that is both easy to jump into and addictive">  – and what you hate about Activision’s Guitar Hero franchise – it feels repetitive and old.  With Rock Band 2 a couple years past and Rock Band 3 on the way, it raises the question of how annual they expect to make the franchise and still get people to pay for it.

This title is the spiritual successor to the infinitely popular The Beatles Rock Band released last year.  That release was a great boon and innovation for the folks at Harmonix. This also provided a much-needed breather between Rock Band 2 and Rock Band 3 (to be shown at this year’s E3).  Having a licensed title allowed Harmonix to play with the story telling and presentation.  Now, it’s not your band’s story unfolding into the future, but a narrative of one band’s rise to stardom.  Not that Green Day did not reach stardom, but from the beginning I’ve felt a slight disconnect with Green Day as a band to be the follow-up for such an iconic band such as The Beatles.



Much like the fab four’s treatment, Green Day Rock Band has local and online Quickplay, local and online Career Mode, Leaderboards, Achievements, etc.  Of course, Career Mode is where it’s at giving you the opportunity to play three different venues. Each venue is then broken down into sets of songs you unlock by completing the previous set.  Pictures and “Cred” are given for successful completion (3 stars) of a song or set with an additional cred given for a 5-star performance. After a specified amount of cred is earned, Challenges may be unlocked.  Challenges could be as generic as earning 13 out of 15 stars in a three-song setlist or earning 56 stars as you play all 14 songs off of Dookie.  Completing a Challenge is satisfying and unlocks rewards for you to enjoy when you aren’t rocking faces off.  



As a game in the music-related genre, graphics and animations do not play as pivotal a role as the sound does.  I mean, how clear can you make the red bar as it crawls down the path in order to be played?  Not that Harmonix rested on their laurels; they thankfully did away with Beatles Rock Band’s “stylized” graphics as far as the track and notes were concerned.  And while the canned animations did begin to repeat often, you can tell a lot of care was put into breathing the trio’s true essence into their AI counterparts.  To see Tré Cool come down during a Billie Joe solo opening and dance behind him put a smile on my face and began to endear the title to me.

Being another installment in the Rock Band franchise, explaining game play is easy enough.  Green, Red, Yellow, Blue and Orange are the hallmarks of Rock Band’s easy-to-play, difficult-to-master play style.  The track layouts for each song continue to be a shining example of allowing you to feel the song as well as play it.  While the layouts felt good, the variety in those layouts from song to song felt familiar and boring.  Perhaps this is due to all the songs being from one band – but yet I did not share that feeling while playing The Beatles Rock Band.  In the beginning, guitar parts felt like the same three cords and the bass felt like just smashing runs over and over.  Thankfully, the layouts improved in variety as the band matured, but not enough overall to give me the feeling this band was a good fit for an entire title.  



While I am not the biggest fan of Green Day, I have always appreciated their music and overall sound.  Songs on the disc span their entire catalog with Dookie and American Idiot’s full lineup able to be played.  It was slightly disappointing and disheartening to find out that the only way to complete one of the final challenges (play the entire 21st Century Breakdown album) was to purchase the remaining songs from the album from the Rock Band store.  If it’s a challenge on the disc, I should be able to complete it simply using what’s on the disc.

My only other major complaint was with the difficulty settings.  I normally play the bass on Hard, but there are still times I have difficulty on Hard and occasionally must drop to Medium in order to pass a particularly difficult song.  As I mentioned before, the bass parts were littered with runs of tightly packed bars and my moderate carpal tunnel flared up, forcing the downgrade.  Unfortunately, dropping to Medium was completely unsatisfying.  It felt like I was doing the New York Times Crossword Puzzle and put it down to fill in a crossword found in a 6th grade Social Studies book.  I can appreciate the necessity to make the game accessible, but at the same time, I am unable to see how a new fan to the franchise would be able to start with Green Day Rock Band and ever graduate from Medium to Hard.



Overall, Green Day Rock Band is fun.  You remember their hits fondly and you can’t help but get pulled into it.  It’s the same formula Harmonix has always used to create a good music game.  Unfortunately, it is also the game’s downfall.  It’s the same formula rehashed in a game released a week before E3 when we’re all going to put hands on (the hopefully innovative) Rock Band 3.  

In the mean time, if you are a Green Day super fan or you absolutely must have the latest Rock Band, you will not be disappointed in your purchase of Green Day Rock Band.  For rest of you in the majority, you may take more away from a rent, discounted purchase or picking and choosing certain songs to download off the Rock Band store, should they be released there.