Rock Revolution Review - Wii

About a decade ago, Konami in Japan released GuitarFreaks and DrumMania in which gamers used guitar- and drum-shaped instruments to play along with popular songs. But while their American division flirted with the idea of bringing them to the U.S., their counterparts in Japan thought American gamers wouldn’t be interested, and neither game ever made it stateside. Counterparts, we’re guessing, who no longer work at Konami since, in the years hence, the strikingly–similar Guitar Hero and Rock Band have gone on to sell millions in the U.S.

Now Konami is both bringing their music games to America as Rock Revolution, which combines the two to let you play drums, guitar, and bass (though not, oddly, vocals, which remain the province of their self-explanatory Karaoke Revolution). But while it’s not a carbon copy of Hero or Band, and has some nice variations on the music game template, its fundamental flaws and dearth of good music makes this also-ran even more pointless.

All The Small Things

Of its two competitors, Revolution is closest to Hero. Its career mode has a Hero-esque loosely linear structure, as opposed to Band’s open-ended approach, while its difficulty levels are more akin to the challenge of Hero than the ease of Band as well. Well, except for the “Beginner” setting, which in Hero just requires you to hit a note, any note, while in Revolution it just restricts the possibilities to two different chords.

The problem is that Revolution just doesn’t work as well as those other games. It just feels slightly off, even after you recalibrate. This imprecision becomes very frustrating on the tougher skill levels, though it’s not as noticeable on the lower ones. Drumming, however, is tough for all, as the kit has six pads (as opposed to five on Hero and four on Band), which not only makes this already hard part even rougher, but it will also throw drum players of those other games. Thankfully, you can compensate by using the drum controllers from Hero or Band instead.

Some might also complain about the lack of vocals. Though having heard you sing, not having vocals is probably a good thing.

It might also bug music fans that, to paraphrase those old K-Tel commercials, Revolution has none of the original songs by the original artists. All of the tunes are covers, and not cool, Jimi Hendrix doing Bob Dylan’s “All Along The Watchtower” covers, but slightly off imitations. “Round And Round,” for example, sounds like a rather unenthused Ratt in singer Dee Snider’s home studio. Granted, they’re not as bad as the wedding band-ish covers you used to get in Hero, but they’re still pretty terrible.

This wouldn’t be so irritating if Revolution didn’t have one of the best set lists of any music game. Not only are there classic rockers originally done by The Who, Cream, Rush, Deep Purple, and Queen, but also rockin’ tunes written by Soundgarden, Judas Priest, and Iron Maiden. Best of all: no Paramore, no “Eye Of The Tiger,” and no crap tracks by the developers’ own bands. And while we do recognize that crappy songs can still be fun to play, especially in games such as this where you’re not forced to play them more than once, these games are always better when the tunes rock for real.

Round And Round

What’s also sad is that Revolution actually tries to distinguish itself from being just a Hero or Band clone. Hitting multiple notes in a row still gives you point multipliers, but in Revolution, they go up to eight, and missing a note doesn’t start you over, it just knocks you down a bit. The game also eschews those special notes that, if you get all of them, double your multiplier. Instead, doing well fills your Atmosphere Meter, which monitors how the crowd is enjoying your performance, and when that’s full, continuing to do well fills your Power Meter. Then you can tilt your guitar for some bonus points.

The object isn’t always to just play the song perfectly, though. On every album there are options to play songs with certain conditions. Songs in the “Poison Note Challenge,” for example, come with fake notes you have to avoid, the “In The Zone Challenge” has notes speeding up when your multiplier rises, while the “Crank It Up” challenge has the skill level amping up twice from Medium mid-song. Thankfully, all songs in these challenges are also playable under normal conditions, and none are required to continue.

Article by: Paul Semel