Rock Revolution

Guitar Hero was good. That is a fact. Guitar Hero 2 was better, everything was refined and Harmonix had started to learn the importance of using original tracks for the game, not some, arguably-decent-but-still-not-the-real-thing, covers. By number three all the tracks were original, and nowadays both Guitar Hero and Rock Band exclusively use orinigal masters on all their tracks. So whatever the hell Konami were thinking when they commissioned AN ENTIRE GAME OF COVERS, is well and truly beyond all comprehension.

Rock Revolution is aiming at being the middle moshers Guitar Hero, there are loads of metal tracks here, some of excellent reputation, a lot less so, which should be great fun to play. Especially if you love your metal or hard rock. BUT, and this is where the developers shot themselves in the foot. If you do love this music, you will not (200% guarantee here) want to play along to some half arsed wet handed cover. That is to say (to Captain Konami) No one ever wanted to pretend to play their favourite song... being er... COVERED!


While the remainder of the game may be fairly solid: A decent trackmaker, a solid interface, an okay career mode. It never does make you think ‘this is kinda sweet’, not once. Sets are seperated into ‘discs’, where at each stage you only have three tracks to play with, to do at least six challenges; which means to finish the game you must play the same limp songs, twice. Of course there is the obligatory band mode; a drum kit is avialable, although it looks more Fisher Price than any of the faux-tars yet. But the absence of any singing mode kind of takes away the full band feel.

The track list might have been an emotionally strong one (or  at least, angry), now only evokes a very mild and fleeting  sense of mediocrity. Lacklustre tracks are played from a shoddy flat-on scrolling fretboard, so things become both awkward and boring.

There isn’t anything particularly wrong with Rock Revolution, it’s just hard to see why you would want to play it; afterall,  there are good band games out there...

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