Other than the price there’s little to criticise the package on, aside from the Rock Band guitar packaged with the instrument set, which despite looking the part doesn’t provide the same feel of precision as you’d hope for: When playing on difficulties above medium the buttons don’t seem as well defined as those on the Guitar Hero controllers, with moving up and down the fret board often feeling clumsy. All of the keys are so close together it’s easy to lose track of which buttons your fingers are actually on, and the 5 extra buttons at the base of the neck that are supposed to be used for solos also sadly feel like a gimmick more than anything else; when you’re struggling to keep tabs on where your fingers are on the main fret, trying to switch to another different set of buttons mid-track is generally speaking not a good idea.

The main annoyances in the actual game all focus around the lack of flexibility in terms of players switching between instruments: When creating a character they are then permanently fixed to play one instrument. This makes perfect sense in terms of realism, but often means that switching between characters on the different instruments involves logging each gamer profile out of the instruments one by one before logging them all back in again in different places. It’s not a huge issue but it does come across as being needlessly troublesome, as having to spend 10 minutes setting up equipment before playing a gig was frankly an aspect of realism they could have afforded to lose.

Niggles aside, Rock Band is a fantastic package that seems to have tremendous longevity providing you’ve got a few close friends who seem equally interested in devoting time to it. If you’re a hardcore Guitar Hero player then you might find the difficulty a little too pedestrian, but other than that if you have the money and space available then Rock Band really is an amazing game. The forgiving difficulty level mean it’s a better time than ever to try and introduce newcomers to the wonders of rhythm gaming, and the variety of music and instruments means there really is something for almost everyone. It’s too expensive, which loses it valuable kudos, but if you can justify the cost attached to it and have enough friends available to really take advantage of the epic multiplayer, Rock Band is truly exceptional.

The original review can be found on Gaming Verdict here.