Do you have what it takes to get a review published right here on Kotaku? Grant does, as he walks the boulevard of broken dreams.
Yes, that’s right, we’re now publishing reader reviews here on Kotaku. This is your chance to deliver sensible game purchasing advice to the rest of the Kotaku community.
And thanks to the very kind chaps at Madman Entertainment, purveyor of all kinds of cool, indie and esoteric film, the best reader review we publish each month will win a prize pack containing ten of the latest Madman DVD releases.
This review was submitted by Grant Oxtoby. If you’ve played Green Day Rock Band, or just want to ask Grant more about it, leave your thoughts in the comments below.
Green Day Rock Band (X360)
The Beatles, Metallica, Van Halen… Green Day? An odd choice for a dedicated rhythm game but no complaints here. I’ve been a fan since the early days and don’t mind their current stuff either, so let’s see how the punk trio from California stack up.
Loved
Green Day: These guys have been around since the early 90s and this game is a testament to that fact. The songs range from their debut major label album Dookie right through to 21st Century Breakdown, with those two albums in full (the latter with DLC) as well as American Idiot, the rest are various hits from the albums in-between. The best part is you can import the entire song list onto your hard drive and use them in Rock Band 1 and 2.
Welcome To Paradise: Like The Beatles Rock Band, there’s a lot of love for the subject matter, there’s heaps of random pics and videos to unlock and I mean HEAPS. A lot of work went into crafting the band members too, there are versions of Billy, Mike and Tre from various points in the band’s career, reflecting their styles through the years and the venues set the atmosphere pretty well (even though I played American Idiot in full at Milton Keynes and the sun never fully went down).
Hated
Stuck With Me: While it’s a great game for a Green Day fan, for a non-fan? It’s a waste of 50 bucks with a bunch of punk and emo songs by a trio of hair dyeing tossers who should have broke up in 1992. If you don’t like Green Day, you will NOT like this game. The venues, however, do look great… all three of them. Since you can’t change the band lineup and there’s no trippy film-clip style action, you better get used to seeing repeated swing shots of the stage and random close-ups on the band.
Minority: This is the first full Rock Band game to not have a set of instruments available, either bundled or standalone and it’s very hard to find them. While the Guitar Hero mics and guitars work, good luck playing the GH drums, it’s spacing is very awkward and combined with said drum’s unreliability, a total mess. I strongly advise hunting down the Rock Band drums (just go easy on the pedal).
Walking Contradiction: It’s no secret Green Day aren’t exactly a Wiggles cover band – they do swear, quite a bit in fact and due to this, the swearing is censored. This bugged the hell out of me, as anyone who owns this game would already have their albums. Why couldn’t have they just left it in and gotten the M rating? It’s no worse than the language we hear in most M rated games now and just to be sure the kids don’t learn any new words, the camera always cuts away when the words are sung.
So verdict? Like Green Day? Get it! No like Green Day? Don’t. Now to continue my wait for Rock Band: Def Leppard.
Reviewed by: Grant Oxtoby
You can have your Reader Review published on Kotaku. Send your review to us at the usual address. Make sure it’s written in the same format as above and in under 500 words – yes, we’ve upped the word limit. We’ll publish the best ones we get and the best of the month will win a Madman DVD prize pack.
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