Rock Band

The drum kit is what changed the argument. Guitar controllers had been on shelves for two years by 2007, and the plastic-instrument joke had already been told, but a set of four rubber pads and a kick pedal asked for something different from the person holding the sticks. You are not pressing buttons in time with a lead line anymore. You are keeping a beat, with your foot, while three other people depend on you not to drop it. Harmonix understood that the drummer is the one who cannot fake it.

The PS2 release is the compromised version, and it is worth being clear about that. No online play, no downloadable content, so the set list stops at what is pressed on the disc. What is there is strong: 58 master recordings running from Nirvana and The Who to Radiohead and the Pixies, chosen with the taste of people who cared more about a song charting well on four instruments than about chart position. Band World Tour lets a group build a career across venues, though on PS2 that career is strictly local, everyone crowded onto the same couch.

Mechanically it is the Guitar Hero grammar widened out. Vocals are scored on pitch contour rather than exact notes, which is forgiving enough that a bad singer can still contribute and precise enough that a good one gets rewarded. Guitar and bass add a solo section and an overdrive tilt. Drums score by hit accuracy across five lanes plus kick. The genuinely smart piece is the save system: a failed player can be rescued by the band's stored overdrive, which turns a wipeout into a group decision rather than a solo humiliation.

The instruments themselves have not aged gracefully. The original Rock Band drum kit was loud, prone to failing pads, and the guitar's strum bar had a reputation it earned. A working set is now the real obstacle, not the software. But the design holds up better than almost anything else from the peak-peripheral years, because it was built around a social situation rather than a scoring system.

Played today with four people who remember the songs, it still does the thing it was made for, which is to make a living room briefly sound like a band that is only slightly out of tune with itself.