Give Me Novacaine
Green Day: Rock Band is an... interesting peek back into the comeback kids' discography.
Published: July 2, 2010
Oh, how I am torn over how to properly review this game. On the one hand, I'm a huge fan of Green Day's earlier stuff like Kerplunk, 39/Smooth and Dookie, and admire where they headed as they got older and welcomed their return with the catchy pop-punk opera with American Idiot. With 21st Century Breakdown, though, I'm seeing the slow decay of what they used to be, and it's starting to give my love for the band some cavities.
Terrible dental puns aside, there's a bigger issue at play here: Green Day: Rock Band largely ignores the band's central discography and instead pulls overwhelmingly from their most recent stuff. Coupled with a lack of seriously interesting unlockables that serve as the whole for the band's infotainment bits, this feels more like an extended song pack rather than a chronicling of all the band's work. I'm not sure if this was their idea or the folks at Harmonix that cobbled together the tracks or licensing issues, but it honestly doesn't matter. If you're going to put a band's name on the title, you should at least attempt to chronicle their entire legacy.
There was a bit of selective editing of a band's history in Guitar Hero: Metallica, but at least things were fairly well broken up. Here, you're paying full price for what amounts to one early album (Dookie) and another one more recently (American Idiot). If you want the full Breakdown album, you'll have to shell out for the already-released track pack that completes the album. Nimrod, Warning and Insomniac aren't given nearly as much love as the rest of the albums the band has done, and without a full decade of songs that didn't get radio play, you can't really see the transition from punky beginnings to the belted-out refrains of their more current tracks.
I do have a confession to make, though: I had no idea there was more to the last two albums than a bunch of catchy hooks and some simplistic lyrics that everyone could sing along to. Playing through the later songs on Expert drums was more of a workout than the sheer speed of the earlier tracks and it gave me quite a bit more respect for Tre Cool, who I mirrored while learning drums back in my youth. I didn't get a sense that there's been a huge improvement to the guitars, but then this is a band that has openly and repeatedly said they make power chord-driven songs that are catchy and little more (at least until they moved all political in recent years).
That exposes something that's a little annoying about Green Day: Rock Band, though, in that there are really only three "eras" from which the band is snapshotted -- two of which are just a few years apart. Though all three of the venues are well-modeled (as are the guys' ages/appearances), and I appreciated some of the motion captured crowd animations, it still only serves to highlight how much of a quick cash-in this feels like, even if that's not the case. The actual songs are still as well constructed as ever, but with The Beatles: Rock Band already laying claim to having multi-part harmonies, there's really nothing here that stands out. That means no new gameplay, a pittance in terms of fun facts or background info or history about the band and a feeling of lost progression.
Terrible dental puns aside, there's a bigger issue at play here: Green Day: Rock Band largely ignores the band's central discography and instead pulls overwhelmingly from their most recent stuff. Coupled with a lack of seriously interesting unlockables that serve as the whole for the band's infotainment bits, this feels more like an extended song pack rather than a chronicling of all the band's work. I'm not sure if this was their idea or the folks at Harmonix that cobbled together the tracks or licensing issues, but it honestly doesn't matter. If you're going to put a band's name on the title, you should at least attempt to chronicle their entire legacy.
There was a bit of selective editing of a band's history in Guitar Hero: Metallica, but at least things were fairly well broken up. Here, you're paying full price for what amounts to one early album (Dookie) and another one more recently (American Idiot). If you want the full Breakdown album, you'll have to shell out for the already-released track pack that completes the album. Nimrod, Warning and Insomniac aren't given nearly as much love as the rest of the albums the band has done, and without a full decade of songs that didn't get radio play, you can't really see the transition from punky beginnings to the belted-out refrains of their more current tracks.
I do have a confession to make, though: I had no idea there was more to the last two albums than a bunch of catchy hooks and some simplistic lyrics that everyone could sing along to. Playing through the later songs on Expert drums was more of a workout than the sheer speed of the earlier tracks and it gave me quite a bit more respect for Tre Cool, who I mirrored while learning drums back in my youth. I didn't get a sense that there's been a huge improvement to the guitars, but then this is a band that has openly and repeatedly said they make power chord-driven songs that are catchy and little more (at least until they moved all political in recent years).
That exposes something that's a little annoying about Green Day: Rock Band, though, in that there are really only three "eras" from which the band is snapshotted -- two of which are just a few years apart. Though all three of the venues are well-modeled (as are the guys' ages/appearances), and I appreciated some of the motion captured crowd animations, it still only serves to highlight how much of a quick cash-in this feels like, even if that's not the case. The actual songs are still as well constructed as ever, but with The Beatles: Rock Band already laying claim to having multi-part harmonies, there's really nothing here that stands out. That means no new gameplay, a pittance in terms of fun facts or background info or history about the band and a feeling of lost progression.
