At its worst, you sound like a passable cover band on a bad night. (The old-school stream of buttons is also available if you want.) You can also switch between a few effects, such as an echo or 'wah,' via the 'pickup selector' on the guitar controller.Īt its best, these freestyle solos release that biological opiate we associate with creative accomplishment. So instead of a long string of predefined button presses to fly through, Rock Band 4 will offer suggestions of what to do, from strumming fast button combinations at the top of the neck to bending one note near the top and letting it drone on. In these sections, depending on what combination of buttons you're holding down and how fast / often you're strumming, the game will procedurally generate an impressive-sounding guitar riff matching the key and general style of the song. In lieu of playing a song's actual guitar solo, you're now able to 'improvise' your own. The big change in Rock Band 4 is the introduction of freestyle guitar solos. The same applies for bass, drums, and vocals, all of which make up the full Rock Band experience. Succeed and the virtual crowd cheers fail and the guitar portion of your favorite song is replaced by some clunky blips and choral jeering. Rock Band 4 more or less keeps to the long-standing rhythm game formula: You, the wannabe rock star, play along to popular songs using a guitar-shaped controller, holding down some combination of five large buttons on the guitar's neck and plucking as those corresponding 'notes' appear in rhythm. But like any good VH1 Behind the Music story, the genre is making a comeback, with both a new Rock Band and a new Guitar Hero coming out this month. Five years, 30-plus titles, and millions of plastic guitar / drum / DJ controllers later, the rhythm genre seemed to fade out of the public eye just as fast as it had emerged. After the equally successful Guitar Hero II, Activision bought RedOctane and the Guitar Hero IP, while MTV picked up Harmonix, who then created a new rhythm franchise, Rock Band. A brief history lesson: In 2005, Harmonix released the wildly successful Guitar Hero in partnership with hardware maker RedOctane and publisher Activision.

For those who missed out on the Rock Band and Guitar Hero craze, let me just say you're also probably too young to have experienced Animaniacs or Legends of the Hidden Temple.

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