My review of the Rockudrama Mode
After spending some time with these new peripherals, they aren’t amazing additions to my arsenal of plastic instruments. The drums are extremely similar to the original Rock Band 4 drums. It took some calibration to get them feeling good, but they play fine on expert now. It still seems like they drop notes on the fast sections, something that Harmonix hasn’t completely figured out.
The guitar is probably the instrument that was altered the most. This blue Jaguar folds at the neck with a hinge that feels sturdy. I played a few songs on it, but quickly reverted to my tried-and-true Guitar Hero 5 model. I need that loud mechanical feedback of the strum bar to play accurately. Lastly, the microphone is heavier and slightly shorter, with a silver grill instead of a black one.
Rivals is something that will mostly appeal to a specific subset of Rock Band players. People who buy Rock Band for the occasional friend gathering won’t care much about what it has to offer. They aren’t squeezing the most points out of every single track. Far from it. They’d surely rather just play some party songs before stashing the gear back in the closet.
But, even if the most essential features in Rivals won’t be meaningful to a lot of people, this expansion represents Rock Band 4 at its best to this point. A year’s worth of incremental updates have molded this into a game that has more to offer and is easier to navigate. Anyone who has waited this long to follow Rock Band to new consoles should know that this is the optimal time to get in now that the growing pains seem to be behind Harmonix. However, those people should also know that Rivals probably isn’t going to be the part of Rock Band that they care about.
