Customer Reviews

Rock Revolution

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Okay so, I really really enjoy music games. The first time I played this on an older HDTV it was okay. Not the best game ever, but overall I didn't mind it much.
However when I bought a new TV and thought I would buy the game because I found it for 5 bucks things went downhill. This new TV has a high refresh rate and it caused the game to kind of "skip". I don't really know how to describe it. But I do know that after a few songs I had gotten quite a headache, and was very sick to my stomach.

Another thing to point out is that, unlike Rock Band and the Newer Guitar Hero games, there are no vocals in this game. I only point this out because my friend bought this initially and was really excited to play. She brought it over and said "I'm singing!" and I said "on that?"
"yeah why? Do the vocals suck?"
"There are no vocals"

She said she wouldn't have bought it if she had known. So I thought it is a fair warning.

I mean for a few bucks it's worth a shot if you really really like music games or you just want an easy way to boost your gamer score, but if you have a HDTV with a fast refresh rate it's going to look strange. The straight down view didn't help much either.

Its probably fun if you play the guitar, but dont get this if your a drummer kind of guy like me. The bass pedal comes down as an extra not instead of a line like it rockband. It throws u off so bad.

The best part of this game is the awesome sound tracks. The games different with the notes coming straight down and not coming at you from perspective, like GH. But for the low price, getting to hear and play all these songs is cool. Check out the songs, and if you're a fan, buy this game.

I DON'T THINK THAT THIS GAME IS AS BAD AS EVERYONE SAYS IT IS! I'VE PLAYED IT AND I ENJOY IT JUST AS MUCH AS I DO MY ROCK BAND AND GUITAR HERO GAMES! THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS THAT YOU CAN'T SING! AND THE WAY THE NOTES COME DOWN THAT YOU HAVE TO HIT IS VERY SIMILAR TO THAT OF THE POP STAR GUITAR FOR THE PS2 AND THE WII! IT'S THE SAME SET UP, STYLE, AND FORM OF GAME PLAY. AND I LIKE THAT AS WELL! THIS GAME HAS GOTTEN ALOT OF BAD REVIEWS BUT I CHOOSE TO GIVE IT A GOOD ONE! SOO...WITH THAT BEING SAID...ROCK ON WITH ROCK REVOLUTION!

When I read who some of the contributing artists were for this game and how much it was, I figured I would purchase it, I didn't have much to lose. You have great artists such as Breaking Benjamin and Korn that contributed songs to it. The three problems I had with it (I sold it to the second hand video game store after a couple weeks) were the songs did not sound anything like the original artists version. Second, the gameplay was way too easy and had very little challenge. And finally, the game itself was actually a bit boring. There were very few awards to get. As far as I could tell, the only point of the game to play a career mode to unlock more songs and just play them at your own convenience. I didn't play for a a while and then gave up on the game and sold it to a second hand video game store. So I would not recommend this game to anyone who is looking for a good challenge and challenging song to play along to. But it is a good game for a beginner who really has no idea what they are doing yet.

This type of game is fun in general. The graphics are good and the songs are good. However, the 2D freat-board (rather than 3D like Rock Band and Guitar Hero) is hard to look at and hurts your eyes after a while. Song covers I'd rank 4 out of 5.

There is quite a bit to say about this game, but for those who seek a quick answer, this is not the right game to pick up if you are looking for a long-lasting, satisfying rhythm gaming experience. I would immediately recommend the Rock Band series for that.

Let me begin with the good aspects and what this game offers. You get a hair above 40 songs for the total setlist, and every one of them is a cover, except for, I believe, two tracks which are master tracks. One of the most discouraging aspects was the lack of quality of these covers; luckily, I did not find most of them to be irritating, although I would agree some of them did have some poor vocal work, but not detrimental enough to discourage me from playing a song I would want to play. There is no vocal instrument to play with, just guitar, bass, and drums. There is a sound studio where you can use tools to build your own songs, a quickplay mode to just pick a song and jam, or the career where you have to clear groups of songs and challenges to advance, until you have cleared the entire career. About the best thing this game has to offer is those unique challenges that give this game an arcade-like feel to it. You have playing back a riff without a mistake, memorizing a riff and playing it back with minimal mistakes, the poison note challenge, and one or two others. There are few of them, about two of each throughout the career, but they were mildly interesting to do nonetheless.

Fortunately this game is extremely inexpensive due to its incredibly negative reviews abroad, so for the rhythm game collector and/or fanatic, it's worth picking up to see what it has. Despite having nearly 100% cover tracks, the songs that were chosen are overall entertaining and fun. Most covers are reasonable covers with some disappointing tracks here and there.

As for the bad, I'll try to sum this up quickly as there is not much with which to elaborate. There is no lefty-flip function for the drums, only for guitar. The bass charts have no hammer-on/pull-off notes. I only played two or three songs on bass but I will assume every song has only strum notes. (The Rush song, Spirit of Radio, had quick sweeps which would be intuitive to chart as non-strum notes yet they were not.) There are two small DLC releases and Konami has dropped support entirely for this game; there is no more DLC available. Due to the lack of quality and popularity, it is virtually impossible to play a random player online, unless you invite a friend who wants to play.

Anyone who wants to dive into Konami's wonderful past of rhythm games, look into the Bemani series games that are all in Japan. Beatmania, Drumfreaks, Guitarfreaks, and all related releases as each has plenty to look into. Sadly the only way to truly experience them is to resort to importing the games/peripherals which will not be further discussed in this review. I suppose they did not think such games would be successful in America and now that Harmonix and Activision have their long-running series in competition, Konami probably does not have an opportunity anymore to bring their games here.

In the end it is a shame Konami did not bring their existing series to the states; all we got was DDR. Rock Revolution, while having some amusing potential, feels like a poorly made game and was quickly abandoned. The other shortcomings I had come to discover about it only further hurt any chance it had at gaining any good reputation back. As previously stated, as an enthusiast and/or collector, be glad this game sells for incredibly low prices these days, as it truly is not worth much in terms of quality. Rock Revolution is completely inferior to both Rock Band and Guitar Hero series games and is, for the most part, wholly unacceptable to be considered a competitor to those two.

I would give this the benefit of the doubt and say a level 5/10 simply because the song selection was decent and because its present-day price matches its intrinsic value.

Let me just start off by saying that I am a huge fan of music games. I own all the Guitar Hero's and the two Rock Bands so some comparing in the review is inevitable. Also my review will be limited as I have only played the guitar charts for this game and not the drum parts.

Rock Revolution has 4 difficulty levels: Beginner, Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert. In playing this game I started off on Medium as I often do to "warm up" and get myself into the groove. Now players of GH or RB already know that the Medium level introduces playing two chords at the same time. Rock Revolution doesn't just introduce the chords..that's almost all you play. The notes come incredibly fast and the note chart is so aggravating that it ends up not being fun to play. The Hard and Expert levels are even worse.

The song selection isn't bad albeit they are all covers, but I bought the game already knowing this.

What I did like about Rock Revolution is that they introduce new modes of game play. I especially like the Poison Note mode. In Poison Note mode you play normally but there are :poison notes" scattered along the note chart and the idea is to NOT strum on the poison notes.

They also have Crank It Up mode. Crank it up mode is you start pick a difficulty level of either Medium, Hard or Expert and you gradually work your way up to that given level. For instance the note charts will start on beginner, then will crank up to easy, then finally will crank up to medium. This might be useful in warming up and practicing to play songs on Hard on Expert.

Another mode of play is the In the Zone Challenge: play normally but the higher your multiplier is the faster the notes come (also a fun mode).

Band Practice Challenge and Studio Recording Challenge are memory games.. where you hear/see some notes play and you have to duplicate it from memory without seeing the note chart.

These modes are different, fun and offer a different way to play other than the GH or RB titles...however its still not enough to make this game a favorite on my list.

Worth the $50? no..wait until the price drops or at least rent it. I bought it as something to play just to hold me over while I waited for GH World Tour to release (and get some extra achievements).

First off, this is like GH little brother, not refined, all the songs are covers and the load times take forever. I have not figured out how to get a full screen image of the song while playing, it tucks you away in a corner similiar to Rock Band when you are playing with 4 people, even though you are playing alone...maybe to "show off" their stage graphics or something. The Hammer-ons and Pull-offs seem difficult to time and not forgiving at all, though the regular notes to offer some forgiveness. The recording mode seems to have something missing, I hope this feature on GH is a lot better. Tried to take it online and it took about 10 minutes to find a single match. A game like this you need a lot of people to buy it for online to work, and thus far that does not seem to be the case. In summation, the online achievements may be difficult to get because of lack of people playing, and I would guess that in about a month you could get this game for about $30.00, so maybe just wait.

This isnt the norm, but I'm a minimalist and dont want a bunch of fake plastic instruments laying around; but I like the music game genre. Played through GH2, GH3, and GH Aerosmith using the standard xbox 360 controller. Sadly, neither RB1 or RB2 will work without instruments (only vocals). Rock Revolution will work a standard controller as guitar or drums. For guitars, the controls are different than the GH scheme (triggers and bumpers). Instead, you have to press one of the colored face buttons and then 'strum' with the D-pad. Its ok, but I prefer the GH scheme. For drums, you hit a colored face button to 'hit' the drum pad, and the left bumper for the kick pad. The GH scheme of triggers and bumpers would have worked better here too, since strumming isnt involved. So i'm glad that Rock Revolution at least works with the standard xbox 360 controllers, I just wish it used a different button scheme. There wasnt an option to change the button scheme. Now i'm hoping that GH World Tour continues to support standard controllers using their legacy button scheme.