Tuesday 23 September 2008

Rock Band

I have a 14 year old stepdaughter (Elspeth) who is into her music. However, as a clueless stepparent I have almost no idea what sort of things she would like for birthdays etc.

So it was a big surprise to me when I hit upon the perfect present, totally by accident, in the window of HMV.

Rock Band is a game for the Wii, PS3 and Xbox. Basically instead of controllers, you have an electric guitar, drum kit and a microphone.

Basically it is Karaoke for a band - you play / sing along to music tracks, while the game shows you which drums to play, when to strum, and what to sing.

Plug the kit into the Wii (in my case) and you make up a band. You can have a second guitar as well, eg one from Guitar Hero.

We gave this to Elspeth the day before her birthday as she was having a bunch of friends over. I can safely say it made the party - they were still playing at 8am the next morning (Sunday).

As games go, even though it is expensive (£125) I can safely say it is the best value game I have ever purchased.

Of course I have not yet bought WiiFit, and that has a huge secondary benefit of improving your fitness. it's true, it actually helps people get fitter, and I have heard several people personally vouching for it. So when I finally find one in a shop and get it, maybe it will be a new best value game...

The days of computer games being just for insular nurdy boys are really over - and if you are a parent looking for an alternative to the usual gaming fare that has your kids locked away, Rock Band is a really good choice.

Power to Nintendo's elbow - they are a company that really deserve a lot of credit!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Rock band was designed for next gen consoles and has nout to do with nintendo other than it's beeen severely downgraded to a pile of crap for the wii.