Rock Revolution DS review

It's a shame, really. Before there was Guitar Hero and Rock Band, there was Konami's Bemani series of games. You might be familiar with Dance Dance Revolution, but also included in the series were GuitarFreaks and DrumMania, games which were the spiritual precursor to games like the aforementioned Guitar Hero and Rock Band. With the band simulator games taking off, Konami is forced to play catch up with a genre they invented.

Luckily for Konami, the only other fake instrument franchise competing for your hard earned dollar on the Nintendo DS is Guitar Hero. With those odds, Rock Revolution has a fighting chance. After all, Guitar Hero only offers fake guitar whereas Rock Revolution offers fake guitar, fake bass, fake drums and fake singing! (Well, real singing actually, but with all the horrible renditions of Blitzkreig Bop I've heard, it might as well be fake singing...) So can Rock Revolution for the DS compete with it's bastard stepchild?

In a word... "no".

I've always been a strong supporter of the theory that what makes games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band so fun is not so much what's on the screen but what's in your hands. The fake guitar controller and fake drums go a long way to fueling your rock star fantasies. Guitar Hero attempts to duplicate the fake guitar with a peripheral that plugs into the DS's GBA slot. Rock Revolution, however, forgoes the peripheral and chooses to turn you into a rock star with a swipe of the stylus. And really, there's nothing like rocking out with the stylus.

Wait, no. I got mixed up for a second. I meant to say "using the stylus is nothing like rocking out." There. That's better.

While Rock Revolution offers up four different instruments to choose from, it's a shame that none of them are actually fun. Guitar parts are transformed into up and down swipes of the stylus, with the occasional circular motion and tap. Bass is pretty much played the same way except that you have to swipe up or down on one of four strings. I found the drums to be more confusing than anything else with seven potential pads that look too similar for their own good. On the bright side, singing is included in the handheld version which is curiously absent from the console versions of the game. The singing mechanic works well enough, although it's hard to tell if your singing correctly because of the lack of movement from the pitch indicator. But that may just be a failing of the DS's built-in microphone.

I wonder if the makers of Rock Revolution for the DS knew they were making a bad game? The game features it's own version of "Star Power" or "Overdrive" which, I kid you not, gives the player a reprieve from actually playing the game. When the designers build in a feature that stops you from playing the game, that has to be a sign... right?

Even the visuals are childish and garish. The DS isn't really a graphical powerhouse, but it's almost as if the developers went out of their way to make everything as visually unappealing as possible.

On the bright side, the game does use the DS's wireless capability to "get a band together" with up to three other poor unfortunate souls who bought the game. It also features a media player which you can use to play the crappy covers of the 20 song set list. That is, if you don't already have them on your iPod... or if you don't own the original songs... or you can't find a torrent to download the songs illegally.

Rating

Recommendations

Elite Beat Agents - Now this is a music game for the DS done right. It uses the same tap/swipe gameplay that Rock Revolution does, but the game is bursting with personality and is a much more satisfying gaming experience.

Rock Band 2 - You may not actually be playing an instrument, but you'll feel like you are.