Green Day: Rockband (Xbox 360)

Wow! Why isn't this game more popular? A balanced and perfect selection of songs with realistic graphics and excellent game play. What more could you want? ALthough the career mode prehaps doesn't have the same sense of progression as other games in the rock band series (Beatles rock band), the indulging and quite frankly 'fun' songs to play make up for it entirely. The collectables and awards also add an alternative feature to the career which really works. I would also strongly recommend buying the drums if you haven't got them because it almost doubles the amount of fun hours to be had on the game. For me, exploreing tre's drum beat arsenal is the best part, and instrument in the game. Nevertheless, the guitar, base an vocals are great as well. Note, the xbox 360 headset does not work, you need to buy a mike. The only other slight frustration, is that all swearing has been taking out of the songs, and any Green Day fan will know, THEY SWEAR A LOT.

All in all, a great buy, you don't have to be a Green Day fan to cherish this rare oppurtunity.

I've been a fan of Green Day for some considerable time now - the first album I ever bought was Dookie, and the band have played a significant, indeed huge role in my aural upbringing. So it was with no small amount of delight that I greeted the announcement of Green Day Rock Band. Whilst others fretted that there wasn't enough diversity within the band's back catalogue, I knew that a good tracklist would be able to pull together all the different forays Green Day have made over the years. I crossed my fingers for the hilarious King For A Day making an appearance. I hoped for the snarling eeriness of Misery, wished for the snotty teenaged outburst of Brat, and hoped that even the thoughtful Macy's Day Parade might be included.

I was being optimistic. Kudos to Harmonix for including the entire Dookie album, but most of the band's pre-American Idiot material barely gets a look in. Green Day were already huge before American Idiot, with Dookie alone selling ten million copies, and it's almost like Harmonix think they've not really done much since 1994. True, the songs that you expect are there (for the most part), but the emphasis on the newer material is frustrating. Green Day are a band who have been (mostly) consistent in their output for over fifteen years now , so over half of the tracklist being made up of material solely from the last two albums seems to be doing the wealth of material the band has to offer a disservice. You would be forgiven for expecting every song off International Superhits to be in the game - it's an obvious move to include the greatest hits tracklisting, and there's a reason why bands put out greatest hits compilations. It's because those are the songs people want to hear, and omission of these seems like a bizarre decision. Walking Contradiction, Stuck With Me, Redundant, Waiting and Macy's Day Parade are all ostensibly missing. In terms of showing the rising popularity of the band in a narrative, including the greatest hits compilation is obvious.

This narrative element is, for me, another area in which the game falls down. There is very little indication of how the band develop over the course of the three shows included in the game. Their clothes change, tattoos grow and develop, but there simply isn't much sense of time elapsing. From their Dookie era shows to Milton Keynes represents the biggest and most noticeable shift, but this is a jump of over ten years. It would have surely made much more sense to include an extra show for the Nimrod era - the follow up to Dookie, Insomniac, was less well received than it's predecessor, but then Nimrod reaffirmed Green Day as the one of the greatest punk bands of their generation. Surely an extra show focussing on the Nimrod era would have done more to show the development of the band? Songs from Insomniac could have been included in this set too - it's not like the band don't have enough songs for three more four or five song setlists.

Then we come to the representation of the band themselves. Every so often when playing, you'll see Billie Joe give a certain look that's undeniably him, and in terms of what he's wearing he's pretty close to how he should be, but not really close enough in terms of personality. Mike Dirnt, for the most part, just stands around looking a bit sad. The closest in terms of accuracy must surely be Tre Cool, as he runs around the stage in his non drumming parts pulling faces at everyone and generally behaving as if he's escaped from somewhere. At no point, however, do we see him set fire to his drum kit, a signature move for years. Be rock and roll kids, but not too rock and roll!

Collectibles and awards, earnt from successful challenge completion, go some way towards immersing yourself in the history and life of the band. Having not earnt the full 111 at this point I can't conclusively state this, but they too seem to be somewhat lacking. A band who've been around as long as Green Day have a wealth of trivia associated with themselves, their songs and their history, but this is sadly absent for the most part. Both of the original Rock Band games do a good job of throwing little bits of trivia into the mix by putting it on the loading screen of each song - I didn't know until I played Peace Sells, for example, that Dave Mustaine of Megadeth was a black belt in karate. The inclusion of such trivia would have been welcome, like how Pulling Teeth was written in reference to Mike breaking a rib having a pillow fight with his girlfriend, or how Billie was refused entry to (legendary punk rockers) Operation Ivy's show and one of the members came out to let him in - Billie would later collaborate with Tim Armstrong of Rancid and Operation Ivy fame on the Rancid single 'Radio'. I've also yet to find any reference to the two albums before Dookie, which whilst nowhere near as commercially successful were still important in the development of the band. I'm not expecting songs from them you understand, just some acknowledgement of their existence would be nice. It's this minutiae and attention to detail that's sadly absent from an otherwise relatively enjoyable package. Although the package itself could have been bigger too. And where's the pink bunny?! He turns up in the loading screen and that's it! We want the bunny! We want the bunny! We want the bunny!

Item arrived promptly and had no problems, good price, got exactly what i wanted, been very enjoyable play it all time