The next Rock Band title ditches the plastic instruments in favor of old-school Harmonix-style rhythm gaming.
Last night Harmonix revealed the upcoming Rock Band Blitz, a downloadable rhythm title scheduled for release on the Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network later this year. This morning, a trailer for the game appeared online. You can see it embedded at right.
Notice anything spectacularly awesome about that footage? If not, you’re probably too young to remember the games Harmonix released before they hit it big with Guitar Hero. Specifically, I’m talking about Frequency and Amplitude, two rhythm titles that featured almost exactly this same kind of track-jumping gameplay over a decade ago.
The key difference between those titles and Rock Band Blitz however, is that Frequency and Amplitude had decidedly techno/dance-oriented soundtracks that were completely static, whereas Blitz can import songs directly from your existing, presumably massive Rock Band music library to complement the 25 new songs it ships with. Given that the downloadable Rock Band catalogue includes over 3,000 songs, players have free rein to create any kind of soundtrack they wish.
Oh, and as a bonus, Rock Band 3 owners can also import Rock Band Blitz’s native song library for use with all their plastic instruments.
With the game still months from release there isn’t a wealth of info available on the title, but the game’s official site should answer any questions you might have. Alternately, try Kirk Hamilton’s hands-on preview at Kotaku — he’s a huge music geek, so his word is extra valuable here.
Normally this is where I’d caution people to not get their hopes up over a game that is still a ways off, but c’mon, this is exactly what Harmonix does best. If you want to get super-excited, go right ahead. You look like you could use the dopamine.
