PixlBit

I spent a bit of time with Harmonix to learn about the game.

I spent some time watching at the MTV booth with Harmonix to check out Rock Band 3, and I learned just about everything I could about the latest update to the Rock Band franchise.

To begin with, I'll talk about the keyboard, personally the thing I anticipate most about the game: It's a two octave keyboard with what seems to be an arm sticking to the side. Players can rest the keyboard on a table or hold on to the arm with their left hand in order to play the keyboard with their right hand. That's right, the keyboard seems to be meant to be played with one hand, at least at times. How do I know? Well, like the Guitar, the keyboard has it's own version of the Whammy Bar, with a button and a touch pad, allowing players to alter how sustained keyboard notes are synthesized.

At lower difficulties, the keyboard notes will come one at a time, and players will see few chords. With higher levels, more complicated rhythms and chords appear, as one would expect, in color-coded areas of the note highway. Speaking of the note highway and keyboard, it'd divided into the five segments, just like other instruments, to help guide players and for the simpler, non-"Pro" keyboard mode. Just like with other music games, players will have trouble at first, learning the muscle-memory and spacing, but with time, even through just the song I played, I became more accurate and successful, and that was on the medium difficulty.

As far as song and instrument compatibility goes, one thing is clear: While Rock Band 3 is backwards compatible with the full Rock Band platform, not every Rock Band instrument is. Harmonix reps were quick to let me know that the catalog of DLC would not be forwards compatible with Pro Guitar modes and Keyboard modes, though they might be remastered on a case-by-case basis. In addition, the Harmonix reps made it clear that not every game would be compatible with the keyboard, even from the list in Rock Band 3. The Pro drums mode, the rep informed me, will be entirely forward-compatible, implementing cymbals into older Rock Band songs.

Other new features have been implemented, like the Pro Guitar mode I mentioned before. In this case, the Pro Guitar is entirely separate from former Rock Band Guitars, with seemingly two versions planned to be available, one with strings, the other with buttons. In Pro mode, the six guitar strings appear on the note highway, rather than colored buttons, and the corresponding fret number appears on each note jewel. For those experienced on the guitar, whenever a chord or chordal progression was played in a song, toward the left of the note highway, the correct notation was used, to simplify things for those more experienced.

In addition to the new guitars, a few new gameplay modes were announced, included a free-play mode, a party mode for those who feel competitive and what to see who can complete a task quickest or the best, and the standard career mode, used to unlock costumes and bonus content. While I didn't get to see it, the Rep called the party mode "Road Challenges," and actually described it as similar to Mario Party, his title choice, not mine. In addition, players can now filter setlists, rate songs high or low to increase their appearances on shuffle mode, and even share saved playlists with other players over various.

By the time Rock Band 3 is released, Harmonix let us know there should be 2000 Rock Band songs available for the platform. From what I've seen and experienced today, it's something I'll be looking forward to playing at home. Some of us will be returning to the Harmonix booth tomorrow, so if there's any questions, let us know!