31 out of 35(89%)reviewers recommend this product.
Product Reviews
Overall rating
5/ 5
Gameplay
5/ 5
Graphics
5/ 5
Sound
5/ 5
Lasting Appeal
4/ 5
Lilrocker55
fromVancouver WA
This game is perfect for:casual gamers
Not Much to Say But Rock Band On The Go
PostedJune 1, 2012
Personally, I think this is one of the best PSP games there is out there. The graphics are in the style of Rock Band (With some small PSP style graphic changes) The sound is phenomenal for a PSP game (Better with headphones) You never lose the appeal of the game, and the gameplay is solid. DLC is also good with some decent songs like Green Day's Know Your Enemy to a free DLC download of GlaDOUS's song from Portal Still Alive. Only thing it is missing is WLAN multiplayer or online multiplayer.
This game is really good because of its sound (headphones) and graphics. It's a bit easy to "beat" because you can play all the main gigs on medium and "win" that way, which I found underwhelming, but there were still plenty of gigs left, like mystery ones and ones you can only do on hard or expert and the infamous Endless Setlist.
The fun in this game comes from the challenge of trying to complete all the gigs, dressing up your band and tricking them out with crazy instruments. For me, anyways.
Rockband: Unplugged is one of the many games that I discovered through a demo. Even though Sony’s demo selection is slightly limited, I can sample many of the PSP’s great games through their demos. I’ve seen great demos and abysmal demos, but there are a few demos that I have absolutely played the heck out of. These include Medal of Honor: Heroes, God of War: Ghost of Sparta, Dissidia: Final Fantasy, etc. Those were the demos that drew me into the full game like an ad couldn’t; those were the demos that I would keep on my memory stick even if I never got the full game.
Rockband: Unplugged is one of these games. After playing through the demo and discovering that it was very fun and enjoyable, I decided that I needed to get the full game, just to experience a handheld Rockband game (and because of a slight vendetta I had against the demo, due to the fact that it ends two minutes into a song).
The opportunity came when my family planned a road trip up to Northern California, and I knew that Rockband: Unplugged would help to pass the time greatly, so I went to my local Gamestop and bought it.
I can now say that, even without a case or manual, it was the best ten bucks I have ever spent on a game.
Rockband: Unplugged absolutely rocked my PSP from the moment our car left the driveway to the second it pulled in. I was drawn in by its diversity of music, hooked on how easy it was to understand, and amazed by the content it offered an average gamer like me. I was overjoyed to find that I was familiar with many of the 41 songs included on the UMD, and I was even introduced to many new songs through the game. For example, I’m very familiar with Kryptonite by Three Doors Down(I’ve played the song in concert!), but I’ve never heard of Less Talk More Rock by Freezepop, and quickly became hooked on its melody and creative musical lines. One other thing: many developers suggest headphones, due to the PSP’s inferior speakers, but I’m telling you right now, you NEED headphones to properly enjoy this game. As a veteran of this game, I simply wouldn’t play it any other way.
I’m a newcomer to Rockband and Guitar Hero, so I can’t say that I like the game simply because I’m a diehard fan. One thing that I can deduce from its gameplay, however, is that it does not play like any other Rockband or Guitar Hero game, mostly due to the fact that you play all of the instruments that are involved in the song: Bass, Drums, Vocals, and Guitar. It’s truly a daunting system, but don’t have a heart attack, because I’ll explain how it works.
The musical tracks, instead of being just one big track like Guitar Hero, are split into four tracks across the screen; one for each instrument. You use the left and right triggers to cycle between tracks, and the track that you are currently on will appear front-and-center and slightly larger than the rest.
When the music plays, you will start on a single instrument (usually a Guitar solo), and you will be given a set of music called a “phrase”. A phrase is a line of music that you must complete, from beginning to ending, to keep the instrument playing by itself. If you miss a few notes or miss one at the end of the phrase, it extends the time required to complete the phrase. This is judged by the big silver bars that act as sliders, showing the beginning and end of a phrase. Once you complete a phrase, the instrument will play by itself for a little while, and you can move on to other instruments. However, if you are struggling with a single instrument and are unable to complete a phrase, the other instruments will suffer for it, because they will eventually stop playing if you do not play their track. The key to playing effectively is completing phrases on all 4 instruments.
If an instrument fails, you are no longer able to play it, and you will no longer hear it playing. Failing an instrument is detrimental to your song, because the lack of a certain instrument in the music will severely lower the crowd’s “morale”. You will know this by the state of the meter on the top left of the screen, which indicates the overall state of the song. The color and percentage of the meter that is full indicates the overall “health” of the song, which will determine if you succeed or fail on a song. The individual instrument icons indicate the state of each instrument, and influence the overall “health” of the song.
The way the individual notes are controlled works like this: the D pad left, D pad up, triangle button and circle button are the red, yellow, green, and blue notes, respectively. This creates a makeshift pad for you to remember: the top face buttons are the four note buttons. This control schemes is slightly confusing at first, but you’ll quickly get into the groove of it before too long.
What separates Rock Band: Unplugged from any other beat-buster is that the combination of all 4 instruments gives you a whole new way to experience the song: One moment you’re delivering awesome lyrics with the vocals, the next you’re strumming the low tune of the bass, and then you’re pounding out an insane beat on the drums. To finish it all off, the game transports you directly to the guitar for a solo (and it’s not always just guitar solos; trust me!).
The amount of content the game offers may be slightly disappointing for diehard Rockband fans, mostly due to its lack of any kind of multiplayer or online leaderboards, but it does offer quite a bit of content for an average gamer like me. Its main asset is Tour Mode, in which you’ll tour the globe, playing everywhere from Los Angeles to Tokyo. Tour Mode allows you to make a fully customizable band; one that you can totally trick out to your liking. You can customize the name of your band. You can customize your band members; their physical features, their clothes, their attitude, and their instruments. You can hire staff, which gives you a variety of benefits, depending on the staff.
Tour Mode is also the only way to unlock all of the game’s 41 songs, as you have only about 5 or 6 unlocked for Quickplay initially. It’s also a great way to get to know the game and your band. There are also a few other modes, such as Band Survival and Warmup modes, which I’ve dabbled into a little. Warmup mode is one of my favorites, since it lets you play any instrument you want for the whole song, and you only lose if you play horribly on all instruments. It’s fun, but it just doesn’t have the sense of challenge that quickplay does. Overall, there is a good amount of extras, but not enough to keep you hooked to those extras for a long time, bringing down its lasting appeal slightly.
There are a few gripes I have about the game, and these are small ones. The difficulty is very inconsistent. An example of this will be if a beginner were to try a song on Easy, say “This is way too easy!”, move to medium difficulty, and be knocked off their feet by the notes flying at them. The bottom line? Get to know a song very well before moving up in difficulty.
The gameplay of this game gets a 9.2, its sound gets a perfect 10/10, its lasting appeal gets an 8.3, and its graphics get an 8.7. The final verdict? Rockband: Unplugged is the perfect beat-buster, and I don’t mean just for the PSP. I find it more appealing and fun to play than Guitar Hero, and more diverse than a one-instrument part in Rock Band. It’s beat gaming at its best, and only on the PSP! (translation: You really need to get this game!) Thanks for reading my review, I hope it was helpful!
i got this game with my PSP back a few years ago and i really liked this game, it's different from the other rock bands because you don't have to but extremely expensive fake instruments. It is fun but it gets boring after a while.
