Rock Band Final Review

It is not often that a game comes and just blows me off of my feet. But this year I've been on the floor more than I've been standing up. With games like Bioshock and Halo 3 coming out this year my Game of the Year race is going to be a tight one. But I can tell you right off the bat, Rock Band is definitely one of my contenders.
The Single Player mode in this game is probably its least appealing part. But, even this least appealing chunk of the game is many times more fun than any Guitar Hero. The reason it is much funner is that you can play more than one instrument. The one problem with Guitar Hero was that once you were sick of the guitar, that's it. There's nothing else to move on to. With Guitar Hero you can play the drums once your sick of the guitar or move on to singing once your done with both of those. The one gripe with this game is that you cannot switch instruments in the World Tour Mode. I personally do not see this problem. If you want to switch instruments often throughout the Campaign, just make three different bands and be different instruments in each of them. That even makes the game last a bit longer (as if it needed to).
The Multi Player is the best multi player if you have all four people in the same room. It is still very good over Xbox Live, but there is not that personal chemistry you get when you have people together. Today, I got three of my friends over and we played Rock Band till our hands were sore (I'm getting carpal tunnel any day now). It was a blast and nothing can compare up to it.
Now let's talk about the instruments. First of all, there is the guitar(s). The guitars are very solidly built except for the strum bar. The strum bar feels a bit wobbly and that makes the note recognition slightly off. I love the new button design though. It really looks and feels like a guitar. It is not the cheesy feeling of the Guitar Hero guitars as this one feels solid. The guitarplay is basically the same thing as Guitar Hero. I could feel or spot no difference. It may have been slightly easier (I am playing Hard with no difficulty) but other than that it is top notch.
Similarly, the drums are built very solidly. In my few weeks of playing this game, I have probably abused the drums more than any other instrument for the mere fact that I have to pound on them. They still work perfectly fine and look perfectly fine. The only problem with the drum design is the foot pedal. It is used very often throughout the songs and, quite frankly, pressing it actually hurts your legs. It is just too hard to push on and not sensitive enough when you have two quick foot pedal lines in a row. The drumplay is very good. Unlike the guitars, they had to totally invent the drum beats. They are much faster than the guitar's but there is more of a pattern. They would be absolutely my favorite instrument if the foot pedal was better, but I still love them.
The singing may be the short end of this perfect package. The microphone is a very good high quality microphone, but the problem with the singing is not in the hardware, its in the gameplay. The singing is just not as appealing as the drums or guitars. It just gets boring and it seems whoever has to sing gets the raw bargain in the band. It might be fun if you try singing and playing another instrument at the same time but I have not tried that yet. Now don't get me wrong; the singing is horribly boring. It's just that compared to everything else in this package it seems like the most boring part. And it does have huge competition.
All in all, this is a great package. The guitars are every bit as good as you expect and so are the drums (once you get over the foot pedal). There is no reason to not buy this package if you have the resources to. Do not get Guitar Hero over this game though. It is just a waste of money to buy Guitar Hero when you can get this game for just $80 more. If $170 is too high for your budget, you may consider buying just the game and picking up another guitar (if you have Guitar Hero) and the drums separately. Harmonix is going to eventually sell the components separately; it may be a while before that happens though. Don't expect to see them before next Spring. So go out and buy this game right now for yourself, or make yourself the new favorite uncle by getting this as a gift.