Lego Rock Band - Game Only (PS3)

I am really glad I shelled out the cash for this.

I bought this game to help me bond with my recently acquired step daughter. She always watches me when we go to the arcade and I play Guitar hero. For me though I think guitar hero and rock band are just not child friendly enough.

I heard about Lego rock band and despite the mixed reviews and the hefty price tag I thought I would check it out. How glad I am. Lego Rock band takes the rock band franchise and makes a concerted effort at making itself accessible, fun and playable.

One of the strongest things about this game is the difficulty levels; you can set it so a family of mixed ages and ability can all join in. This gives it that pick up and immediate play factor and heightens in on the whole family game genre. My step daughter is just ten years old and had never played the game before but just imagine after a few minutes in the tutorial we were rocking out to Ghostbusters by ray parker junior, and You give love a bad name by Bon Jovi. What's more, as her skills improved the game kept up and she was still challenged on the guitar with chords, riffs and hammer ons, yes you read that right, hammer ons!

I love the way the Lego aspect is used in this game, it is full of humour which provides much needed relief and to see the Lego versions of Freddie Mercury and Brian May move and sing along on set to their tracks has to be seen to be believed. It is also worth mentioning that just like rock band you can create your own Lego character to use in the game and they can be fun if you base them on yourself which is what we did.

The set list is another great gem, it was really a neck and neck decision between this game and band hero, but in the end I went for Lego rock band because the tracks are just more fun. As with all of these types of games there are always a few less popular ones but this one tends to have the least.

One last thing I would like to mention about this game is that whilst you can download tracks from Rock bands online content, because of its child friendly nature I found that tracks compatible were quite limited which is a shame. I would like to see more tracks to rock out to, 65 tracks might seem like a lot but in reality when it comes to repeated play which is what happens when you play with young children, you need at least 20 more plus downloadable content which is why I think I will be lucky if this game gets played at all in a few months time, which is a shame as it is great fun.

I have to say that my boyfriend thought I was mad when I bought this, and that I should stick with guitar hero, but I liked the sound of this one so got it anyway!

After playing for far too many hours, I have to admit that it was well worth the cash (- if you go into the office feature, the game tells you how many hours you have actually spent playing), although there are just a couple of niggles.
For a start, unlike guitar hero, when you go the different venues, you don't get 5 or 6 new songs, in fact in some venues you only get one new song(!) the rest of the gigs are challenges or special performances, or more often than not 'lucky dip' gigs, where the console picks two or three random tracks for you to play. This is fine, except for the fact that the song selection doesn't appear to be all that random (the game picks the same songs time and time again), and you also find yourself repeatedly playing the same songs just to get through gigs, and I have to say that there is a limit to the number of times you can hear 'walking on sunshine' before going quite mad.
It is possible to rush through the game a bit to keep buying new vehicles and collecting new trophies, but when playing that way you constantly feel like you are skipping bits, and feel like you should go back and complete some of the gigs that you missed, which untimately you will have to do anyway if you want to complete the game.

Another big downside is that even though it says on both the case and the game itself that you can use virtually any USB microphone with the game, the singstar mics don't seem to work - we have tried them several times, tried switching the console off and on again, switching the game off and on again, trying different USB ports, trying a second set of microphones, but they just don't work at all which is obviously disappointing. The Guitar Hero guitars do work however, which is good to know for those of you who have the guitar hero rather than the rock band guitars.

Overall, a good buy for the price, but the repetative songs, and the lack of compatibility with the singstar mics puts just a little downer on things. Recommended.

Had I researched the game a little better I would have found out that Singstar mics, wired or wireless don't work with this game, so dissappointed as it means forking over more cash! Its a lot of fun though and a fantastic song set. Good family game.