Is It a Rebellion?

Somewhere at Konami somebody saw the massive success of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises and decided that they had to fight back. You see Konami just about created the music rhythm genre of games with its releases of Guitar Freaks and Drum Mania at the tail end of the 20th century (1998 and 1999 respectively). So it had to be hard for them to watch the massive success that their creation was having under the guidance of developers Harmonix and eventually Neversoft. However the gaming space for the plastic instrument playing music genre is getting over-saturated. This year alone will witness the release of 10 different plastic instrument based games, so if you are going to stand out in this crowd (like Rock Band 2) you better be bringing your A game.

Rock Revolution is very similar to its primary competitors, Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and if you have played any of the music genre games in the past few years you will be pretty comfortable with it. At its core the gameplay is simplistic yet challenging. Just like in Guitar Hero and Rock Band colored orbs, representing notes, scroll down the screen and using your controller, (guitar shaped, drum shaped, or otherwise) the player will hit them in sequence along with the music. The drumming portion of the game is a slight bit different than other games, with the kick pedal appearing as a note, instead of a bar, on the scroll board. Unlike Rock Band and the upcoming Guitar Hero: World Tour, Rock Revolution for the Xbox360 has no vocal gameplay, leaving the game feeling a little bit empty. Rock Revolution uses the currently available peripherals on the market, although to play with the Rock Band drum kit you will have to change the settings to a five input kit instead of a seven input kit.

No, Sire, It Is a Revolution

The core experience of Rock Revolution takes place in the career mode. In this mode players will pick one of a handful of generic looking characters and play through tiers of music, "albums", unlocking new songs, venues and playable characters along the way.

Its all pretty standard fare except when Rock Revolution deviates from the tried and true tier method by its inclusion of challenges. Each album, except the final album, has two challenges that need to be passed to complete the album and drive it to platinum status. Challenges like the memory based, Band Practice Challenge, can be frustratingly fun and when you finally hit all the notes from memory the feeling is one of elation. There are five challenges in all and while some work better than others, they are a nice addition and change of pace from the usual music genre progression format.

Of course there is more to Rock Revolution than just the career mode. There is, as expected, a quick play mode, where you can play any of the songs you have unlocked. There is also a pretty straightforward online component, wherein you play versus, co-op or even band on band.