The highlight of E for All was Rock Band. And after getting some hands on time with the game, this is definitely something I’m looking forward to. A pretty cool marketing idea is the Rock Band tour, where people can go up and play the game and be taped (the company is owned by MTV so it’s going to be used on TV at some point in time…not my performance…unless they do a blooper reel), so check out the Loot-Ninja Band (working title)

Thats me on the left playing bass rocking the Loot Ninja hat, and Dez, the creator of Whorecraft on the right playing lead guitar. I’m not sure who the other two guys are, but I’m grateful to them for giving us the other 2 we needed to get on stage.

If you have played Guitar Hero then you will have no problem picking this up and playing, since the notes and timing display the same way.

The lead guitar has 5 notes, bass has 4 (although there is no special bass guitar), and the drums have 4 notes representing drums, with a bar across the middle for the kick drum. Each of them are displayed side by side with the vocals along with the pitch scroll across the top. There is also a feature called Overdrive, which is similar to Star Power in Guitar Hero, that each person can fill up individually on their section by hitting certain series of notes (they turn white instead of being colored). However instead of giving a bonus multiplayer, overdrive can be used to rescue a band member who has failed the song. So for example if the person doing the vocals fails, the entire band won’t necessarily fail the song if the overall meter isn’t too low, and one of the guitarists can turn the guitar and bring him back. However if everyone is doing crappy, the band still can fail the song.

As for the instruments themselves, the guitars have the 5 buttons on the top of the neck that most people are familiar with, as well as 5 more at the base that can be used in certain solo sections. Also, the Guitar Hero guitars will work with Rockband. The drums have 4 pads representing different drums, and are played using real drum sticks, as well as a foot pedal for the bass drum. Also, there is a small control pad in the middle of the drum set with an Xbox Guide button that people kept accidentally hitting and bringing up the console, which was really annoying in the middle of songs.

Overall, the games was extremely fun to play. The only potential problems I see are that the price tag is a bit steep ($170 for the game, 1 guitar, the drum set and the mic), and it comes out a month after Guitar Hero 3.