My love for Rock Band knows no equal, but that doesn't mean I'm blind to its defects. The more obsessed I become, the more the little (and not so little) things bother me. Nothing I'm about to bitch about can't be fixed or addressed, assuming Harmonix is paying attention. At least the latest patch brought us the superb in-game music store, which does kick much ass, but there are still issues I'd like to see solved before I'm forced to buy Rock Band II.
1. Multiplayer Downloadable Content
I'm one of those nuts who has purchased every single damn song for Rock Band. I even had to move to the larger hard drive because the writing was on the wall for the 20-giger. As much as I love all of the downloadable content, there is one glaring problem that drives me nuts: I seldom find anyone online to play with in a Quickplay multiplayer match.
The folks over at Harmonix have totally dropped the ball on this front and it's unfortunate. In a perfect world, Rock Band would group players based on their DLC purchases so they can actually play these new songs online. As it stands, it's pure blind luck if you stumble upon someone with the same songs, ultimately hurting the value of these purchases.
Well, that didn't take long. Not an hour after posting about the new in-game store coming to Rock Band, Harmonix has finally issued a full list of changes we can expect when the update lands for Xbox 360 and PS3:
Music Store: Rock Band now has a new feature that lets you preview and purchase songs from within the game! Accessible from the main menu, the Music Store lets you view, purchase and sort all available music based on various categories, view album art, listen to song previews, and check out extended information about the song like difficulty for each instrument.
Revised Fan Caps: To allow Easy, Medium, and Hard players to progress further in the Band World Tour, we’ve increased the number of fans that you can earn before hitting the cap. Easy players can now travel across the Atlantic, Medium players have a wider rang eof venues they can play at, and Hard players on the Xbox 360 are now able to unlock the “One Million Fans” achievement.
Destructoid is reporting that Harmonix is poised to update the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of Rock Band this week, with an in-game music store representing the biggest change.
If you're a Rock Band freak like myself, this comes as great news. Navigating the hideous Xbox Live Marketplace feels more like self-inflicted punishment, especially with so many songs now available. Judging from the screenshots, it appears Harmonix have devised an intuitive system that not only displays all downloadable content in an easy to grasp format, but goes the extra step by breaking down songs by instrumental difficulty.
The update is scheduled to appear sometime this week. Destructoid mentions other changes, but offers no further details. I can only hope that one of those changes will be a way to easily play downloadable songs with people on the Internet, because as it stands right now, it's a hit-or-miss affair.
Head on over to Destructoid for more screenshots of the Rock Band update.
