Review: Rock Band Blitz
By Sean Booker
September 9, 2012 - 13:08
Studios: Harmonix
Rating: T (Teen)
Genre: Rhythm Game
Platform: PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade
Players: 1
 |
You play as all the instruments. That’s the first thing and most important piece of information you will need when playing Harmonix’s new twist on the Rock Band franchise: Rock Band Blitz. You control all four of the instruments and the vocals by yourself, this is not a party game any more. Gone are the days of the plastic instruments as Rock Band Blitz shows how this genre can work with a standard controller. Rock Band Blitz comes off as a fun and fresh twist on the genre, and despite not playing right next to your friends there are enough social aspects with the game’s connection to Rock Band World that allow for its asynchronous multiplayer to be quite fun.
Unlike previous iterations in the band rhythm game genre, where you need only focus on one lane of oncoming instrument note ques, Rock Band Blitz has you cycling through four of five (depending on the song) lanes and playing them as often or infrequently as you want. The core mechanic of the game is through the use of the trigger buttons allowing you to move freely from one instrument to the next. Doing so will allow you to raise your score for each individual instrument and if each score is high enough at certain moments your score multiplier can rise indefinitely.
 |
This concept may sound quite hectic, and at the beginning it does come across as a daunting task. One of the failures of Rock Band Blitz is a steep learning curve with a very short and minimal tutorial section. However, the game counters this with having no way to fail a song and making you only have to deal with two notes at any given time. Wherein previous Rock Band and Guitar Hero games had you focus on five colored notes (green, red, yellow, blue and orange) this game only has you dealing with two. And you play these by the use of your controller’s face or d-pad buttons. So simply playing one instruments lane can be easy. The real task is learning when and why you should be switching to different instruments and for the most part you will be on your own as each song will differ.
Rock Band Blitz also doesn’t feature any form of story or campaign mode. It simply presents you with a list of songs to play through at your leisure. One nice feature is that any Rock Band tracks you had previously will all work in this game, and vice versa. Completing songs will unlock you Blitz Cred - which is used in unlocking power-ups, and coins - which are used to purchase said unlocked power-ups. These power-ups differ in a ton of interesting ways. Some will cause a pinball to bounce around the screen, while others will light strings of notes on fire. All of these will lead to higher and higher point bonuses and add another layer of speed and thought to your game.
 |
Apart from this, Rock Band Blitz focuses heavily on Score Wars with your friends. These are essentially leaderboard battles where you try and surpass your friends’ current high scores on each individual song. The game takes this even further by being quite integrated in Harmonix’s Facebook app: Rock Band World. Syncing your game to this account allows you to more easily challenge your friends. You can also take on goals that will track your progression in the game and, upon completion, will unlock a significant number of coins for you to shop with when playing.
This form of asynchronous multiplayer can be extremely fun as it allows you to always have something to aim for. And the game will constantly update you on how you’re comparing to you friends and current goals. The one problem however is that this feature is only as expansive as the number of friends you have who own Rock Band Blitz. Score Wars are no fun when you don’t have people to fight against. The game does try to remedy this by giving you updates from random people’s high scores; but competing against strangers with no means of communication is nowhere near as interesting as actually bragging to someone’s face (or Facebook account).
 |
As a whole, Rock Band Blitz is a very fast paced and fun addition to the franchise. It brings on a completely new form of play to a genre that felt stale and lacking. It’s unfortunate that there isn’t enough of a tutorial sequence for the game, so jumping in can be quite tricky. But once you’ve figured out the basics, challenging your friends and constantly completing goals is a ton of fun. And the level of inclusion that Rock Band World has in the game opens up a great deal more of multiplayer activities. However, without a proper group of people to constantly challenge and compete with, your time with Rock Band Blitz might come up short.
Rating: 8/10
Related Articles:
Review: Rock Band Blitz