Rock Band: Unplugged

I really enjoy playing the Rock Band video game series, more so than the Guitar Hero games. So I was really excited about the release of Rock Band: Unplugged for the Sony Play Station Portable. Personally the thought of being able to rock hard day and night even while on the road made me like super excited. I totally went out and bought this game as soon as it came out. First I just looked at it for a really long time in awe and anticipation about the awesome power of this game. After a good hour I finally tried playing the game, and I was a little disappointed.
When playing the game I like how they changed the controls of the video game so that it would work on the PSP. Instead of the usual five notes they brought it down to four. Though I did feel a subtle craving to try to play all five notes on the PSP version of the game, I like challenges a lot. Another cool feature of the video game is how the player can switch between the instruments that they are playing. However it was a letdown that the video game is only a one player game. The success of the Rock Band series was built on how much fun it is to play with your friends. I think they could have found a way to make the video game Wi-Fi compatible. That way a group of friends could play the video game together and people have the option of picking what position in the band they want to play.
Sadly the songs in Rock Band: Unplugged are most of the songs off of the Rock Band 2 video game. But if you have a Play Station Network account you go online with your PSP and down load more songs. When playing the World Tour mode of the game the player would go about in almost the exact same way that they would in any regular rock band game. By using hand eye coordination to play the colored notes when they are on top of the bar at the bottom of the screen. One of the differences in this video game is that the part of the singer is being played the same way as all the other positions in the game. Another thing makes the game play a little different in this game is that since the player has to play the part of all the band members that means you have to cycle through the each band member’s position while playing the song. You have to play what is called a phrase for each of the band mates. A phrase is just a grouping notes that, when played correctly, will make that band mate play by himself for a set period of time. If you mess up on a phrase you they will give you another one to play until you get it right. However there is nothing making you play the phrase at that time you can skip it and come back to that band member later, this will cause that band member to go silent until you play the phrase though. The various solos that are found within some of the songs are really cool. If you mess up on them it keeps going but it does not take anything from your main score, but you will lose whatever multiplier you had accumulated. This aspect of the game is pretty fun, but if you don’t really the time, or you just suck that bad, you can go to the menu and make all the songs available on the game.
The different game modes are really cool to if you are too busy to play the World Tour mode or you just want to practice at the game. They have the option of Quick Play mode, which just let you play a song or you can create a set list. My favorite mode in the video games is the Band Survival mode. You can play as many songs as you want like but you don’t have to play phrases like you would in the World Tour portion of the game. You have to play all the positions in the game but you can play them a little bit more freely. But one must be careful when playing in this mode of the game. It is a lot easier to fail in this mode because all the notes for all of the positions are going non-stop expecting someone to play them. This is the best mode to me though I love making a really long set list and setting the game to Expert to see how long it will take me to fail.
Over all the game was really fun to play. I wish they had made it at least two players. And new songs would have been awesome as well, besides all of that the game is a lot of fun but it is not really anything new. Since I am being forced to grade a video game I would say that this one is entertaining but run of the mill, so 5 out of 10.