Rock Band 4 review: Rekindle your love of plastic instruments

Even if you think you're "all over" Rock Band, this game may prove you wrong.

I still remember the first time I played Rock Band at an impromptu party full of in-the-know press and developers in a cramped suite off to the side of E3 2007. Even after years of playing Karaoke Revolution and Guitar Hero obsessively, the game instantly impressed me with its amazing ability to turn a room of strangers into an instant party unified by the power of rock. Seriously, watch the video linked in the last sentence and tell me the connection between that room of sleep-deprived, slightly drunk, E3-addled partiers is anything but magical.

In the years since, the entire gaming world seems to have overdosed on rhythm games as a genre and is now going cold turkey during the recovery. Series like Rock Band and Guitar Hero were the hottest things in the industry, bringing in billions of dollars right up until the sudden point where they weren't. By the time Rock Band 3 failed to reinvigorate the genre in 2010 with the addition of a keyboard accessory and "Pro mode," it seemed like the whole idea of playing fake instruments in front of a game console was a fad whose time had already come and gone.

Harmonix has had five years to let players and the industry at large get over the hangover from those years of a rhythm gaming binge—five years to figure out how exactly to get players excited about strapping on some plastic instruments again. Rock Band 4 only slightly refines the fake-rocking experience that I first fell in love with over eight years ago now, but it does a good job proving that games based on pretending to be rock gods were more than a passing fad.

You can go your own way

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