Musical Rhythm Games

Musical Rhythm Games are  really popular at our house.

Essentially they are Karaoke games that everyone can play whether they can sing or not. The Guitar and Drums can be tricky, but they level well enough, so even players on the Easy Level can enjoy. When we purchased Guitar Hero 5 in the first month it was available, we became eligible for a free copy of Guitar Hero Van Halen. We also picked up Lego Rock Band and Band Hero.

Guitar Hero 5 and Band Hero are essentially the same game with a different skin/style and different song selections. They are geared specifically for party play. You can hop in and out and change difficulty on the fly, and you can play with any combination of instruments—i.e. if you happen to have four drum sets, you can all play drums, and you can change instruments on the fly as well.

I played We Are the Champions and American Pie last night and it was a blast.

Guitar Hero Van Halen, isn't even out yet. Its release date is about a month from now. I'm not a big Van Halen fan, but If it's free, that's the price for me. I found that I recognized a lot more of the Van Halen Music than I thought I would, and enjoyed most of it. It has one Queen song in it, and I've been a little obsessed with the music of Queen lately—A very talented group. I remembered that in the Movie Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, that they were always trying to come up with a way to get Eddie Van Halen in the Band—now I understand why. There is some truly challenging stuff in this game due to the Amazing things he did with the real instrument. The Game feels like Guitar Hero III, as far a menus and game play, but updated to handle More Varieties of plastic toy instruments. It's challenging, and frankly I'm surprised at how much I've enjoyed playing it.

Now let's talk Lego Rock Band. When rumors of this game started to spread, a lot of people groaned and a lot of people cheered. Count me as one of those that cheered. The thing about Lego games I like are the Humor and the Family Friendly Nature. There is one problem though. The Wii version is Nerfed. The ability to download songs from the Rock Band Store has been completely removed. This feature was limited in the Xbox and Playstation 3 Versions—but it was limited in a way I found useful. Only songs marked as family friendly are available—which is perfect, I don't really need to be adding songs that are not family friendly. This was a feature I was really looking forward to, because there are a lot of songs in the Rock Band store that I would like to get.

The game is fun. Especially the Challenge levels. The animations going on in the background are amusing enough to distract you form your playing at times. So far the tasks we have completed used the Power of Rock! to Demolish a building, Scare Ghosts from a Mansion, and Fight off a Giant Octopus—amusing stuff indeed.