CB
28 Jun 2008, 6:05pm
So, my wife just picked up Rock Band for the Wii, and it is all the fun of Rock Band for the other systems, but it has some very noticeable differences, some of which seem not to make much sense:
No DLC. This is the only one that I knew about in advance. You can't download anything, but we did find a flyer in the box which indicated that additional songs would be released 20 at a time on additional disks, so no big deal. I don't mind that, and I understand that it's a limitation of the Wii.
rockbandwiidrums.jpg
The drum set is white instead of black. meh.
Players cannot customize their rocker. In fact, you don't even get to choose from among some pre-made rockers, you simply don't get an avatar in the game at all. The rockers that play in the background are set for each song, like each song has a pre-recorded video of the rockers on stage. This was a disappointment, but I understand that the Wii is not quite as powerful, and may not be able to handle rendering the rockers in real time, so okay.
The confusing one is how they changed the Tour mode: In the other versions of the game the band goes from city to city, playing sets in different venues. Sometimes they get to choose their song, sometimes they have to play what the fans want, and sometimes the sets are multiple songs that all have to be completed in order to win the set. The Wii doesn't do any of that. On the Wii, the tour is divided into chapters of about 5 songs each, and in order to move on to the next chapter you must beat all of these songs. There is no random song sets, there is no multi-song sets, and no opportunity to choose your own song to play. There doesn't seem to have been a reason for this. They've removed a very interesting aspect of the game. It couldn't be processing power or any other limitation of the system, it's simply been removed to be removed, and this disappoints me.
Rocking away with the band (my wife named our band "The Kittehs") is still a great time, and the game seems unchanged in the playing, once the band is in the song-playing part, which I suppose is the most important thing.
No DLC. This is the only one that I knew about in advance. You can't download anything, but we did find a flyer in the box which indicated that additional songs would be released 20 at a time on additional disks, so no big deal. I don't mind that, and I understand that it's a limitation of the Wii.
rockbandwiidrums.jpg
The drum set is white instead of black. meh.
Players cannot customize their rocker. In fact, you don't even get to choose from among some pre-made rockers, you simply don't get an avatar in the game at all. The rockers that play in the background are set for each song, like each song has a pre-recorded video of the rockers on stage. This was a disappointment, but I understand that the Wii is not quite as powerful, and may not be able to handle rendering the rockers in real time, so okay.
The confusing one is how they changed the Tour mode: In the other versions of the game the band goes from city to city, playing sets in different venues. Sometimes they get to choose their song, sometimes they have to play what the fans want, and sometimes the sets are multiple songs that all have to be completed in order to win the set. The Wii doesn't do any of that. On the Wii, the tour is divided into chapters of about 5 songs each, and in order to move on to the next chapter you must beat all of these songs. There is no random song sets, there is no multi-song sets, and no opportunity to choose your own song to play. There doesn't seem to have been a reason for this. They've removed a very interesting aspect of the game. It couldn't be processing power or any other limitation of the system, it's simply been removed to be removed, and this disappoints me.
Rocking away with the band (my wife named our band "The Kittehs") is still a great time, and the game seems unchanged in the playing, once the band is in the song-playing part, which I suppose is the most important thing.