Your Guide To Gaming

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Bands aren’t just for musicians anymore — they are for gamers, too.

Harmonix first struck gold when they developed Guitar Hero — a rhythm game played with a Gibson SG guitar-shaped controller. Guitar notes of a song are mapped out to corresponding colors on the guitar, and you beat the songs to become a Guitar Legend. That is all the game is, playing a big pretend guitar. After Guitar Hero swept the nation they went on to make Guitar Hero II which was even more successful.

Well, Harmonix has then since moved on to bigger and better things in the form of Rock Band. Now you can form a band complete with guitar, bass guitar, drums, and singer. When you buy a Rock Band bundle it includes a drum kit and stand, microphone, and a Fender Stratocastor guitar. The beauty of Rock Band is its online game capability. You don’t have to have three friends come over to form a band, you can form one online for the console system (Sony Playstation 3 or Xbox 360) you play.

Now let me tell you where the genius of the developers and publishers of Rock Band really comes in. During the Guitar Hero revolution, die-hard players found ways to customize their game by creating their own custom song charts and implementing them in the game. Well, Rock Band has an online store, and it sells downloadable content in the form of new songs with song charts. Each week (Tuesdays for Xbox 360 and Thursdays for PS3) you can buy more music for your game at $1.99 for 1 song or $5.49 for a bundle of 3 songs.

If that’s not striking it rich, I don’t know what is. I know that my husband, a die hard Guitar Hero/ Rock Band player (yes he customized charts) easily spends twenty to forty dollars a month on downloadable content.