* Experience 4 music games in 1--master lead guitar, bass guitar, drums, and vocals. Music spans all genres of rock and includes many master recordings from legendary artists.
* Form your own band, create and customize your own rocker, and travel on a fast rise to fame around the world.
* Choose single-player Career mode leading a band or multiplayer as part of the band or against each other--in person or online. Supports downloadable content for never-ending challenges.
* The Rock Band Special Edition includes the Xbox 360 game, a guitar controller, drum set, and microphone.

Tap into your Rock & Roll fantasy as you pick your axe, form a band and tour for fame and fortune, all while sticking the rock credo of learning your instrument as you go in Rock Band.

Bring the house to its feet in Rock Band

For those about to rock!
Solo Tour Mode

Jam solo if that's your thing. View larger.
Band world tour mode

Or try multiplayer action. View larger.
Step to the mic

Step to the mic. View larger.
Drum like a wildman!

Or go Bonzo on the skins! View larger.
Developed by Harmonix, creators of the blockbuster Guitar Hero franchise, Rock Band is an all-new platform for gamers ready to take on the challenges of the Rock & Roll lifestyle. Instruments available to players are guitar, bass, drums or vocals as they hit the road as either an aspiring superstar solo act, or for the first time in game genre history take on the true collaborative and challenging nature of music as they form a band and jam together in multiplayer action from home or around the world. Either way players will need to master their stage presence through the various game modes and polish their rock chops via the unrivaled Rock Band song list if they hope to make it out of the garage, into the clubs and finally on to the main stage.

* Rock Band Special Edition for Xbox 360 includes: guitar, mic, drum kit peripherals plus software.


Extensive Game Modes.
Rock Band delivers four music games in one - challenging rockers to master lead guitar, bass guitar, drums and vocals through the five separate game modes.

* Tutorial Mode: Master the basics! No need for experience. Pick your weapon of choice and ascend from beginner to rock god.
* Practice Mode: Perfect your tune! Breakdown any part of any song at your preferred speed before hitting the main stage.
* Quickplay Mode: Instant fix of fun! Jump into any unlocked song for some quick jam time either on your own or with other players.
* Solo Tour Mode: Take it on the road! Pack up your instrument of choice and set out on the open road for a fun and challenging single player career.
* Band World Tour Mode: Conquer the world! The journey to rock stardom takes you from small town bars to world-renowned venues. Earn fame and fortune along the way to secure rock star necessities.

A Song List That Goes to Eleven!
Built on unprecedented deals with top record labels and music publishers, the mix of remastered originals and covers that make up the epic Rock Band song list puts players in the shoes of legendary artists from day one. And with the promise of additional downloadable songs and albums you are sure to be rockin’ for some time to come. In addition to the 45 tracks listed below, Rock Band will also feature 13 songs ranging from a variety of established bands to up-and-coming independent artists that can be unlocked as you play through the game. Track list includes:

* Rolling Stones "Gimme Shelter"
* Aerosmith "Train Kept a Rollin'"
* The Who "Won't Get Fooled Again"
* Boston "Foreplay/Long Time"
* Mountain "Mississippi Queen"
* The Police "Next to You"
* David Bowie "Suffragette City"
* Black Sabbath "Paranoid"
* Blue Oyster Cult "Don't Fear the Reaper"
* The Ramones "Blitzkrieg Bop"
* Deep Purple "Highway Star"
* KISS "Detroit Rock City"
* Molly Hatchet "Flirtin' With Disaster"
* The Outlaws "Green Grass & High Tides"
* Sweet "Ballroom Blitz"
* Rush "Tom Sawyer"
* Bon Jovi "Wanted Dead or Alive"
* The Clash "Should I Stay or Should I Go"
* Faith No More "Epic"
* R.E.M. "Orange Crush"
* Iron Maiden "Run to the Hills"*
* Foo Fighters "Learn to Fly"
* Metallica "Enter Sandman"
* Nirvana "In Bloom"
* Stone Temple Pilots "Vasoline"
* Weezer "Say It Ain't So"
* Smashing Pumpkins "Cherub Rock"
* Radiohead "Creep"
* Beastie Boys "Sabotage"
* Hole "Celebrity Skin"
* Garbage "I Think I'm Paranoid"
* Soundgarden "Black Hole Sun"
* The Hives "Main Offender"
* Queens of the Stone Age "Go With the Flow"
* The Strokes "Reptilia"
* Jet "Are You Gonna Be My Girl"
* OK Go "Here It Goes Again"
* Nine Inch Nails "The Hand That Feeds"
* Pixies "Wave of Mutilation"
* Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Maps"
* Red Hot Chili Peppers "Dani California"
* Coheed & Cambria "Welcome Home"
* Fallout Boy "Dead on Arrival"
* The Killers "When You Were Young"
* New Pornographers "Electric Version"



Product Description
Time to release your inner rock star! Dive into Rock Band's challenging and addicting game modes and rock out to your favorite tunes. Put together a band, play in it, and tour for fame and fortune- all while learning to master lead/bass guitar, drums and vocals. Major record labels and leading music publishers have signed on to provide unrivaled access to master recordings and legendary rock artists - from punk, metal and alternative to classic and southern rock - including many master recordings from legendary artists, including acts like Metallica, Bon Jovi, Stone Temple Pilots and the Ramones! Learn to play songs spanning all genres of rock and with access to new downloadable content, it's a new concert experience every time! Play together in your living room or across the world - Rock Band offers deep online functionality, allowing players to rock together whether they're in Rhode Island or Reykjavik. This Special Edition box includes game, guitar, microphone and drum set -- everything you need to get in the game and rock out! Call out the crowd! Vocalists can bring the crowd to their feet during Rock Band's freestyle vocal fill windows. Ad-lib your own words or shout to the crowd to raise the rock intensity of the performance. Band mates can fail out of a song for poor performance, but the band still plays on. Rescue your failing mate by busting out signature moves and blistering solos to wow the crowd with showmanship. Boost your bonus! Earn bonus points for your band during Rock Band's Unison Phrase opportunities if everyone plays perfectly. ESRB Rated T for Teen.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews


243 of 258 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Harmonix Delivers another Slam Dunk, November 20, 2007
By Lisa Shea "LisaShea.com" - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
Let me first admit that I'm a Guitar Hero fan. I adore playing all of the Guitar Hero games, and we have multiple guitars in the house (for multiple platforms) so that we can jam together. When Harmonix turned over Guitar Hero III to another company, I was really curious what they would choose to do next. I am THRILLED with the result - Rock Band, which combines together all the fun of singing karaoke, playing guitar (lead and bass) plus DRUMS!!!

My boyfriend is in several bands, and he plays lead guitar, bass guitar and drums. I love to sing. So we have played many, many games in all of these genres (including the Donkey Kong Konga game which is surprisingly fun). We were quite interested to see how the Harmonix guys would merge these variety of instruments into a single game.

First, the instruments. The guitar is FAR better than the guitars previously released for Guitar Hero. The buttons are "full fret" making the much easier to press. You don't have that annoying ridge line. You get TWO sets of buttons in fact - one for easier guitar solo play. You have sound settings. I can't say enough about this guitar. The only thing it lacks is stickers :) Really, couldn't they include a sticker set or two, to customize the thing? A minor flaw :)

The drum set is REALLY cool. It comes with a stand and it has a very nice feel to it. My boyfriend complained a bit about the wood sticks not being smooth, but heck, you're not paying for high quality sticks here.

There is a four-plug USB hub so you can actually plug all these items into your XBox 360 :) And there's a few headset adaptors, and a microphone. We already had several of these.

Now for gameplay. The graphics are visually lovely, although really, with up to four people playing and singing, the background stuff is pretty meaningless. The screen is taken up by all of the progress bars and alert bars and so on. I do have to comment that the customization for your characters is AWESOME. You customize their style of movement (punk, rock, etc), their facial look, hair style, eye color and much more. Plus you can buy all sorts of great outfits in the store. Never mind equipment. They really went overboard in this area.

I found when I played an instrument whose track was on the far left (the lead guitar, for example) that I could easily see the "overall progress" bar showing how everyone in the band was doing. I could see that the drum guy was doing poorly and slipping down into the red. However, when *I* was playing the drums - and the visual for my drum track was on the far right - I had NO idea how well or poorly I was doing. That overall band progress display was on the far left (past the other instruments' tracks) and there was no way to watch both my own drum note list and see how I was doing at the same time. So you almost need to designate whoever is playing in that far left track as the "band alert person" to yell out if someone is doing not so well.

The band works as a unit. If for example the drums are doing poorly, but the guitarist is doing well, the guitarist can use their energy the rev up the crowd which helps everyone in the band. So the guitarist can save the drummer, for example. On the other hand, if the drummer is really bad, after a few failures, the crowd gives up. You can't have the remaining players try to play the song out.

Which brings up one of my only complaints about the game. Let's say you start a band "Asia" with the leader being a drummer. Now any time Asia wants to continue on their career, the drummer MUST BE PLAYING. In real life, band members change positions sometimes. You have a drummer who also likes to sing. But here, if you have a position set as the leader, the game can't be played (with that band and the songs it's unlocked) without that instrument being played. We found that really annoying. You should be able to say that person X now wants to play instrument Y and keep going.

Now, interestingly, my boyfriend plays the drums. He found the drum pads AWFUL to use and thought they were broken. We swapped off and he took over guitar while I played with the drums. I did a 100% performance. So it's something about the way you hit them. I *think* they have to be hit pretty close to dead center, with a sharp rap. I'm not a drummer so undoubtedly I'm not hitting them "technically right" but I am able to sail through many songs on easy with 100%. So it's a matter of getting used to how they work.

The vocal / mike track is much like any karaoke game, and you "yell" to activate overdrive. It's a lot of fun. I did try several songs with a mike stand setup so I could play guitar and sing at the same time. It was a lot of fun - but part of the mike track is "cowbells" where you're supposed to thwap the microphone in time to the beat. Unfortunately if you're busy playing the guitar or drums you no longer can thwap the microphone. I tried yelling "POP" and it worked about half the time, if I used a very snappy sound to my POP. Still, it's a shame you can't sing and play because of this.

The songs in this list are GREAT. I really love some of them, and there were few that I simply didn't like at all. It's cool that they have multiple venues per location, instead of the Guitar Hero games where there was just "one Boston" and so on. You have to actually earn a Van or Bus or whatever to move on to a new city. You actually build up a fan base as you go, and lose it if you do poorly. That is all very cool. On the down side, the progression of songs is rather odd. You can play 2 songs you like in Boston, and then go to Chicago and play the exact two songs again to earn more stars there. The songs seem to unlock slowly. I'm also not overly fond of several modes where you have no idea what songs are coming up until 2 seconds before the songs begin.

They do have a training mode and solo mode, but really you figure the great appeal of this game is to play with your friends, using the various instruments. So we found that interface - where you are stuck with a single leader, and it is very much one-person-one-instrument oriented, to be a bit frustrating. Sure, I love playing drums - but I love playing guitar too! Sometimes I love to sing. It didn't seem like it should be THAT bad to let a person switch instruments once you'd unlocked a bunch of venues and songs.

Finally, I really like that right from the start you have access to all difficulty modes, and can set them by person. So if you have a really great guitarist in your family, and someone who is perhaps younger or just getting started, the great guitarist can set themselves to difficult and the younger person can set to easy and both can have a really fun, challenging time.

I am really looking forward to new song downloads too, and imagine that could make this game last years and years and be just as much fun.

Highly, highly recommended if you can get your hands on this thing. We were there right when the store opened to get our hands on ours, and it sold out immediately. Well worth tracking down!! Note that I have photos of the instruments on my website and am happy to answer any other questions you guys have about this game.
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76 of 79 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Are you ready to rock?!, November 20, 2007
By M. B Cole "Kegrun" (Las Vegas, NV) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
When I first heard that Harmonix was creating Rock Band, I thought to myself, "Guitar Hero Remix". Until I heard about the mic and then the sweet drum set. So I was amped for this to come out. Then GH3 came out and all I could think of was "Dang...Rock Band better be awesome cause I just can not put GH3 down". Then I hit up my local Best Buy with a mock set-up of RB..and once I hit those sticks on those drum pads..I was in heaven. I was already going to buy RB, but now I HAD to have it.

I bought it the day it came out as soooon as my local Target opened up. Went straight home (with Kane & Lynch also...which at this time hasnt been played..heh) and began opening it up. After a few minutes of setting up (drums take a few parts to put together..nothing hard though..no tools), I was ready to go.

I started off with the drums (like probably most people). I'm gonna have to say..they are a lot tougher than I thought they were gonna be. I've never played drums in my life so it's gonna take a little time to get used to them. When I tried them at Best Buy...they had a demo that didnt include the base pedal. Well now I have to worry about stepping on that, while also worrying about where I'm slamming my two sticks at also. Sounds easy right? I really dont think so..least not yet..lol. By no means am I dogging this part though. I can see that this will be a lot of fun, especially when you start playing on Hard. On Easy the beats are so slow that I really do not feel like a rocker... I feel more like I'm some slow drummer in some jazz band. But I know it's like that to get people like myself accustomed to this new piece of equipment.

Secondly, I grabbed the new guitar. I put it on Medium and began playing a bunch of songs. I looovveee this guitar. The top fret buttons feel so good. One the edge of the green button and the orange button, there is a lift about half an inch high. So when you start playing on Hard or Expert and you start moving up and down the fret buttons trying to hit every button, you won't get lost cause you'll bump into those lifts. Definitely helps out. Also at the bottom you have 5 more fret buttons with the same color. Once a 'solo' appears on screen (the background will be a shade of blue) you can use these buttons and not even have to strum. Just hit the buttons once the button appears on the line. So much fun and you feel like even more of a rocker. The selector on the guitar has a bunch of sound effects that you can do on the fly. Pretty cool I guess, but I swear I cant hear a difference. Not saying it's not there, but I just havent heard the difference yet. The ONLY gripe I have about the guitar is the Whammy Bar. Its so dang long and almost gets in the way of my strummer. It looks very good, but I'm just not diggin it. It's not crazy bad where you would hate the guitar, but I would have liked it just a bit shorter. One last thing about the guitar. My roommate is insanely good at Guitar Hero and he is in absolute love with this new guitar and the new way it plays out on Rock Band. He doesnt even want to look at the GH guitars anymore..lol. He has issues with the whammy also though.

The Mic is next. I've never played a karaoke game before on any system. I never really cared for it (even though I do like Karaoke sometimes...when I'm drinking). I also didnt really know how it worked. Well before I stopped playing RB for a while, I decided to try it out. HOOKED. Seriously hooked on this part of the game right now. I was laughing at first while singing cause it was just funny to me, but then I really started getting into it. Then my roommate wanted to join in with the guitar. So we picked Creep and aced the crap out of it. Next thing you know we had Mississippi Queen playing and then I'm standing up and just rockin the mic. Right then I could just TELL this was going to be a very fun party game. I'm getting off track here. Ok, back on. When you sing you have to keep the pitch or tone of your voice on track with the line that shows on the screen. There is an arrow that will let you know if you are to high or to low. When it's time for your 'energy' meter (star power), you can just make any noise or statement you want to to activate it. I just usually hold out the note of the last word longer than usual to activate it...or scream ARE YOU READY TO ROCK?! (cause it always gets a laugh..lol). The only thing I dont care for is that you have to tap the mic on certain parts to make a tambourine sound or a cow bell sound. It's not bad if you are JUST singing, but I can see how that would be crap if you were playing a guitar or drum also. It doesnt HURT you if you miss those beats, but you dont get extra points. So far I love the mic, but probably cause I've never played those Karaoke games before like I said.

Although the 360 version isnt wireless cause of Microsofts greedy self (they use a proprietary wireless that they charge companies to use and Harmonix didnt want to pay for it so they could keep the PS3 and the 360 versions the same price), it's not TOOOO bad. The wires are a lot longer than the GH guitar wires. Plus the 4 port USB that comes with the game is a godsend for this game (make sure you have one more outlet for the USB plug). Hopefully they'll make some wireless stuff later.

When you start your career, you'll get to start customizing your guy or gal you want to use. Lot of different things you can do also...I was very surprised. If you ever played any of the Def Jam fighting games, then you might think back to those games like I did. Faces, Rock Styles (fighting styles on Def Jam), Hair, Height, Color, Rings, Bracelets, Pants, Shoes, Shirts, Tattoos. It's crazy. Lots of items to choose from the start and more and more as you get farther into the game. I unlocked 5 things in 5 songs I believe. I cant talk much about career mode since I stopped after my first 5 songs since I had to get ready for work. What I played though was really fun and what I've read and seen on videos (mainly from the rockbands website) its seems like it's going to be a blast.

I still love Guitar Hero. 1, 2 and 3. Not 80's, but whatever. I'm still gonna play them because of certain songs. But I think Rock Band has become my new favorite. Especially since once in a while, we have a good group of people show up to just drink and play GH. I think Rock Band is gonna replace that thanks to the 4 player support, GREAT song list, and more than just a guitar or two to play with. Actually I know it is..lol.

While you are reading this... I'm pretty sure I'm playing Rock Band. =D

***UPDATE for 22 Nov 07.***

2 more gripes about this game.

1. Harmonix seemed to use a LOT of constant repetitious notes..for example..you have to hit the blue button say...6 times in a row..then the red..6 times in a row..then back to blue..6 times in a row...then yellow..six times in a row...and on and on. I dont mind this on some songs...but I'm just saying they used it a lot this time around. Even my roommate was getting aggravated with it.

2. I believe my guitar is starting to act up like others that I have read. My strum bar after only a day is getting less responsive on the down strokes. I'm missing notes for no reason. I started using the up stroke instead and now I'm hitting ever note. I'm gonna send a request for a new guitar soon. Usually I'm not a victim of the faulty hardware that many people come across (I've never even seen a red ring of death in person on the 360...knock on wood), but this time I think I am. *sigh*

Cool stuff I like though since I first posted.

1. I figured out how to use the Guitar sound effects switch. Gotta be using star power (energy..whatever). Very fun!

2. Love how the star power adds up even while you are using it. Huge improvement over GH's.

Thats it for now.

LOVE this game...really I do. Just wish the guitar didnt start messing up. =(

***UPDATE for 23 Nov 07.***

2 really cool new things I like.

1. I REALLY love how when you are doing good during a song...the crowd starts to sing along with the song. WOW! That made me feel more like I was there than GH ever did. Very cool feature.

2. During Thanksgiving...I took my game over to a friends house. We had enough people to put a 4 player group together. Talk about A LOT of fun. 2 people never even touched GH before. Yet they had a blast playing all three instruments. The one girl I was playing with who I would have thought would've been on the mic more since she likes karaoke STOLE the drum set almost the whole time..she loved it. It was a lot of fun watching her beat the crap out of the set..lol. I was on mic most of the time since most were scared of it. Sometimes other people took the mic over, and even though they were sometimes bad..it was never embarrassing. Most of the time the other people were to engaged into their own playing or either it was so bad that it wasnt embarrassing, but just down right funny.

I had way to much fun with that game this Thanksgiving. Like I said way earlier..I knew this would be a great party game. We didnt even think about putting GH in.
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65 of 123 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Okay - Let's Get Serious, December 4, 2007
By Brian Seiler (Tomball, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars
Kind of shocked there aren't more less-than-stellar reviews at the time that I write this, so I'll clarify some things before I begin. For starters, we need to understand what we're reviewing. We're not reviewing the game simply as a game, but instead the game and the three external control devices that you get for the princely sum of one hundred and seventy dollars. That's going to be important in a minute.

That out of the way, quick summary - Rock Band is basically Guitar Hero with drums and vocals, or, if you're not familiar with that game (for all you parents out there that couldn't possibly care less), it's a game where you take a plastic guitar or microphone or funny looking drum set and play along with some popular music roughly from the general direction of rock, probably with your friends. Since I'm talking to the parents, I'll take this opportunity to let you know that unless you're strictly conservative (as in Shakers or so level of moral conservatism), this game is probably okay for your children so far as the content goes. My filters don't pick up anything objectionable in the content that comes with the game.

Now, this game is really four games (guitar, vocal, drum, and multiplayer) so let's look at each independently.

The guitar part is unquestionably the best element of the game, which makes sense, since it's just an extension of Guitar Hero in that regard and that was pretty well refined at the point that Harmonix handed it off. Comparing it to its nearest competitor (Guitar Hero 3), the set lists are better, the song styles are more varied, and the tabulature makes a lot more sense (Guitar Hero 3 was developed primarily by game designers, so they had a terrible tendency to just make everything a chord in hard and beyond, while the folks at Harmonix are all musicians, so things that should be single notes typically are only single notes). The controller, however, is a weakness.

First off, if your controller isn't broken, that's a good thing, and you're lucky, because mine was. There was apparently some bad doings at the factory and the glue that holds the strum register on tended to break on some of the first run models, which led to your guitar becoming virtually unusable after five hours. The tilt sensors in a number of them were also totally fried. Outside of those technical issues, it's a mixed bag. I like the weight and feel of the control a lot better than any of the other alternatives (it almost feels like a real instrument, with a proper weight distribution), and the different widgets are a lot more convenient to get to, but it seems that in fixing the problems earlier guitars had, the designers went overboard. Now it's easy to reach from the green fret button to the orange fret button with one hand, but that's because the buttons are now adjacent. They click much deeper than before and it doesn't take a lot of pressure to do that, and the result of all that is that you're going to hit a lot of buttons you don't mean to. Most of the people I know that have the game are still using the Guitar Hero 3 controller, if that's any indication of how awkward it can feel.

The drums....well, let's put it this way. Either you're a drummer or you aren't. The easiest drum parts are as hard as most normal guitar parts, and I can easily believe there are large numbers of people that just plain won't be able to do it very well and no amount of practice will help. That's bad. The drum charts that they force you to play also don't do much to help you learn how to, for example, keep one time with each hand and another with one foot. The foot pedal has to be pushed pretty deep and it gave me leg cramps after a while. The set itself is also loud as a donkey bleeding to death in a metal barn, which might be an issue for parents.

The microphone works pretty well. That's good. Alternative microphones, however (like, for instance, a 360 headset) do not. I am convinced that this is because things like screaming and loud talking are best filtered out of in-game conversation (what the headset is built for), but are necessary parts of rock music. Long story short, if you intend to play and sing, you're going to end up buying a microphone stand. I personally object to the difficulty of the vocal tracks, and the microphone (any of them) seem to do a remarkably terrible job of picking up high-to-low tone transitions. You're probably going to be a little frustrated trying to nail five stars in normal on some songs if you're not a pretty good singer, which is bad.

The multiplayer, I'm led to understand, is enjoyable, and I could definitely see that. The multiplayer campaign is wonderful. And should be the single player campaign. And isn't. And this bothers me. The development team didn't get the online cooperative elements finished by release, with the result being that you cannot play the cooperative campaign online. If you don't have friends you can bring over, or can sing well enough to play and sing at the same time, you'll never know how much fun it is. I'm an old person. My friends are married with children. I cannot bring them over to my house to play pretend guitar with me. This is unacceptable.

On the whole, I wish I could recommend this package, but I just can't do it. You're better off spending the money to get Guitar Hero 3 (inferior game, but superior value in this case) and just the game itself and playing the guitar parts. In six months, and particularly if prices come down, it might be a good idea, and the downloadable content support for the title is amazing so far (cheaper than Guitar Hero 3 and better songs besides), but for the holiday season, I have to warn undecideds to stay away.

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Labels: Xbox 360