Macy’s Day Parade”, and “J.A.R.” that were included on their 2001 greatest hits compilation. The game would have been much more comfortable had this been addressed and a venue been chosen to house them.
This is how it should have been handled. Scrap all of 21st Century Breakdown, and replace it with the songs listed above (maybe even pull in some non-single album tracks), and add 2 extra venues (one from 1997 and one from 2001). Then, release all of 21st Century Breakdown as downloadable content and have the current 2009 venue as the exclusive home for these tracks. Since the newest GD songs appeal to the audience that is most likely to download extra tracks for the game, this adds value to the DLC and if released properly, keeps attention on the title post-release. That scenario gives a more robust track list, and without including any extra songs on disc, the game feels complete.
With that out of the way, I can say for certain that GD fans will love Green Day: Rock Band. Most of the game will be extremely familiar to fans of the Rock Band series. The menu layout is the same as the layout found in The Beatles title from last year, but unlike the Beatles, Green Day has a better Challenge System. Both photos and videos can be unlocked by playing through career mode, with the videos being taken directly out of the MTV archives. Any video from 2009 footage isn’t as interesting as stuff from the Dookie era, but the inclusion of the footage is fantastic fan service.
Graphically, GD:RB looks like what you would expect a Rock Band Game to look like, but the character models could have used some more tweaking. Green Day requested not to be mo-capped, so impersonators had to come in a complete the motion capture. As a result, the old Green Day tracks don’t have Billie Joe’s spastic movements associated with their early live performances. The elusive 4th member of Green Day, Jason White the support guitarist, doesn’t get a digital representation but can be seen in many of the unlockable photos.
The game looks good enough, but every time you play a song, if its the first one you’re playing in the venue, the intro video for the venue will play. If you leave the venue and come back, it will play again, and so on. This is really annoying if you are jumping from venue to venue. It should also be noted that after I unlocked some of the live videos, I would have preferred that the game play tracks be overlayed on the live performances. It may have felt cheaper, but the performances would have been more authentic.
Again, your biggest point of concern before buying this should be the track list (listed below). If it suits your fancy, GD:RB is well worth you time. Is it worth a full $60? That’s argueable, but if all 47 songs were released to the Rock Band Store it would cost $94 to download them. At $70 ($60 for the game and $10 to export the setlist to your Rock Band 1 and 2 library) Green Day Rock Band seems to feel like a better deal. As the cost of the game drops, that deal will get even better and better not to mention the sweet bonus content included in the unlockable videos.
Track List
Dookie (1994)
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