My First Rock Band!

LEGO Rock Band. It would be easy to say that if you've played one LEGO or Rock Band game, you've played them all, but that only applies to an extent in this case. This mash-up may look strange on first blush, but makes sense when you think of the social gameplay needed for the best Rock Band sessions. By making the game "kid-friendly" and ,more importantly, taking itself a little less seriously, LEGO Rock Band takes two successful, if somewhat stagnant, franchises and plays off of both series' strengths, but falls into some of the same ruts that both series have created for themselves.

LEGO Rock Band is basically a Rock Band game, with a smaller song library to play through. The Lego part comes in with the graphics, setting, and humor. This combination works pretty well most of the time, although the small song selection leads to some repetition of songs very early in the game. As the music is the core of the game, this makes for a dull experience at times, but new songs are unlocked through a progression of locations and special situations, such as playing as Blur or David Bowie at LEGO locations, like LEGO Speedway or the Stud Farm. Another way of unlocking new songs are through making available "rock power challenges", which remove score boosts, but increase the entertainment value of the video action that takes place behind the scroll of gems, or in this case LEGO bricks. The songs for these challenges are always well matched to the action, whether it is "Ghostbusters" while fighting ghosts at Brickton Manor, or "In Too Deep" while defending a pirate ship from a giant octopus. There are a variety of these challenges, although they all begin to become a little tiresome after a little while. This is actually true of the entire game, partly because many people have already played this game, except with more and more popular songs.

One of the upsides of this game is that, thanks to the LEGO makeover, the band and crowd animations look fluid and appropriate. Since LEGO minifigures are at best rough estimates of the human anatomy, the movements of the performers and crowd are limited but highly polished. The LEGO makeup of the crowd also alleviates concerns about repetition, as the repetition is guaranteed, but instead of pulling you out of the game experience, it actually fits the LEGO universe and helps increase immersion. Another advantage to the LEGO makeover is that it allows the game to have some fun with itself, from the story cut scenes, to the instruments, to the song selections. Unfortunately, the humor only carries the game so far before the gameplay has to pick up the torch, which means that in this case, the music has to be varied, fun to play, and enjoyable to hear multiple times in short order. Almost as if in recognition of the small library, LEGO Rock Band offers a short version of each song, perhaps anticipating how quickly players would tire of the songs available early on in the game.

The song library consists of 45 songs across a variety of genres, which sounds like quite a few, until you start up the game and see you can select from only three or four songs for the first hour or two of gameplay. This, combined with the small library of music, seems to suggest that the game is meant for a much more relaxed play style rather than the intense, focused style of play most other Rock Band/Guitar Hero style of games are subject to. While this isn't to say that this game is worse because of that, it does make the game more difficult to approach with an intense focus. Also, the level of difficulty is a little lower than other games of this type, making this game seem almost like "My First Rock Band". This does make sense in some ways, as the LEGO designation normally means that the game is for the family with younger children, as opposed to college age people, for whom Rock Band seems destined to be marketed to.

In the end, the LEGO license doesn't add much to the Rock Band experience, and unfortunately what it does add is largely negated by the music library being made "kid-friendly". If you're going in looking for an intense, challenging music game, you should probably pass on this one; if you're looking for a way to get your kids into music games, than you could do a lot worse than LEGO Rock Band.

Graphics: 8 out of 10

LEGO graphics can only be done so well or badly, and nice small touches abound in the game.

Sound: 8 out of 10

The music sounds great, but some of the songs start to sound alike, despite the different genres.

Gameplay: 7 out of 10

There's nothing wrong with the gameplay, but the reduction in difficulty is noticeable.

Controls: 10 out of 10

The best thing about the controls is you can use almost any music peripheral to play.

Replayability: 7 out of 10

Replayability will fluctuate depending on if you have a group of friends over and if you like the music.

Overall: 8 out of 10

In the end, the limited music selection hurts for intense, long sessions, but shorter, intermittent sessions are great. Perfect for families that dislike some of the music in Rock Band or Guitar Hero because of content.