PlayStation 3
Rock Revolution
| Graphics: Sound: Gameplay: Overall: |
8.00 9.00 9.33 8.67 |
| Votes: | 3 |
| Reviews: | 1 |
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| Reviewer: RedBerylFTW | Date: Oct 1, 2023 |
| You've stumbled upon what is probably the biggest victim of uninformed U.S. critics. Originally released in 2008, Rock Revolution is a game that you play with a guitar peripheral controller or drum kit. You need not worry about which one to use, since essentially every guitar and drum kit of the GH/RB series' are compatible.
Graphics: 7 Visually this game is similar to other guitar games. You have a highway, notes to play that scroll over that highway, and a stage venue with a crowd to make you feel like you're putting on a performance. The highway itself is often compared to Guitar Hero and Rock Band for the 5 button down-scrolling layout. In reality, it's just a more complex version of the Guitar Freaks highway made to be compatible with Harmonix/Red Octane guitars. It's worth noting that Guitar Freaks directly inspired Guitar Hero. So much so that Konami won a lawsuit against Red Octane for violating their patents on instrument-based games. The common criticism that this game is a "clone of Guitar Hero" is uninformed at best. That being said, Konami did take enough inspiration from Guitar Hero and Rock Band to warrant a lawsuit from Harmonix for violating some of their patents. They finished that beef with an undisclosed settlement. I don't know what exactly was violated, but if I had to guess I would say it's the round note design and the direction of the scrolling highway. Sound: 8 The setlist for this game is a heavily American-centric Rock/Metal/Country mix. The majority of tracks are covers. The covers aren't necessarily great quality, but they aren't bad either and they give this game a sense of personality beyond being just a chart runner. It's actually very nice to hear new takes on songs that I enjoy like Paralyzer and Pull Me Under. There's a high level of charm to having covers instead of studio masters. Gameplay: 9 If you've played one, you've played 'em all. You hold fret buttons and strum those frets as notes pass along the hit window. There are double and triple notes, clean gallops, long tremolos, held notes, and most importantly; Hammer-ons and Pull-offs. The hit window itself is clean and reminiscent of Guitar Hero 2. It's not so loose that you can hit notes with a 60ms reaction time, but not so tight that it's bad like GH1. To go along with the super clean gameplay is a set of very well-made charts. They aren't perfect, as some of them are either undercharted (lacking in notes) or overcharted (too many notes where they shouldn't be) but none of them are so difficult as to be uncomfortable. It's more like playing through a casual Rock Band setlist than it is powering through a wall of notes. Overall: 8 It's not nearly as good as Guitar Hero 2, Rock Band 2 or Guitar Freaks V2. But it's still so good that I have to recommend it to anybody who enjoys guitar games. Don't let the eschewed reputation put you off from having a good time. Despite having been labeled a Guitar Hero clone early on, Rock Revolution is actually just an American entry in the Gitadora/Guitar Freaks/Drum Mania series. It's impossible to be mad at Konami for using their own gameplay and ideas, no matter how much inspiration they took from the success of GH/RB. But we here in the U.S. didn't ever get Guitar Freaks, so there's no way our critics would have known better. There's no way our public would have known better. There was really no way for this game to have a good reputation because we didn't have the pretext for its existence. Now that we have access to that kind of information, it's much easier to appreciate this game for what it is rather than what it looks like. It's kind of funny; Rock Revolution was once seen as a generic clone of a better series when in actuality it's the only game of its kind. No other games have the visuals or style of this one. |
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