Plastic Band - A look at Rock Band 3

For the last five years music games have become a best selling phenomenon in the video game industry, creating fun new gaming experiences as well as inspiring kids to pick up a real instrument. But since the release of the first Guitar Hero game in 2005 and gamers first got a look at a plastic guitar with five colored buttons, music games have been criticized, claiming that they are an aberration of actually playing an instrument as well as convincing gamers they can really play. This may have been true...till now. The newest addition to the music game genre, Rock Band 3 to be released next month, may change some of the skeptics into believers.

The newest Rock Band game includes Pro modes on each of the instruments which is now up to four with the addition of keyboard. Pro mode changes the gameplay to more accurately recreate playing the instruments. The Pro guitar controller has 6 strings and plays like a real guitar, pro drums have three cymbals, and keyboard uses all 25 keys of the keyboard controller. It will also have special training modes to help you learn to play.


This new game experience isn't cheap. The keyboard will be $79.99 and the two versions of the Pro guitar will be $150 and $300.  The cymbals are $39.99 That's assuming you already have a drum set and microphone.  So the full experience of the game may set you back $500 or more.

Two Scoops of Grit - Realism in Today's Games

Shoot him or let him go? Bet Mario never had to make these choices.

In recent years I've noticed a dramatic shift in the tone of video game stories. When video games began the stories were simple, the characters had simple motivations, fight the bad guys, save the princess. Through the years video game stories have become more and more complex but always focused on light hearted fun. Recently this seems to have changed. With games exploring darker themes and heavy moral choice situations.

Are the "bad guys" really bad? Am I the bad guy?

Not your parents Batman villain

At the dawn of games these questions weren't posed to video gamers, lines were clear. It was something reminiscent of an old western, good guys in white hats bad guys in black ones. In this case a yellow circle and a bunch of ghosts or an italian plumber and an angry monkey. Todays games have moved from black and white morality into a deep shade of grey, a trend which has spilled over from Hollywood in films such as the recent Batman flick the aptly named "Dark Knight" which transformed a children's comic into a dark and gritty social commentary. 

Two games that stand out to me for their moral choices and dark story lines are Grand Theft Auto 4 and Red Dead Redemption both recently released sequels produced by Rockstar Games who came under major media fire as well as several lawsuits for their previous GTA titles. The last three installments of Grand Theft Auto shied away from moral choices, or morality altogether. The gamer was free to do whatever wherever with little in game consequences an idea that revolutionized video gaming and created a  firestorm of criticism of video games in general. But in the end they were fun games complete with humor, action, adventure, ect. The developer, Rockstar, has taken a different approach, perhaps because of the criticism of the other GTA titles, in their newest game. GTA4 focuses on themes of revenge, guilt, regret, and other powerful emotions. To not spoil any more of the plot line, one cutscene which stood out to me, the main protagonist, Nico, tells of the horrors he witnessed during his time in the Soviet army. One thing's for sure we're definitely not in Hyrule anymore.

I know video games are constantly evolving, but a message to developers, don't lose sight of the reason people play games...to have fun.