After amassing a pile of plastic toys, I threw in the towel for music games after Rock Band 2. Much in the way that the Call of Duty series has felt stagnant, the Rock Band franchise needed to inject something fresh, innovative even. Well, what Harmonix delivers in Rock Band Blitz is a little of both.
Right from the start, it seems like Harmonix went back to their roots of music genre games with the stylistic similarities to their previous games Frequency and Amplitude, more so on the later. I found myself uncomfortable with the controls at first, using the default setup of triggers/bumpers moving you from track to track with the analog sticks or d-pad/face buttons to hit left or right notes. The options to change the controls saved me by letting me choose a more comfortable button layout. Using the triggers to hit the notes and the analog sticks to move between tracks. The control style is labeled ‘Freakish’, but I find it to be quite normal despite what Harmonix thinks.
After playing all 25 included songs, something still felt off. No matter how hard I tried, it never seemed like I was getting the score I should have got, even with power-ups active for that song. It wasn’t until I picked the pinball power-up that I realized that I was doing this all wrong. The OCD in me wanted to hit all the notes on all the tracks. When I tried focusing on the pinball power-up when activated, I managed to keep the pinball in play for at least 10-15 seconds every time I came across the power-up in the song. My score soared above my greatest expectations.
So, in order to get the best score you have to actively think what power-ups to combine and use on each and every song. That is a lot of strategizing and research to do! Once I got over the fact that it’s all about the power-ups, I started to have a little more fun. It doesn’t hurt to have a ton of songs bought or imported from previous Rock Band games, except Rock Band 3, to hoard a lot of coins as well as to experiment to the best combos. I have yet to find the perfect companion to my wonderful pinball power-up but with a little more time, or someone finding out before me, I will find some friends that will play well with my lovely pinball.
Score Wars is a way to challenge your friends and strangers to a certain song to get bonus blitz points and coins. Only having Facebook linked to the Rock Band Blitz gives you the option to pick just what song you want to challenge people with. Not giving the freedom to do this in-game is a missed opportunity for many to troll people with the horrible songs that you actually paid for, though Harmonix would get that last laugh since you actually bought that horrendous song. We all have one in our Rock Band collection, mine is that Miranda Cosgrove song. Hey! It was free, all right?
Rock Band Blitz has enough here to make me have faith in the franchise again. Finding a way to get me to play all the old songs I have in my library as well as buy new ones all without using those evil plastic space-sucking instruments is an accomplishment in itself. To actually have fun playing a Rock Band game again, that is simply wonderful.