THE GAMEPLAY
Fortunately, the designers have done a fantastic job charting even the less inspiring numbers. If you’re thinking these songs will all be painfully simple thanks to Green Day’s origin as a simple pop-punk band, man, you’re in for a hell of a surprise. Even the simplest numbers (e.g., most of Dookie) have some astonishingly challenging gameplay on guitar at Hard and Expert thanks to some very, very detailed chord charting.
Now, understand: Green Day is not DragonForce. If you come into this looking for long, twiddly solos, you’re going to want to look somewhere else. (Though you might want to check out the exceptionally active and challenging bass lines before you do.) But there are moments where even I — and I love big chords in music games so much — even I was scrambling to keep up with the changes and the timing. But yes, the guitar parts are almost entirely chords, and if that turns you off then you’re not going to be happy with this game. Personally I find them a more interesting challenge than those long, rambling solos, but I know I may be in the minority there.
Some of the challenges are expected: “Brain Stew” (aka “the second half of ‘Jaded / Brain Stew’”) is positively ridiculous on guitar. “Longview” is pretty insane on bass. The longer numbers from American Idiot are rough on any instrument.
But there were some surprises too. I found “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” surprisingly tough on guitar on Expert. And even factoring stamina out of the equation, “Jesus of Suburbia” is a hell of a challenge on drums; I was expecting that five years of steering-wheel practice would allow me to sneak through that one on Expert, but it turned out I could barely make it through on Hard. Tré Cool’s playing may sound straightforward, but he does a lot of heavy kick work that I simply can’t keep up with.
Of course, you can’t please everybody, and I did end up being a little disappointed by some of the tracking. On drums, “Longview” isn’t nearly as fun as I was expecting on Hard (I couldn’t get a quarter of the way through on Expert), thanks to a shifting rhythm on the floor tom — i.e., Green and Blue — that I kept messing up. And “Murder City,” which I was expecting to be palm-muting frenzy, ends up being both somewhat awkward and somewhat boring to play on guitar, on both Hard and Expert.
But when this game gets the charting right, oh man. It hits me right in the sweet spot. Take “Holiday,” which is an absolutely, ridiculously good time on Expert drums, and pretty fine on guitar as well. Or “Horseshoes and Hand Grenades,” which is such a blast on Hard guitar. In fact, let me show you the newest trailer, which includes snippets of gameplay from that tune:
And I was also surprised by how much fun I had singing along to songs I didn’t expect to have fun singing along to: “Are We the Waiting” is a great example of the many moments where you can just belt out a melody and feel like a rock star. There are even purely unexpected segments, like the Middle Eastern-sounding drum intro to “Extraordinary Girl,” which is fully charted and entertaining as hell.
Bottom line: While of course some songs are stronger than others, overall the gameplay here is fun as hell, with the typical Harmonix focus on entertainment and band play over raw, Guitar Hero III-style challenge.
Good review. I, like you, have liked Green Day on and off since I was younger (I’m only 19 now). However, having Dookie playable in it’s entirety was enough to sell me.
I will be picking up my copy from Gamestop tomorrow morning.
Great review! I’ve been on the fence. I liked it on and off, and am currently on “off,” but listening to Dookie again really changed my mind. I think I’ll probably give it a rent and see if I like it, at the least, because harmonies sell me pretty quick.
Great review, I was really on the fence about picking this up but I’m definitely going to get this tomorrow. Should I pick up the Plus version of the game? I haven’t listened to 21st Century Breakdown so I’m curious to see if it’s worth the extra $10 for the code.
“For multi-song challenges, Overdrive and score multipliers carry over from song to song. I’m not sure if this was the case in Beatles, but if it was I didn’t notice.”
Yes, that was the same in Beatles. I recall noticing it and wondering if RB2 also did that (which it doesn’t). Anyway, great review. I’ll also be picking up my copy tomorrow at GameStop. Just out of curiosity, which game do you think you’ll end up enjoying more: Green Day or The Beatles?
Difficulty wise: Green Day
Overall song quality wise: The beatles
Content from entire career: The beatles
On disc full album wise: green day
this game is gonna be as sweet as the beatles
Thanks for the review!
May you tell me if the DLC of RB works within Green Day which is NOT from Green Day? eg Lady Gaga and whatnot?
No DLC from RB2 (Non-Green Day) will not work in this game.
Also if you like drumming you should be buying this game.
Arkk,
Speaking of the 6 tracks they’ve released from 21st Century Breakdown, I personally have enjoyed them. Some are super-easy (21 Guns), but others provide a real challenge.
And if you think you’d like to have everything, the game, the export to Rock Band/Rock Band 2, and the 6 tracks already released as DLC, then the “plus” version is the way to go.
For $10 more, you get $21-$22 worth of content (the export would normally cost $10, and each of the two 3-packs cost $5.50 on the 360 and PS3, and $6.00 on the Wii since there’s no multi-pack song discount available there).
I already grabbed the 6 songs from 21st Century when they came out, so I went with the cheaper option (and actually pre-ordered it from Gamestop and got a free export code).
Nice write-up, Joe. I agree with you regarding the relative pleasure of navigating chording sections versus noodly solos. I much prefer banging through a complex set of chord changes in time with the rest of the band. I’m sure that’s due to being a long-time drummer.
Thanks everyone for the kind words. I was a little concerned at the length, glad to know it wasn’t an issue. To answer a couple questions:
@Arkk, if you haven’t downloaded any of the 21CB songs, I’d go with the Plus version. Those are some of the more entertaining tracks from the album, and the game just doesn’t feel complete to me without them. Sucks that that kind of makes it a $70 game, though.
@Dry Country: On an intellectual level, I think I got more out of the Beatles; I didn’t really know much of their stuff beyond the super-popular songs, and it was really interesting to me to discover more about this legendary band. But in terms of actual entertainment value, Green Day wins for me, hands down. I just find these songs a lot more fun to play.
@Voegelchen, toymachine is correct: other DLC does not work in Green Day. In fact, you can’t even download the 6 21CB DLC songs in the game — you have to do it in one of the other games, or in the standalone RB Store “app” on 360.
I have it preordered, but I Cant pick it up til after work. I am looking forward to it. Great review Joe.
What’s your gamertag?
I got it, and was able to play it for a little over an hour. Finished the Dookie Set on Expert guitar, but the triple strums in between chord changes killed any chance of me scoring more than 3 stars on about 75 percent of them.
Moved on to Milton Keys, and based on the simplicity of the guitars on the first 3 songs, I decided to pull double duty and bust out the microphone. Thats probably the most fun I have had playing GD thus far, being able to sing along. I wish I could do it more often with RB2, but in order for me to pull it off, I really need to know the words by heart. Good thing I’ve been listening to Green Day relentlessly for years!
Had to stop playing in order for my lil one to get to bed and sleep, but I am itchin for the next chance for me to fire it up!
Grant – My GT is Astroburn. When I log in on here at my work computer it has me in as Nate. I need to change that…
When I played the demo, I was surprised by how difficult the drums were — and I’m one of those irritating people who only plays on Expert. I’m always up for a challenge, so I enjoyed replaying “Welcome to Paradise” (or whatever it was) a few times until I could get a decent “5 star” score.
But when it comes down to it, I can’t stand listening to Billie Joe or any other whiny, perpetually adolescent frontman sing. Good Charlotte, Panic at the Disco, Fall Out Boy — the singers from these bands all sound identically terrible.
The drumming may be fast and fun, but the music is such a turn off to the ear that I’m going to have to pass.
Great review, Joe. Thanks
I’ve been ripping through the game on the drums for the last couple of hours. Aside from many of the things I love about it, I must say that I’m extremely disappointed that they have not fixed the lag on the drum fills!
For some reason it seems worse on this game than Beatles or RB2, probably because of the difficulty of Tre’Cool’s rythms.
(I can’t get out of the fills without losing the rythm unless I can completely block it out)
My set up is calibrated perfectly, which makes the fills sound and feel like there’s another drummer joining in and jacking up the song. I used to love the fills when I played RB on my 25″ tube TV and I counld actually improvise within the song.
But the better your home theatre, the worse it plays. I really wish they would do away with the fills now, or give us an option to turn them OFF.
Anyone know where I can give this feedback that it might get through to the makers?