After a year of uncertainty, Harmonix, MTV and Electronic Arts finally decided to get off their collective arses and release Rock Band in Australia. The good news is that we get a year’s worth of downloadable tracks available from the day we pop the disc in. The bad news is that everybody else in the world is already playing Rock Band 2, and the whole concept is no longer as fresh as it was a year ago, particularly with the presence of Guitar Hero: World Tour. That doesn’t necessarily make Rock Band a bad game – in fact, it’s rather good.

For those of you with fuzzy memories, Harmonix was the developer of the first three Guitar Hero games. The studio was built on the concept of making musical performance accessible to the common person, and many employees of the company are involved in bands. It’s safe to say that they know their stuff – and that’s something that really stands out when you play Rock Band, particularly after playing the Neversoft developed Guitar Hero games. Rock Band is basically Harmonix’s way of bringing the music game up a notch. Instead of just playing guitar, you can now team up with another three friends and play as a complete band, with one on guitar, one on bass, one on drums and one person singing.

In producing Rock Band, Harmonix has drawn on their experience from developing the early Guitar Hero games and the home versions of Karaoke Revolution. The interface for guitar, bass and drums is much the same as the note path from Guitar Hero, while the vocal interface is influenced by Karaoke Revolution. The interface can seem a little cluttered when four people are playing, but it’s easy enough to follow what you need to do to fulfil the requirements of your role in the band. Due to money and space restrictions, our playtesting of Rock Band was conducted utilising the Guitar Hero: World Tour instruments.

As you’d expect, the guitar and bass segments of Rock Band have a lot in common with Guitar Hero. Aside from the aforementioned visual similarities, the two pretty much play identically; notes fly down a path, and you press the specific coloured buttons as the cross a bar at the bottom of the screen. To mix things up a bit, you’ve got hammer-ons and pull-offs and overdrive, which fills the role of star power, but also allows you to accumulate more power while the meter is active. Also new to the guitar sections are bonuses for nailing every note in a solo and the “big rock finish”, which is the same, but comes at the end of the song. Veterans of the harder difficulties of Guitar Hero are going to find Rock Band pretty easy, with the difficulty settling in somewhere between the first two Guitar Hero efforts. The note charts make considerably more sense than Guitar Hero, bearing more resemblance to what you’re actually playing, rather than Neversoft’s brand of charts which come across as random noise.

Singing should come pretty easy to anyone who has played SingStar or Karaoke Revolution. The basic aim is to sing the words as they roll across the screen, attempting to match the pitch of the vocalist. The on screen indicator will show where your pitch is in relation to where it needs to be. On easier difficulties, you can get away with just matching the pitch with a constant “oooh”, but the harder levels are more discerning. There are a few minor issues – original vocalist can trail off on a note, but the game will expect you to maintain the pitch regardless of the fact that the note is fading. The game seems to notice the pitch you come in at as being the default pitch which can cause issues with the extremely high and low notes. There can be a bit of downtime as a vocalist, but the game gives you the opportunity to participate and earn points when you don’t have to sing, with free talking sections and tambourine/cowbell sections where you tap the top of the microphone in time with the beats on screen for extra points.

Drumming is the most intriguing part of the Rock Band package, not really having been done before by any mainstream, home-release video game. Gameplay on the drums is much like the guitar – it uses the same note path setup, except that (obviously) you strike the corresponding colour pad (or the pedal) as the note crosses the line. Overdrive is triggered by free drumming sessions, where you can bash whatever pads you feel like. The key to success in drumming is being able to maintain your patterns – the easy difficulty helps you pick up the basics without too much trouble, but the harder difficulties require a lot of skill and commitment. It’s important to loosen up a bit when you’re playing the drums; don’t hold the sticks too tight or put too much effort into the pedalling, or you’ll find yourself worn out after a long set.

There are 62 tracks on the Rock Band disc; the original 58 from the American release (45 from famous acts and 13 from independent Boston bands) and the four additional English tracks from the European release. The vast majority of the tracks are from the original masters, with only half a dozen or so performed by cover bands. There’s really something for everyone with acts like The Police, R.E.M., Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Weezer, The Ramones, Metallica and Garbage all represented. The only outstanding issue with the playlist is that some of the tracks aren’t really appropriate for the vocal side of things – some songs are a little unfamiliar (despite the famous acts) and many leave the singer with long gaps of nothing to do while the guitarist or drummer rock out on solos. Perhaps the vocalist is meant to double as the beer getter. If you’re not pleased with the variety on offer on the disc, you can hit the online store to download more tracks and even full albums. At the time of this review, some 300+ downloadable tracks are available from a variety of artists.

Before getting started on your music career, you have to create your rocker. It’s a pretty painless process and there are plenty of customisation options, but the slightly annoying thing is that you have to create a character for each role in the band. Solo Tour lets you pick any role in the band and play through a number of pre-determined sets; it’s much the same as Guitar Hero, but it’s just not as exciting as the game’s main attraction; the co-operative Band World Tour. With two to four players, you can start a band and play gigs in local clubs. As your performances improve, you’ll move to bigger gigs, get more fans and get a van to start travelling the country, then a plane to travel the world. The game decides on the set list you play, so if you haven’t been through the solo tour or don’t have a bunch of downloaded tracks, you’ll end up playing the same stuff ad nauseum. Each step up in the world also results in a difficulty increase, which can substantially slow your progress. Band World Tour can only be played locally – competitive online offerings are virtually the same as has been previously offered in the Guitar Hero series.

It’s unfortunate that Electronic Arts and MTV took so long getting Rock Band out here, because it is a really good game. The game feels much tighter than Guitar Hero: World Tour, the note layouts just make a whole lot more sense, and there’s a heck of a lot more downloadable content with 300+ songs available through the online store. The only major problems Rock Band has are the somewhat dull single player mode, lacking online multiplayer options and instrument reliability issues (we haven’t tested them, but there’s a class action lawsuit relating to the faults going on in the US). Rock Band is the better of the two band games, but Red Octane makes the better hardware, so perhaps you’d just be better off getting both.