After roaming through the hallways of the Games Convention in Leipzig, I managed to locate EA´s booth, where they were showcasing Rockband. Wait, did I say booth? Actually, it was a bus and it was parked outside the convention building.

As soon as I entered, I spotted a group of gamers singing and trying to synchronize their music as best they could. Pretty soon, I was able to grab one of the guitars to check out what Rockband was all about. First off, I explained to the EA dude that I wasn´t much of a musician and that I never experienced these types of games. He smiled and replied: "That´s not a problem." I was shown a few basic moves and how to keep up with the pace of the song and the beat played by the drummer. In short, we all sucked. At first, it felt utterly weird, having to play an X360 game and trying to play a guitar at the same time. The good news is it didn´t take long to get used to the controls. I was told that all the instruments were designed to appeal to the casual gamer and I found it was rather that the basic controls were simple to master. Of course, performing more complicated tunes and solos takes a bit of practice, but given time and the right band by your side, you should be an expert (and you should look forward to some pretty hilarious moments as well).

The game features a standard choice of instruments for you to try your musical skills on: guitar (which can also be used as a bass guitar), drum set and a mike for all of you who want to practice your vocal skills. When you really want to take part in a serious jam session and have some fun at the same time, playing the drums is a barrel of laughs. That´s the way it was for me anyway. I found myself appreciating the fun factor, while I noticed a lot of people were actually getting into the musical aspect of it, in an attempt to sound like real musicians. Some of them were quite good...

Using the instruments is very intuitive, which can also be said for the interface shown on the main screen. All you have to do is memorize the buttons and just keep watching at that screen, so your strums are well-timed.

The game was running excellently on the X360 and all the people around seemed to enjoy watching it (yep, it´s always kinda cool when you watch other people trying to play a popular song completely out of tune).

We´ve also learned about a few songs that were promised for the final version of the game. Deep Purple - "Highway Star," Faith No More - "Epic," Jet - "Are You Gonna Be My Girl," OK Go! - "Here It Goes Again," Radiohead - "Creep," Nine Inch Nails - "The Hand That Feeds," Smashing Pumpkins - "Cherub Rock," Beastie Boys - "Sabotage," The Clash - "Should I Stay or Should I Go," Rolling Stones - "Gimme Shelter" and more.

Of course, not much has changed since E3, and that seems to be the main theme of much of this show -- recycling, so the release date is officially unchanged, Holiday 2007, though, as some of you may know, the Euro release was pushed back to 2008.

-- Ure 'Vader' Paul

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