Rock Band is probably one of the most fun games to play during this holiday season, you can easily spend a few hours playing it before you even realize it. Oh and once you play Rock Band you realize that poor old Guitar Hero is a joke of a game in comparison. Rock Band really has a great lineup of songs that get you even more into the game and introduces the concept of the cowbell and tambourine, how can you say no to a game where you play the cowbell?

The guitar is pretty straight forwardly similar to Guitar Hero except now you have the addition of a Bass guitar, but he game really shine s with the microphone and the drums, both of which take some getting used to. My main gripe with the game is once you create a character he/she is stuck with the instrument they started with, so I can’t have one character that plays all four instruments. Another major problem with the game is that the setup times can be quite extensive especially once you first get the game and have to create 4 new characters, this can take up to a good half hour to figure out the different modes and who is doing what.

Another major problem with the peripherals is that it takes quite some time to unpack the entire ensemble and set them up. Once you open Rock Band expect to not play an actual song for at least an hour while you open the packaging, set up the instruments, download patches, set up characters and then figure out what to do. The funny part is once you unpack all of the instruments they do not fit back in the box, so you wil have a drum set up lying around your living room along with a Fender.

One great thing for all those Xbox 360 users out there is that the wired Guitar Hero guitars work perfectly with Rock Band, so this will let you get 4 people playing right off the bat without having to buy another peripheral. Rock Band really is a lot of fun and I can only hope that they will release the different instruments as solo items you an purchase. For now grab a bundle and three friends and rock it out!