After taking a couple years off to market spin-offs and expand the DLC network, Harmonix is returning to Rock Band with the third act in their core series of MMO games. Wait, wha–? MMO? Minimally Multiplayer Online game? Mastering Multiple Octaves? Murdering Music (by singing) Offkey? Okay, I tried. But, as with the last iteration, Rock Band 3 still features online (and offline) play with your best friends, whether they exist in the virtual world or meatspace.
However, the “Big New Thing” for RB3 is the introduction of a brand new instrument — the Keyboard. And not just another plastic toy to clutter up your living room, but a quality, 25-key set of ivories that can also be plugged into a computer and used as an actual MIDI instrument. But, as Ron Popeil would say, there’s more! The emphasis in Rock Band 3 seems to be on realism, providing yet another step for players to transition into using real instruments. That means that the Drums will be getting an upgrade (three new cymbals in addition to the four current pads), and several new versions of Guitar will be available, as well — a Squier Statocaster with real strings that senses where your fingers are, and the Fender Mustang Pro from Madcatz that keeps the good, old button motif, but adds a whole bunch more of them to accurately reflect different hand positions for chords and bars. And those three-part harmonies from Beatles: Rock Band? Still in, meaning you could have up to seven people play simultaneously for certain songs.
There are more details on all the new rockage after the jump, but I implore you to check out the video that accompanied the official reveal at USA Today Game Hunters, which features liberal footage of the Keyboard peripheral:
The full article contains a surprising number of things that I thought, for sure, would be saved for next week’s Electronic Entertainment Expo. Undoubtedly, it’ll have a huge presence at the event, being highlighted in major platform keynotes from Microsoft and Sony, but it still seems weird to let the cat out of the bag this early. Regardless, here’s what we know:
- New 25-Key Keyboard peripheral
- Three cymbals added to Drums
- At least two new guitars designed to help players transition to real ones (probably at a premium price)
- Three-part microphone harmonies remain
- Rock Band Pro: New mode that replaces the colored bars with more realistic notation
- Solo Keyboard play can utilize the full instrument (it is condensed during multiplayer)
- Career Mode still features “build-a-band” motif, but progresses along hundreds of achievements instead of a linear song path
- Road Challenges are similar to the old World Tour mode, but can be completed in a night as opposed to a week or more
- Revamped song-filtering to balance out the 2000+ (and soon to be hundreds more) songs currently available through the Rock Band Network
- Full jump-in, jump-out gameplay — other players can join in or leave voluntarily in the middle of a song; instruments and difficulty can be changed on the fly without pausing (though I imagine juggling such a feat could still pose problems for perfect play)
- 83 new songs, including The Doors’ “Break On Through,” and Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
Now pardon me while I slide this copy of A Night at the Opera into my Shelby Mustang’s cassette player, and take a midnight ride to Stan Mikita’s Donut Shop.