Rock Band
is awesome. I got it this morning and have been playing the drums for most of the day, driven by the desire to crack the top 1000 in the drum career mode, if only fleetingly. (I finally managed to do so a few minutes ago, peaking at #997. It’s tough, because there are tons of other people playing as well, so I had to go back to earlier songs to get points that I missed.) I haven’t even pulled out the guitar or the microphone yet, but I think I’m going to try the new guitar in a little bit here — it’s getting a bit late to play the drums. They’re not super-loud, but they’re not super-soft either. I figure some silent tips may eventually be in order.
The presentation of the game, by the way, is awesome. The characters are animated (and lip-synched) really well, there’s a decent amount of customization for characters and gear, and there are some really great screen effects and camera angles used at various points. (One example would be the many loading screens which are run-time generated “photographs” of you and your band in various poses and situations. It shows your character with all of its customization, and is not just a canned image. It’s a pretty cool effect.) Overall, I think it’s way better looking than Xbox 360 Guitar Hero III
.