Rock Band is awesome in a box

The Joneses were staying over a night with us on the way back to Geneva, which provided us with an evening of some fun activities. Normally this would mean it is time to break out some board games, but since it was a work night for Claudia, we decided to do something that was not quite as long a time commitment.

We broke out my recent Ebay purchase. ROCK BAND. This is a game I had been REALLY wanting for ages and ages. It was one of the drivers behind me wanting an Xbox at all. I have to say, it totally lived up to my expectations as far as fun goes.

I just have the first Rock Band game, one guitar, drums and a microphone, so we could not quite get the full band experience going. Maybe one day I'll splash out on a second guitar, but not yet.

I had played a bunch at my sister's place on my last vacation, so I had a bit of a feel for the instruments and how the game worked, and I had played with Claudia once since I bought it. I had to explain the whole thing to Doris and Ryan though. It is not super complicated and they understood the gameplay pretty fast.

What surprised me the most was the willingness to have a go at the singing. I don't enjoy it and did not sing, but all the other little songbirds had a go. I have to say it is a very good thing that the TV volume is higher than the singing volume. As a group... not the most beautiful voices. But i will definately say that Ryan put in the best stage performance as this photo shows.

It is also pretty funny how some people were just instantly better at some of the instruments. Claudia - basically never plays ANY video games of any kind. Picked up the guitar and was scoring 80%+ on the mudium difficulty levels. Drums... disaster. I think she did not get more that 20% through a song on easy

Doris - Also not a gamer, but did quite fine on the drums from the start, getting through songs. Guitar... not so much. She could not seem to master the timing and was pretty bad.

Ryan - Did very well at both Guitar and Drums on easy right away, but for some reason insisted on trying medium drums over and over, which he failed EVERY TIME (Sorry Ryan, but the little animated crowd does not lie.) Despite singing in a way that was making my eyes water, the little computer fans went nuts for him and he scored 95% I would give him huge bonus for his acrobatics as well.

I did make some videos as well, but I think I will save those until I can best figure out how to display them.

Claudia has also summed up the game well. "It is fun, but we really are just a bunch of lame-os sitting on the couch with plastic instruments!" I totally agree.