Developer(s): Harmonix, Demiurge Studios
Publisher(s): MTV Games
Distributor(s): EA Distribution
Series: Rock Band
Platform(s): Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii
Release date(s): June 8, 2010 (NA)
June 11, 2010 (UK)
Genre(s): Rhythm game
Mode(s): Single-player, multiplayer
Rating(s): ESRB: T
Media: Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Wii Optical Disc
Input methods: Guitar controller, drum controller, USB microphone, gamepad.
Green Day: Rock Band is a music video game developed by Harmonix Music Systems, published by MTV Games and distributed by Electronic Arts. It is the fifth major console release in the Rock Band music video game series and, like other games in the series, it allows players to simulate the playing of rock music by using controllers shaped like musical instruments.
The game's soundtrack consists of songs by the popular punk rock group Green Day. Green Day: Rock Band features virtual depictions of the three band members performing the songs in new venues designed for the game. The game incorporates existing Green Day songs already released for the Rock Band series as downloadable content, and allows players to export its full tracklist to the other Rock Band game titles except The Beatles: Rock Band.
The game's soundtrack consists of songs by the popular punk rock group Green Day. Green Day: Rock Band features virtual depictions of the three band members performing the songs in new venues designed for the game. The game incorporates existing Green Day songs already released for the Rock Band series as downloadable content, and allows players to export its full tracklist to the other Rock Band game titles except The Beatles: Rock Band.
A free playable demo for the game was made available on May 25, 2010 for the Xbox Live Marketplace and on May 27, 2010 for the PlayStation Network. The demo features full, playable versions of two songs from the game, "Welcome to Paradise" and "Boulevard of Broken Dreams".
Gameplay
Green Day: Rock Band features gameplay similar to other games in the Rock Band series, played by avatars of the Green Day band members at recreations of venues from their concert tours.
See also: Gameplay in Rock Band series
Green Day: Rock Band allows players to perform simulated rock music by providing up to four players with the ability to play three different controllers modeled after music instruments (a guitar controller for lead guitar and bass guitar gameplay, a drum controller and a microphone for vocals). Players simulate the performance of rock music by using their controllers to play scrolling on-screen notes. For lead and bass guitar, this is accomplished by holding down colored buttons mimicking guitar frets and pushing the controller's strum bar; for drums, this requires striking the matching colored drumhead, or stepping on the pedal to simulate playing bass drum notes. When singing vocals, the player must sing in relative pitch to the original vocals. A pitch indicator displays the singer's accuracy relative to the original pitch. The game will support harmonies as introduced in The Beatles: Rock Band, allowing multiple singers to perform the vocal portion. Harmonies will be added to the six songs already available as downloadable content for the game when played in Green Day: Rock Band.
As in previous Rock Band games, successfully hitting the proper notes in sequence earns points for each player and boosts their "performance meter". If a player fails to match the notes, their performance meter drops. If the meter empties, that player is forced to drop out of play, temporarily silencing that instrument and causing the band's overall performance to drop. Any player to drop out can be "saved" if another player activates "Overdrive", which is collected by successfully completing specially-marked phrases, and for guitar and bass players, using the controller's whammy bar to alter the pitch of marked sustained notes. Overdrive can also be used to temporarily increase the amount of points the band earns. Activating Overdrive is specific to each "instrument". For guitar, the controller must be temporarily shifted to an upright position; for drums, a specific drumhead must be hit at the end of a drum fill when prompted; and for vocals, a noise must be registered by the microphone when prompted. The game will not feature any "Big Rock Endings", which allowed players to improvise at the end of a song for additional scoring as in the other Rock Band games, nor will including any clapping or tambourine sections for the vocalist player, due to lack of places in Green Day's songs to include these features.
Immediately before playing a song, players must choose their difficulty level (ranging from "Easy" to "Expert"). A "No Fail" mode has been carried over from Rock Band 2 and is accessible from the difficulty selection screen rather than from the game's main menu. This mode allows players to complete songs regardless of their performance. In addition, No Fail mode is automatically enabled for any player who chooses the "Easy" difficulty. Players are also able to identify their handedness for guitar, bass, or drums before the start of or during a song via the game's "pause" menu. Upon completing a song, the players are given a star rating, from 1 to 5 stars, or 5 gold stars for very high scores if all band members are playing on Expert.
Green Day: Rock Band features a Career mode similar to The Beatles: Rock Band, however, it allows the player to immediately select any of the available songs and records to play from the start instead of stepping through specific sets. The Career mode has a "meta-game" through various challenges that subsequently unlock additional rewards (photographs or videos contained on disc), such as by completing every song in a specific set with a 4-star rating or better. In addition, some challenges require the players' band to earn enough "cred" to unlock them; these additional challenges three or four song challenges built around certain themes. A Quickplay mode allows players to select one of more of the songs available to the game to play outside of Career Mode.
A drum trainer mode will be available to help players become accustomed to the instrument controller. The trainer will include a set of stock rhythms that are generic for most songs, and a set of "Tre's Greatest Hits" with drum patterns and solos taken from Tre Cool's performances, including one "ferocious" solo that runs across two different lessons.
Music selection
The game is the first Harmonix game to feature a full album in the game as shipped, with the entirety of American Idiot, Dookie, and 21st Century Breakdown being playable. The inclusion of the full album of American Idiot was the centerpiece of the game's development, according to Harmonix' Chris Foster, due in part to the nature of the album which is meant to be listened as a whole, as well as the album's success and forthcoming Broadway musical. This led the team to also including 21st Century Breakdown, an album similar to American Idiot that is meant to be heard as one complete work; as Harmonix had already released six songs from the album as downloadable content, they did not want to make those that had purchased the songs have to pay for them again in the full game, and instead designed the game to immediately incorporate those songs into the game if the player had already purchased them. Once these two albums were selected, Harmonix' CEO Alex Rigopulos determined that they needed to include the full Dookie album, the major label debut of the band and one of the most requested albums by Rock Band fans, in order to complete the experience. Though Harmonix had considered including material from the earliest Green Day albums, 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours and Kerplunk, but master multi-track recordings required by the Rock Band game engine to provide proper feedback when playing were not readily available,. According to Cool, while the master tapes for Kerplunk exist, they are in poor shape and the process to digitize them would destroy the tape; as such, Cool stated "We’re making sure we have the right dudes to do it" as potential future downloadable content for the game. Harmonix opted against using live versions of songs on these albums, feeling that the game needed to stay with the studio versions of the songs. Once Harmonix had selected to focus on the three albums, they decided against including any additional non-Green Day songs, instead focusing on rounding out the group's history to present a complete Green Day experience.
Green Day: Rock Band features songs with up to three parts of harmony, featuring the same functionality as The Beatles: Rock Band. Harmonix noted that many of Green Day's songs are actually two part harmonies traded off with other lines, such as in "Rock and Roll Girlfriend"; only one song in the game, "Homecoming", features a three-part harmony. They authored the vocals on most of the songs to have the third vocalist (if present) singing the trade-off lines alongside the two-part harmony singers. There is very little censoring of the lyrics; according to the project lead Chris Foster, only about four to five words across the entire game are muted. Harmonix considered their standards for inclusion of songs to be similar to downloadable content, allowing for mature references to drugs and sex. Harmonix left intact certain pairings of songs that "blended" together due to how they were released on media, such as "Brain Stew/Jaded" and some songs on the American Idiot album. They opted to leave the pairing of "Chump" and "Longview" as separate songs due to how "Longview" was eventually released as its own single.
Green Day: Rock Band features gameplay similar to other games in the Rock Band series, played by avatars of the Green Day band members at recreations of venues from their concert tours.
See also: Gameplay in Rock Band series
Green Day: Rock Band allows players to perform simulated rock music by providing up to four players with the ability to play three different controllers modeled after music instruments (a guitar controller for lead guitar and bass guitar gameplay, a drum controller and a microphone for vocals). Players simulate the performance of rock music by using their controllers to play scrolling on-screen notes. For lead and bass guitar, this is accomplished by holding down colored buttons mimicking guitar frets and pushing the controller's strum bar; for drums, this requires striking the matching colored drumhead, or stepping on the pedal to simulate playing bass drum notes. When singing vocals, the player must sing in relative pitch to the original vocals. A pitch indicator displays the singer's accuracy relative to the original pitch. The game will support harmonies as introduced in The Beatles: Rock Band, allowing multiple singers to perform the vocal portion. Harmonies will be added to the six songs already available as downloadable content for the game when played in Green Day: Rock Band.
As in previous Rock Band games, successfully hitting the proper notes in sequence earns points for each player and boosts their "performance meter". If a player fails to match the notes, their performance meter drops. If the meter empties, that player is forced to drop out of play, temporarily silencing that instrument and causing the band's overall performance to drop. Any player to drop out can be "saved" if another player activates "Overdrive", which is collected by successfully completing specially-marked phrases, and for guitar and bass players, using the controller's whammy bar to alter the pitch of marked sustained notes. Overdrive can also be used to temporarily increase the amount of points the band earns. Activating Overdrive is specific to each "instrument". For guitar, the controller must be temporarily shifted to an upright position; for drums, a specific drumhead must be hit at the end of a drum fill when prompted; and for vocals, a noise must be registered by the microphone when prompted. The game will not feature any "Big Rock Endings", which allowed players to improvise at the end of a song for additional scoring as in the other Rock Band games, nor will including any clapping or tambourine sections for the vocalist player, due to lack of places in Green Day's songs to include these features.
Immediately before playing a song, players must choose their difficulty level (ranging from "Easy" to "Expert"). A "No Fail" mode has been carried over from Rock Band 2 and is accessible from the difficulty selection screen rather than from the game's main menu. This mode allows players to complete songs regardless of their performance. In addition, No Fail mode is automatically enabled for any player who chooses the "Easy" difficulty. Players are also able to identify their handedness for guitar, bass, or drums before the start of or during a song via the game's "pause" menu. Upon completing a song, the players are given a star rating, from 1 to 5 stars, or 5 gold stars for very high scores if all band members are playing on Expert.
Green Day: Rock Band features a Career mode similar to The Beatles: Rock Band, however, it allows the player to immediately select any of the available songs and records to play from the start instead of stepping through specific sets. The Career mode has a "meta-game" through various challenges that subsequently unlock additional rewards (photographs or videos contained on disc), such as by completing every song in a specific set with a 4-star rating or better. In addition, some challenges require the players' band to earn enough "cred" to unlock them; these additional challenges three or four song challenges built around certain themes. A Quickplay mode allows players to select one of more of the songs available to the game to play outside of Career Mode.
A drum trainer mode will be available to help players become accustomed to the instrument controller. The trainer will include a set of stock rhythms that are generic for most songs, and a set of "Tre's Greatest Hits" with drum patterns and solos taken from Tre Cool's performances, including one "ferocious" solo that runs across two different lessons.
Music selection
The game is the first Harmonix game to feature a full album in the game as shipped, with the entirety of American Idiot, Dookie, and 21st Century Breakdown being playable. The inclusion of the full album of American Idiot was the centerpiece of the game's development, according to Harmonix' Chris Foster, due in part to the nature of the album which is meant to be listened as a whole, as well as the album's success and forthcoming Broadway musical. This led the team to also including 21st Century Breakdown, an album similar to American Idiot that is meant to be heard as one complete work; as Harmonix had already released six songs from the album as downloadable content, they did not want to make those that had purchased the songs have to pay for them again in the full game, and instead designed the game to immediately incorporate those songs into the game if the player had already purchased them. Once these two albums were selected, Harmonix' CEO Alex Rigopulos determined that they needed to include the full Dookie album, the major label debut of the band and one of the most requested albums by Rock Band fans, in order to complete the experience. Though Harmonix had considered including material from the earliest Green Day albums, 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours and Kerplunk, but master multi-track recordings required by the Rock Band game engine to provide proper feedback when playing were not readily available,. According to Cool, while the master tapes for Kerplunk exist, they are in poor shape and the process to digitize them would destroy the tape; as such, Cool stated "We’re making sure we have the right dudes to do it" as potential future downloadable content for the game. Harmonix opted against using live versions of songs on these albums, feeling that the game needed to stay with the studio versions of the songs. Once Harmonix had selected to focus on the three albums, they decided against including any additional non-Green Day songs, instead focusing on rounding out the group's history to present a complete Green Day experience.
Green Day: Rock Band features songs with up to three parts of harmony, featuring the same functionality as The Beatles: Rock Band. Harmonix noted that many of Green Day's songs are actually two part harmonies traded off with other lines, such as in "Rock and Roll Girlfriend"; only one song in the game, "Homecoming", features a three-part harmony. They authored the vocals on most of the songs to have the third vocalist (if present) singing the trade-off lines alongside the two-part harmony singers. There is very little censoring of the lyrics; according to the project lead Chris Foster, only about four to five words across the entire game are muted. Harmonix considered their standards for inclusion of songs to be similar to downloadable content, allowing for mature references to drugs and sex. Harmonix left intact certain pairings of songs that "blended" together due to how they were released on media, such as "Brain Stew/Jaded" and some songs on the American Idiot album. They opted to leave the pairing of "Chump" and "Longview" as separate songs due to how "Longview" was eventually released as its own single.
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