Many people including myself were disappointed with the lack of features that shipped with Rock Band 4. Online play, setlist creator and detailed stat tracking all seemed absent when the game launched in early October. Last week saw the arrival of the first of many feature updates for Rock Band 4. While Rock Band 4 has been pushing out weekly servings of DLC songs since it’s launch, this update gives hope to many including myself that buying new Rock Band disc titles are a thing of the past.
The December 8th update features a new game mode called Brutal Mode. Brutal mode, like the title suggests is meant to challenge those players who score chase and play on expert difficulty. Brutal mode shares some similarity to Performance Mode, which was present in past Rock Band titles. Performance mode required players to play a song by relying on muscle memory. No notes were shown, just the animated characters playing along to the song. Brutal mode is similar in its concept except that you can still see the note charts. The better you play, the more notes will be taken away from your highway. The worse you play, the more notes will be shown on your highway. No Fail mode is always off in brutal mode and all players are forced to play on expert. If you’re lucky enough to gold star a song in brutal mode you’ll earn “Crimson Stars”. Players who play Brutal Mode have their scores uploaded to a different leaderboard than those who play Quickplay.
My main instrument is drums and I found that even simple songs at first like Green Day’s 21 Guns or These Days by the Foo Fighters forced me more heavily to rely on muscle memory than watching the actual track. It was only by relying on muscle memory I tended to score much better and improve my drumming skills. Brutal mode is an addictive mode that will challenge you if you love score chasing. The only problem with the mode is that if you are a casual player or not a score chaser you may not find a whole lot to enjoy. Failing out is incredibly easy and if you’re playing in a band, you’ll need some experienced plastic playing musicians at your side.
Aside from the Brutal Mode are several new social and competitive features. As soon you login to the main menu screen you’ll see a little notification window that alerts you when your friends have beaten your scores on certain songs. Not only that, but you can also send taunts back and forth with friends. I also noticed that when you complete any song in quickplay, the game will show where you place in comparison to your friends on that song. It’s a nice feature that adds competitiveness with a game that is sorely lacking online play.
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“Fans of customization will be happy to know that the Rock Shop features several new costumes and outfits including the suits from Fallout 4.”
The other big improvement is the score tracking. You can now see your cumulative stats in the song selection screen, which lists your total score, number of songs gold starred and number of songs full combed. Another new feature that’s been added when you’re playing a song is the full combo indicator that lets you know whether you’re on track to full combo a song or not. Improved song stat tracking has also been added once you complete a song. While it doesn’t come close to matching the detailed song stats in Rock Band 3, it’s a step in the right direction.
Fans of customization will be happy to know that the Rock Shop features several new costumes and outfits including the suits from Fallout 4. Personally I’ve never understood the appeal of character customization in music games since most of my attention is always focused on the note highway.
In addition to the feature updates are some new bug fixes. One issue I always had with my drum kit was the game’s timing window for picking up kick drum hits seemed off. This no longer appears to be an issue as my drums play better than ever in Rock Band 4. Another big issue with Rock Band 4 was the noticeable microphone lag when singing. This no longer appears to be as noticeable, which is a welcome change.
The December 8th Patch is a step In the right direction for Harmonix. While it doesn’t have everything fans want, it’s a glimpse into the types of features fans will see in the future.
Click on through to page 2 to check out what we would like to see with future Rock Band 4 updates.