Lego Rock Band Review
By Brian Buckley
If history has thought us anything, it’s that Lego is great fun for all ages and works quite well when brought into the video game realm. We’ve seen Lego incarnations of Batman, Indiana Jones and the Star Wars films, all of which had the unique look of Lego, and the quirky humour that identifies the brand. It would follow on then, that merging Rock Band a game about having fun with friends with the cornerstone of family co-op fun that is the Lego branded games would make sense. And it certainly does.
If you’ve played any Rock Band game before, you’ll be very familiar with the general gameplay mechanic of Lego Rock Band, the only real differences here being the notes on the highway are now replaced by Lego bricks, and more importantly the cast are now of the Lego characters leading to some fun animations and antics.
Playing through the main career you unlock loads of kit, be it Lego body parts, new furniture for your pad, or instruments. While the ability to customize your studio is kind of fun, it’s not really in-depth enough to make it satisfying. But the real fun comes when you go to customize your character. You can change the hair, face, body and legs with any combination you wish, leading to some truly hilarious get ups. Want to see a moustachioed Lego man wearing a belly top? Well wonder no more, because besides the ability to create this character, Freddie Mercury and Queen are in the game, along with David Bowie and Blur.
During the career you also get the option to hire a manager, and road crew. The more staff you have on board the more gigs will unlock, and the ability to tour a larger area. And in turn you will gain percentage bonuses on your takings for use in turning your Lego Rock Band member into the next member from YMCA. While playing in the career, you come across an awesome new feature, Rock Power Challenges. Your first task is to aid a demo crew destroy a building by rocking out. Each member of the band gets their own solo, and the resulting animations from a good performance are certainly satisfying to see, much more so than the generic applause and appreciation from a copy and paste audience. If any other music rhythm game tried this scenario it would be ridiculed, but hey this is Lego we’re talking about, where everything is possible, even being chased by a T-Rex.
The track listing is a great trade off for a game aimed squarely at the family market, for the Mam’s and Dad’s you have classics from Tom Petty, Queen, The Police, David Bowie, whereas the kids get great acts like The Zutons, Kaiser Chiefs, Pink and Razorlight. Both of these set lists are nicely complemented with appearances from The Jackson 5, Katrina & the Waves and Ray Parker Jr.’s smash hit Ghostbusters.
I guess it would be hard to talk about Lego Rock Band without mentioning its competition, Band Hero. I reviewed Band Hero earlier this year and really enjoyed it, but that was mainly down to the fact that it was a Guitar Hero 5 clone. So where does Lego Rock Band sit, it is identifiable as a Rock Band branded game, but there is enough funny animations and humour to distinguish it as its own game aswell. The opening sequence to the aforementioned T-Rex chance scene is why this game stands out, just see the T-Rex’s reaction to the poor guy on the toilet, and you’ll understand that the Lego humour is stamped all over this title.
And now for the bad, while Lego Rock Band tried to do so much to make it standout, and not just be a rebranded Rock Band 2, it neglected to bring across any online play. The mind boggles as to why they decided to do this, the online architecture is already coded and known to work, so why emit it?
There is no denying that the Lego franchise is still at the top of the pile, with a humour and endearing quality that never seems to fade. This is a solid game with a fun new feature “Rock Power Challenges” and a track listing that will have your toes tapping for joy. It’s just a pity there’s no online play.
