Rockband 4 is a multiplayer Rock Band simulator that lets players play guitar, base, and drums, and also allows players to sing into a microphone. Right now I only have two guitar controllers (and no other instruments).
I was initially skeptical of this game since I’m a trained classical violinist and … well it seems like cheating. It turns out that playing the game is a lot of fun somehow. The way it works is each player hovers over an infinite flowing fretted guitar neck. “Notes” that correspond to buttons on the controller fret stream towards the player from the horizon and the player must hit the correct fret button and flip the strum control just as the “note” passes under a line near the base of the screen. The “notes” are color coded, usually, although sometimes they are all a single color for certain sequences though at this point I’m not clear on why that is.
The songs that come with the game are all rock songs from various eras. It is very easy to get into the flow and thoroughly enjoyable to hit the notes at the right time to keep the melody/base going. I find myself kind of dancing or “rocking out” where I sit while playing the game.
One downside I’ve found so far is that in 2 player, with two guitar controllers, one person has to play the base, and it’s very difficult (for me at least) to hear the baseline - if I miss notes for example I can’t seem to usually notice any effect on what I hear.
My daughter hates the competitive mode - it’s way too hard for her and for some reason ever since she started playing video games she takes losing them very seriously[1], but she loves the endless solo mode, which is pretty much all she plays.
- I do not recall ever taking losing video games either by myself or against someone else as seriously as she does - to the point of tears. ↩