Early 2009 prediction for the merging of two franchises as seemingly disparate as the Lego series and Rock Band would have garnered pretty high bookkeeping odds. Scanning daily for apologetic rebuttal but with a depressing lack of April fool’s return, two weeks after the news of Lego Rock Band’s existence broke I geared myself up for a coming holiday release. Though I remained jocularly incredulous, trickling details made Lego Rock Band appear, at least conceptually, a near-perfectly formed music experience. Finally reaching PAL territories with Harmonix’s characteristically trite attention to punctuality, a love of Traveller’s Tales layered collect-’˜em-ups and Rock Band’s previously pitch-perfect rhythm action inspired a day one purchase.

Lego Rock Band is in essence a watered down, re-skinned Rock Band 2. Avatar stalwarts of the Rock Band series are here reduced to inch-high minifigures, scrolling brick highways replace what we have come to accept as notes, and every utterance of ‘œscore’ is replaced with the Lego series familiar ‘œstuds’. Marketed similarly to the somewhat soulless Band Hero, Harmonix’s foray into family-friendly music gaming differs immediately in its Lego caress: a pedigree known for providing a consistently outstanding contribution to cross-generational inclusion. Lego Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones play out like early episodes of The Simpsons: traditionally slapstick humour met with a mature underlying critique. Successfully pitched as being able to entertain children in droves without alienating adults in patronising boredom, the gameplay itself services a demographic so completely, that like Popcap’s puzzle genre monopoly, it seems a lost cause for rival developers to even bother drawing close.

Harmonix’s presence is unmistakeable in the game’s tightly charted tracks, overall presentation, framework sheen and déjà vu inducing career. Traveller’s Tales offer their usual character, a staunchly adhered to policy of family accessibility, and frequent disregard to v-sync lock. It would appear that the unlikely pair have produced a true compound of each team’s respective output. But, external to heaped reputational praise, is the amalgamative title itself any good?

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Unless you’ve got your finger on the pulse of department store news, Gobblepalooza will be nothing more than a really stupid name to you. In reality it’s a three day ‘œfestival’ set up at your local Old Navy store. The focus of the promotion is Rock Band. 700+ stores across the country are filled to the brim with RB stuff. There are various podiums to play The Beatles: Rock Band with your family, RB t-shirts for sale, and store employees decked out in RB gear. More importantly are the deals associated with Gobblepalooza. If you purchase Rock Band 2 in-store, you get a free wireless guitar. Random cards handed out when you walk in the store may contain codes for a free song download. It’s a great idea: what better way to pander to the ever-popular casual gaming market than to set up shop in a place populated by tweens and soccer moms?

Best of all was the Black Friday deal: purchase $20 worth of merchandise, and you got LEGO: Rock Band‘¦for free. Yep, $20 of fleece pullovers and overpriced soap netted you a $50 game for free. As can be expected, supplies of the game were extremely limited. Meaning that if you wanted to get a copy, you had to have gotten to the store way before its Black Friday opening time of 3:00 a.m. Guess where I was Friday morning? Yes, braving the cold wind and insane shoppers who want nothing more in life than $15 jeans. I waited in line to get my copy of LEGO:Rock Band, and it kinda sucked.

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Rarely do I get the pleasure of reading very good game ideas. Most game ideas I come across are either too cliché or too obvious in the message they are trying to push (and they ALWAYS have a message).

Corvus, writing on Man Bytes Blog, has come up with a simple, yet surprisingly deep idea for a game; using the Lego games as the basis for an adaptation of A Clockwork Orange. I would highly recommend having a read of the article, however, as Corvus also points out, due to the contents of the film the description accompanying the game isn’t for those who can’t easily stomach much violence.

Recently, in my own game ideas I’ve been toying with all the entertaining juxtapositions that could be used within games. They provide such a great range of stages, as well as interactivity with real meaning that no other medium can provide.

Before I go off on some great tangent about my game ideas (which are all flawless and brilliant), I’ll stop there. But I highly recommend giving A Lego Orange a read.