Opposable Thumbs / Gaming & Entertainment

Rock Band Blitz dumbs the rhythm game down to timed thumb twiddling

Harmonix's Rock Band Blitz feels like a step backward for the venerable rhythm …

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When I heard that Harmonix would be showing off a new game at PAX East, I was incredibly excited to see what my favorite rhythm game developer had to offer. When I heard that the game was going to be cross-compatible with the hundreds of Rock Band songs already on my Xbox 360 hard drive, I got even more excited. When I actually got to play Rock Band Blitz on the PAX East show floor, though, that excitement quickly gave way to disappointment and boredom.

Unlike Harmonix's recent rhythm game successes Guitar Hero and Rock Band, the downloadable Blitz doesn't require any sort of unwieldy plastic instrument to play. Instead, you use a standard controller to match the familiar sets of Rock Band notes scrolling down from the top of the screen in parallel, color-coded lines representing the guitar, bass, drum, vocal, and keyboard parts. Once you've maxed out the multiplier on one track, you can shift over to the next one by tapping one of the shoulder buttons. The presentation is a bit reminiscent of Harmonix's earlier PS2 rhythm games, Frequency and Amplitude. The song selection in Blitz is much much wider than those games' limited dance and techno offerings, though.

By transitioning from plastic instrument to controller, Harmonix seems to have dumbed down its carefully constructed note patterns to a ridiculous degree. The complex, intricate five-note tracks in the original Rock Band are here simplified down to a mere two possible notes for each track, one on the left and one on the right. You match these notes in time by simply flicking the corresponding left or right analog stick (or, occasionally, both simultaneously) as the note reaches the target area at the bottom.

The developers have crafted some complicated rhythms within this limited two-note structure, to be sure, and it can be a challenge keeping up with the high-speed strings of alternating notes. After a bit of a warm-up, it's quite easy to simply lose yourself in the gentle back and forth of stick flicking, reaching a blissful, rhythm-fueled zone where you don't really have to consciously think about how you're going to respond to the next set of notes.

Rock Band Blitz Trailer

But by reducing the complexity of the standard Rock Band rhythm tracks, Blitz feels a bit more disconnected from the music that you're supposed to be playing. In Rock Band, following a complicated progression of notes on the guitar or drums was almost like reading sheet music that outlined what the coming notes would actually sound like. In Blitz, the simple binary rhythm acts more like a metronome, simply marking time to the beat of the music without really reflecting the notes themselves.

What's more, the tracks that you're not currently working on play just fine without your direct input. This is a major departure from Frequency and Amplitude, where you had to build each track up from nothingness on your own. In Blitz, on the other hand, it feels like you're just twiddling your thumbs to some pretty background music rather than actively playing that music.

Harmonix has thrown in a few power-ups to mix up the thumb-twiddling gameplay, including one item that destroys a set of notes in front of you and another that sends out a ricocheting pinball that you need to keep in play with some careful track shifting. Players that are obsessed with high scores, too, will find a bit of deeper strategy in deciding precisely when to switch tracks to maximize their ever-increasing multipliers. Still, my first impression of Blitz is that it's a step backward for a company that has been at the top of the rhythm game space for a long time now.

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