Harmonix is back, bringing us a game full of sound and entertainment that carries the energy and life of a full-blown rock concert to your home. However, like The Beatles: Rock Band before it, this is a one band experience with that band being Green Day. So how does it stack up compared to other band specific games and the Rock Band franchise as a whole?

Over the many years that Harmonix has been in the industry, they've had a lot of time to develop the process of music making in video games. From Frequency and Amplitude to Guitar Hero 1 and 2 to Rock Band, they've always focused on layers of improvement. Green Day: Rock Band is no exception to this. Running off the same enhanced Rock Band 2 system first seen in The Beatles: Rock Band, this game makes good use of the multi-part harmonies, allowing more than one vocalist to join in. This is a solid mechanic that allows more than just the four players on the core instruments, guitar, bass, vocals, and drums, to participate, showing off what a great party game this can be. Sadly, however, multi-part harmonies are only available for local play, not in online modes. Also, while this game is fully compatible with the Green Day songs available for DLC in Rock Band and Rock Band 2, don't expect these songs to offer the multi-track harmonies.



Beyond that, this is a standard version of Rock Band 2 themed around Green Day and their career. As they work their way through story or Career Mode, players are rewarded with video clips, photos, sound bites, and background on the band while also unlocking new songs and challenges to play. Sadly even though this is a game about music, this is not a collection of Green Day's entire back catalogue. The game includes full albums of Dookie, American Idiot, and 21st Century Breakdown, but only small smatterings of songs from other albums and nothing from before the band was signed to a major label.

All of the Rock Band standards are here in gameplay modes. Quickplay for those just wanting to play specific songs, Career Mode to play through challenges and follow Green Day's progress as a band, and Score Duel, a mode where you can compete against another player on a song and instrument for the best score. The only mode that is uniquely customized for this game is Career Mode, through which, like The Beatles game, you can unlock featurettes, videos, images and more fan tidbits about Green Day.



Like many other Rock Band titles, the achievement set offers some really difficult challenges like hitting 100% of the notes on Expert level in various Green Day songs. There's plenty of career challenges as well, many of which that require focus on a single member of the band to complete. The achievement set will take many hours to complete in its entirety as Harmonix did another bang up job challenging the player (even experts at Rock Band).

Graphics

• The Rock Band franchise has always been one of the most entertaining not only to play, but to also watch. It is easily missed by those performing as the note chart races ever constantly towards them, but for vocalists and spectators, there is always something entertaining to see. This, unfortunately, falls a touch short in Green Day: Rock Band. While the concerts are still well directed with lighting effects, panning cameras, and energetic virtual crowds, the band animations are stiff and bland. This is likely due to the fact that the band itself was motion captured for the game to give it a more authentic feel. It does this, but at the cost of a less entertaining watch for spectators since Green Day isn't the most animated group around. Along with this, the band is in serious need of a better wardrobe agent and stylist because they only have three different outfits throughout the entire game. Also there are only three venues for the band to play in for the expanse of their career; pretty lame for a Rock Band title.


• The gameplay visuals haven't changed from Rock Band 2 and The Beatles: Rock Band, so anyone familiar with the franchise will be able to quickly jump into this game without confusion. Harmonix's subtle use of indicators to keep players informed of progress and overdrive opportunities has always been a nice and natural way to incorporate those bonuses into the game without startling or throwing the player off mid-song and taking them out of the experience.

Audio

• The sound is of impeccable quality. Even with a standard audio set up, the game sounds wonderful, but if you can afford it, make full use of the Dolby Digital surround sound to really feel like you are standing up on stage at a concert in front of hundreds to thousands of fans. It's the small touches that really make the ambiance believable, like listening as the crowd joins in to sing along with the chorus when you are performing well.


• As mentioned previously, this game includes 47 songs in total including full albums of Dookie, American Idiot, and 21st Century Breakdown and it is also compatible with previous Green Day DLC from Rock Band and Rock Band 2. This mixture of song variety really shows how the band has grown and developed over the years from punk alternative to mature melodies. Every song in the game is from the master tracks, so the audio is clean, crisp, and rich.

Conclusion

While Green Day: Rock Band offers much in the way of entertainment and strong gameplay, it is really only going to appeal to a small fraction of the potential music and rhythm game audience due to its focus on a single band and general music genre. For those that are huge, hard core fans of Green Day, this is the game for you with all of its detailing and band related features. If you are a casual fan who is more interested in the music than the group itself, you should still pick this up on sale. With this game and 800 Microsoft Points, you can import all 47 songs from this game into Rock Band 2 to play at your leisure, treating it like a huge expansion pack. Green Day: Rock Band is a game full of energy and fun, but lacks the variety to stand on its own for any great length of time.

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