Rock on with Rock Band Blitz - Preview
by Gordon Bryant , posted on 07 June 2012 / 2,510 Views
While the music fad has died down a bit, and Rock Band has faded from a cultural milestone to a more involved (but still immensely fun) karaoke machine, Harmonix has continued to pump out DLC and other new ways to enjoy your music library, and Rock Band Blitz is the latest way to play every single song you've ever played in Rock Band!
If you've ever played Rock Band Unplugged for the PSP, or Harmonix's own Amplitude, you should know generally how Rock Band Blitz plays. Instead of playing with 4 note highways, using two directional buttons and two face buttons, each track uses only two buttons; one on either side of the controller. This manages to emulate the feeling of drumming with your fingers on a counter or slapping on your legs in time with the beat. You can still switch between tracks using the shoulder buttons, and there are a bunch of different options to activate the right and left notes, such as directions, flicking the analogs, and face buttons, but the gameplay is remarkably simple.
The key to enjoying the game is that you can chose a series of power-ups that boost your score, give you a little bit of an advantage, or kindly forgive you for messing up. There are three different categories to apply power-ups, and I admit I didn't have time to scroll through all the options, but they were a lot of fun to play around with once they were applied.
I think the best part about this game is that not only are there 25 tracks that come with the game, but every single piece of Rock Band DLC you've bought to date will be available to play in this game, and every song that comes with Rock Band Blitz is immediately exported to play in Rock Band 3.
Here are the first set of announced songs for the game:
“Kids in the Street” by The All-American Rejects
“One Week” by Barenaked Ladies
“Always” by Blink-182
“Shine” by Collective Soul
“I’m Still Standing” by Elton John
“A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More ‘Touch Me’” by Fall Out Boy
“Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster the People
“Once Bitten Twice Shy” by Great White
“The Wicker Man” by Iron Maiden
“Cult of Personality” by Living Colour
“Raise Your Glass” by P!nk
“Metal Health (Bang Your Head)” by Quiet Riot
“Diamond Eyes (Boom-Lay Boom-Lay Boom)” by Shinedown
“Jessie's Girl” by Rick Springfield
“Shout” by Tears for Fears
Rock Band Blitz will be coming out sometime this summer for XBLA and PSN.
