
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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