MetaCritic Score: 78-79 What It Deserved: 66 Is Rock Band 4 fun? Absolutely. But should it have been released as a retail game? Absolutely not. Following the downturn of the rhythm game genre around five years ago, Harmonix attempted to resurrect it with a new Rock Band game, which would abandon the over-the-top guitar-teaching shtick of the previous title and get back to plastic instrument basics. While that is successful to an extent, Rock Band 4 basically just feels like a glorified DLC update: the 65 on-disc songs are a decent if not massively remarkable collection, and the removal of online multiplayer is nothing short of criminal. That Harmonix felt comfortable charging up to £50 for such a meager amount of content is ridiculous, as this really should've been a £20 DLC. There's a feeling that many critics gave the game a free pass because of the compatibility with legacy content, that you could play most of your DLC and songs from previous games within the new game, but in essence that gets away from what this new release is actually offering you, and seems disingenuous. After the vastly superior Guitar Hero Live released a few weeks later, this one was all-but forgotten, even though Live inexplicably only scored a few points higher than RB4 on most platforms.
Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes).
General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.
