Rock Band Blitz Message Board

Prove you're the best at manipulating Rock Band Blitz's power-up combinations, by competing in a new series of weekly tournaments. Harmonix has added the option to enable tournaments on the Rock Band World Facebook page, after which you'll be able to play the three tournaments hosted every week.

Each tournament focuses on a single song, and allows you to replay the song as often as you want within that week to get a high score. If you have the highest score or the second-highest, or you're one of three random winners selected for each song, you get "free DLC and other great prizes!"

The tournaments continue through March 13. This week's eclectic challenges: "Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me," "Charlene (I'm Right Behind You)" and "Shout."

You'll probably have the same reaction we did upon learning of the half-off sale Harmonix is holding on over 1,100 Rock Band tracks this week: "Oh, no." More than one Joystiq editor expressed despair in response to the discounts on both individual tracks and artist packs, on Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii, because it means an inevitable purchase of too many tracks that can be played not only in Rock Band 3, but in the new Rock Band Blitz, as well.

The situation became even more dire when we remembered that the Rock Band World Facebook app lets you build shopping lists for DLC, which then show up in Rock Band Blitz for easy, convenient purchases. Instant ramen, anyone?

The economy is rough all over, including inside of video games that just came out, apparently. In response to player feedback collected from Facebook, Twitter and its official forums, Harmonix has changed how coins are earned in its PSN/XBLA score-chasing music game Rock Band Blitz.

First off, power-up costs have been adjusted and Track, Note and Overdrive doodads now cost 100, 200 and 250 coins respectively. The amount of coins earned at the end of a song has also changed; players now receive 100 coins per star earned during the song. Additionally, Score Wars winners will now be granted 1,500 coins, with Score Wars losers taking home 500 coins.

Basically, earning more coins more quickly means that players will have to spend less time grinding, and will be less frequently unable to purchase the power-ups needed to potentially earn a song's maximum score. Also, you ever look at a word so long you stop being able to tell whether its spelled correctly? That's where we're at with coins. Coins, coins coins. Coins coins coins -- coins. Coins?

#review Let's say there's a spectrum. On the one end, hunched in a leather jacket and stubbing out a cigarette on its boot heel, is Music. On the other end, peering over its sunglasses at a strobe-lit LCD, sits Video Games. More »

Rock Band Blitz is basically criticism-proof. No matter what qualms I may have about the XBLA/PSN game, they'll end with a recommendation that you should, without a doubt, purchase it. The value proposition of 25 new Rock Band DLC songs, including Queen's "Death on Two Legs," cannot be argued.

However, the same people to whom I'd recommend this DLC bundle (and game) most enthusiastically - people who have already played a bunch of Rock Band - are going to be the most confused by Rock Band Blitz. It's different. Disorientingly so.

Ryan and Jeff play songs without plastic instruments, and they don't care who on Facebook knows it.

Hear you me.

They're our dirty little secrets.

Check out the power-up with balls.

I'm right behind you now, Charlene.

There’s a moment during game development when you have to let go of your game and release it to the world. You’re sitting in your office, thinking about all of the choices you made, wondering whether people will find it fun, engaging, beautiful, scary, funny. Is your vision going to be realized? And then you take a deep breath and let it go.

How do I know? I’m the Project Director for Rock Band Blitz, and for me that moment came about two months ago. I guided the development of the game over the course of the last year. The creative, smart, talented team that made Rock Band Blitz can’t wait for you to play the game on your console and see, at long last, the result of all of our hard work.

Rock Band Blitz is a downloadable PlayStation Network game. It’s the latest entry in the Rock Band family, and rather than using plastic instruments you play with a standard DualShock 3 controller. At its core, it’s still a rhythm beat-match game: you smash notes in time with the music. But in contrast to the full band experience of traditional Rock Band titles, Blitz is fast-paced — with over-the-top visuals and a wide range of crazy Power-ups that you can use strategically to increase your score.

For only $15.99, we’re shipping Rock Band Blitz with 25 tracks. That alone is a great value, with hours of gameplay right out of the digital box. Even sweeter, the game lets you play all of the music in your Rock Band Music Library – including songs you were able to export from previous Rock Band games and songs downloaded from the Music Store – in an entirely new way. And if you’re a fan of the full-instrument experience, the 25 songs that come with Rock Band Blitz can be played with a full band in Rock Band 3 at no additional cost!

Over the past week here at Harmonix, we’ve been running a company-wide Rock Band Blitz tournament, and it’s obvious that all of those tough game design choices are starting to pay off. We’re seeing employees tweeting about how they can’t stop playing, even though it’s 2:00AM on a weekday. They’re challenging each other to asynchronous Score Wars, and talking friendly smack to one another over who has the top spot on leaderboards for their favorite songs. Lunch conversation is now dominated by folks whispering strategy secrets to one another as they exchange their favorite Power-up loadouts for specific songs.

They liked it! They really, really liked it! (Hey, I’m as insecure as the next guy…) Some of the common themes I head last week:

• The game looks simple to play, and it is. You can pick it up and bang out a song, and starting having fun in minutes. But what looks simple on the surface is, in fact, deceptively deep and strategic. There are multiple “AHA!” moments as you learn to effectively use the different Power-ups, then combine them in different ways to use on different song types, and finally apply all that knowledge moment-to-moment as you play through the songs. I’d suggest starting with Blast Notes and Bottle Rockets as you’re learning to play; they’re easy to use, but super effective… and they make stuff blow up!
• Rock Band Blitz is instantly compatible with every Rock Band DLC track, giving people huge libraries of music to choose from. Getting those tracks to work in Rock Band Blitz is simple: you don’t have to do anything – any Rock Band music content you have on your hard drive will show up in the song list at no additional charge.
• Rock Band Blitz sounds absolutely killer on headphones, like the official wireless PS3 Stereo Headset. You’ll be hopping around tracks and playing all the instrument parts, but we accentuate the track that you’re playing on, so you can groove along to your music like never before. Settle in to your armchair, strap on your headphones, and lose yourself in the music and the world of Rock Band Blitz’s “Rock City.”

We really hope you give the game a shot when it hits PlayStation Network tomorrow. There will be a free trial available, so you’ve got nothing to lose trying it out. But fair warning: we’re hearing people are getting addicted, so get a good night’s sleep before the game’s launch.

The Rock Band Blitz team here at Harmonix is really proud of the final game; we hope you enjoy it as much as we do. Let us know what you think!

#harmonix Musical combat? Combat musical? Rock Band: Combat? Combat: The Beatles? More »

#rockband No matter how many times I ask the fine people at Harmonix to put Carly Rae Jepsen's masterpiece "Call Me Maybe" into Rock Band, they just don't listen. More »

As a music game coming out in 2012, Rock Band Blitz is required by law to include Maroon 5's "Moves Like Jagger" in its track list.

In addition to complying with recent pop earworm ordinances, Harmonix also revealed the final five tracks to be included with the downloadable game at launch: "These Days" by the Foo Fighters, "Stronger" by Kelly Clarkson, "Death on Two Legs" by Queen, "Give It Away" by Red Hot Chili Peppers, and "Spoonman" by Soundgarden.

Check out the full 25-track song list after the break, and a video introducing some new power-up items above. This game has a lot of power-ups.

#rockband Harmonix's downloadable Frequency-izing of all the Rock Band music begins on August 28 and 29, when Rock Band Blitz comes to the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade for $15. You have no idea how hard I crave it. More »

I have a lot of Rock Band DLC. Like, A LOT. This might be bad for my ability to get anything done.

Harmonix's upcoming non-instrument controller using Rock Band game, Rock Band Blitz, finally has a release date and price. According to this official announcement, the game will officially arrive on PlayStation Network August 28, and Xbox Live August 29. It will retail for $14.99 and 1200 MSP respectively.

Harmonix also announced four new songs for the 20-plus song soundtrack. Here's the whole soundtrack thus far, with the new songs in bold.

• All-American Rejects - "Kids In the Street"
• Avenged Sevenfold - "So Far Away"
• Barenaked Ladies - "One Week"
• Blink 182 - "Always"
• Collective Soul - "Shine"
• Elton John - "I'm Still Standing"
• Fall Out Boy - "A Little Less Sixteen Candles"
• Foster the People - "Pumped Up Kicks"
• Fun ft. Janelle Monae - "We Are Young"
• Great White - "Once Bitten, Twice Shy"
• Iron Maiden - "The Wicker Man"
• Kool & The Gang - "Jungle Boogie"
• Living Colour - "Cult of Personality"
• My Chemical Romance - "Sing"
• P!nk - "Raise Your Glass"
• Quiet Riot - "Metal Health (Bang Your Head)"
• Rick Springfield - "Jessie's Girl"
• Shinedown - "Diamond Eyes (Boom-Lay Boom-Lay Boom)"
• Tears for Fears - "Shout"

Of course, those 19 songs (and whatever other ones Harmonix announces before the release date) will join any Rock Band downloadable tracks you already own as playable songs in Blitz. Likewise, you'll be able to play any of the above songs in Rock Band 3 as regular DLC. Hell, I'd pay $15 just for "Jungle Boogie" and "Jessie's Girl," but maybe that's just me.

Tune up your ... normal controller, because Rock Band Blitz is on the way in just over a month. Harmonix's downloadable music game will be out on PSN August 28, and on XBLA a day later, for $14.99 or its Xbox fun money equivalent.

The game works with all your exported Rock Band tracks and DLC, but it'll come packed with 20 songs of its own. Today, Harmonix revealed four more of those: Avenged Sevenfold's "So Far Away," Kool & The Gang's "Jungle Boogie," My Chemical Romance's "Sing," and Fun's "We Are Young." You know, the song that's on the radio between plays of that Gotye song.

All Blitz songs work in Rock Band 3, so that $15 is also an excuse to get the band back together.

It's taken us a day to upload the footage of Harmonix's Rock Band Blitz prototype, shown at the company's PAX East panel, but here it is! See the sunny "Pre-Blitz," or, as design director Chris Foster called it, "Preblitz," in action here.

Yes, I'm surprised too. Rock Band Blitz, despite its superficial similarity to Harmonix's PS2 music games Frequency and Amplitude, is fundamentally different from those -- and from Rock Band. Well, okay, you're still hitting buttons in time to music, represented by icons coming down the screen. It's not that far gone.

But almost everything else has been rethought. Instead of Rock Band's five "buttons" per instrument or Frequency's three, each instrument track in Blitz is limited to two tracks, with imported tracks converted algorithmically from the original Rock Band version. It is, technically, a simplification, but it's still challenging enough when you're juggling four or five instruments. And when you're playing "Symphony of Destruction."

#paxeast2012 Rock Band Blitz is Harmonix's next effort to revive rhythm games, a creation that uses a standard console controller rather than specialized music peripherals. At PAX East 2012, the team showed off video of the game in action and explained a little more of its genesis. More »

Harmonix team members Matthew Nordhaus, Chris Foster, Brian Chan, and Jyllian Thibodeau explained the development process that led to Rock Band Blitz, by way of showing us previous versions and iterations of the game. Collectively, these prototypes were referred to as "Pre-Blitz," and epitomized by a brief video of a version that keeps the social basis of Blitz, but with a very different aesthetic.

While the final game ended up featuring a sort of rainbow note highway in a musically reactive city, this version is a much sunnier, somewhat more literal "highway" style environment. Somewhere between these two, the team thought of having the music make the city spring up building by building, but that didn't make it.

At one point it wasn't even decided where the music would come from. A DLC strategy was important to the team, but it wasn't certain that the game would be a Rock Band game. When it was decided that it would be, the source of music became obvious. And then the team had to convert all the songs from five lanes per instrument to two -- which, Nordhaus explained, made the game way too easy in lower difficulties. Finally, against his better judgment, the team playtested a game with only one difficulty, and it worked.

Senior designer Brian Chan explained that the game lost the "track-locking" mechanic from Amplitude and other handheld Rock Bands, in favor of a system that allows players to build "levels" in individual tracks. This allowed people to play in a much more freeform manner instead of following a prescribed, single best scoring pattern.

Even the specifics of the controls were in question, with considerations like gestural controls for each instrument. Above is an idea for keyboard controls that used left, right, and a button press to simulate keys.

Dapper John Drake character skin sold separately.

#rockband In attics and closets around the world, plastic drum sets are gathering dust. Battery acid leaks into the casings of countless replica Stratocasters, long since pulled from under the coffee table and placed in the closet under the stairs. More »

Harmonix's Rock Band Blitz for Xbox Live Arcade and PSN was announced last night, but now the studio is sharing a trailer and some more details on the game. Featuring gameplay similar to that of Rock Band Unplugged (or HMX's Amplitude or Frequency), the game has you sailing down a note highway, tapping blocks and switching instrument tracks for maximum points. There are several control layouts available, allowing you to switch instruments using bumpers and hitting blocks using buttons or analog sticks.

Rock Band Blitz will launch with 25 tracks, including "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster the People, "Jessie's Girl" by Rick Springfield, "Always" by Blink-182 and "Bang your Head" by Quiet Riot. All 25 tracks will be available to play in Rock Band 3. The game will also have access to the full Rock Band Music Store.

However, you will not be able to export the disc-based Rock Band 3 tracks into Rock Band Blitz, since they don't reside on the hard drive. Asked whether Harmonix was working on an update to allow import of disc tracks as an option, a representative told us, "We don't have plans at this time."

Blitz will be out this summer.

It's no secret that the rhythm game genre is at a low point when it comes to being on the radar of your average gamer. The genre bubbled a few years ago, and you couldn't set foot in a college party or any form of social gathering without someone pulling out plastic guitars and virtual wailing awa...

On via G4's X-Play, Harmonix revealed their upcoming project for Xbox LIVE Arcade and PlayStation Network set in the Rock Band line of games, but it's not a proper sequel to Rock Band 3. Instead, Rock Band Blitz will be an arcade-style game with more in common with Harmonix's past titles Frequency and Amplitude than with previous console versions of Rock Band...