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Really? Green Day?

Nobody will argue that Green Day has been cranking out hit tracks and records for closing on twenty years now. If you look at the other Rock Band and Guitar Hero band-specific titles out there, you’ll see Aerosmith, Van Halen, Metallica, and The Beatles. All of these have at least ten years on Green Day. Now, let me make it completely clear that I’m a big fan of Green Day, and I think they’re completely deserving of such treatment as they received in Green Day: Rock Band. It’s worth pointing out though that EA and Harmonix may have sliced off a percentage of a percentage of their market here.

The Music of Green Day

The disc comes with 47 pieces to play, which is about as many tracks as Beatles: Rock Band, but there’s a key difference here: Every one of Green Day’s big hits appear on the disc. When you’re playing a song that you’re not terribly familiar with, you know it’s only because the rest of it is already on the disc. Let me be more specific here. The disc has the entirety of Dookie and American Idiot on it, and combined with existing downloadable content, the entirety of Green Day’s most recent album, 21^st Century Breakdown, is also available to play. There are a handful of other songs from Warning, Nimrod and Insomiac, which makes me think these albums will appear as DLC in the future. Compare this with The Beatles: Rock Band, which was about half greats and half filler (which I’ll admit may be the best filler ever recorded) and Green Day is the much better value. This is a better way to do it: give us a couple of albums and a handful more hits, then sell us the other albums afterward.

I think the track listing is perfect, and I wouldn’t trade a single track for another. The only problem I have is that, particularly in their earlier work, there is a significant amount of profanity, and all of it is silenced completely. From EA’s perspective, the task of marketing something that’s probably already got limited appeal with the added challenge of a higher ESRB rating would most likely be too much to bear. While I understand why this is necessary with the audience being what it is, I still find it annoying. Naturally, you can sing the profanity if you want and the game doesn’t punish you, or you can leave it out the way the game does. It’s an imperfect but acceptable compromise.

When you’ve had enough of the game’s isolated experience, you are allowed to export the songs from the disc and play them in Rock Band 1, 2, or 3 if you’re so inclined. This feature does not exist on Wii, only PS3 and 360. This was something we all missed from the Beatles game, and it’s great to see this option here. It’s also great to be able to improvise with the music by distorting notes and inserting drum fills.

Up to three-part harmonies make a return from Beatles, which is great for those with superior singing skills.

Three Guys, Three Venues

Green Day is a small band, with only three guys in it. That’s Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tré Cool. Their likenesses are used in the game, and they’re pretty good likenesses, like in Beatles: Rock Band. They’re definitely stylized, rather than being super realistic, which works nicely. The animations are pretty well done too. One thing that was strange was how much Armstrong looked like Paul McCartney to me in a number of the songs. Subtle changes happen to the guys over the course of their careers in the three venues, but they’re not customizable in any way. Just like in Beatles, you can’t pick and choose what song you play where you want to play it. The ability to export the songs and play them in Rock Band 2, however, makes up for this, provided you don’t find the $9.99 an annoyance. You can make your own character there and sing the songs. Just not wherever you want. And of course, it’s never going to look just like your favorite Green Day member.

There are only three venues in the game, and they’re tied to the songs principally by album, with the exception of the few songs that are not from Dookie, Idiot, or Breakdown. I’m assuming future album releases could come with additional venues. That would be very nice.

Lasting Value

One of the brilliant things about Green Day is how much the band’s music has changed over time. When you head back to their earliest songs in this game, it’s as though you’re listening to a different band. I imagine there are a lot of early Green Day fans who complain about how much they’ve changed over the years, especially when listening to some of the lighter tracks on Breakdown, but I think that, like The Beatles, this is a band whose shift in style over time lends very well to such a project. You can poke through a wealth of bonus content here that is easily unlocked, including some cool photos and some really great videos of live performances and the like.

A lot of photos are unlocked just by beating songs with three or five stars. Some of the other bonuses are unlocked using a system called CRED, where you earn points by scoring three and five stars on songs the first time. These points are used to unlock things. On medium difficulty, I rarely had to try a song twice to score five stars, so as soon as I was done with the 47 tracks on disc, I unlocked all the challenges. Challenges are basically a setlist, whether it’s three songs or a whole album. Beat these with a certain rating to win, which unlocks more bonuses.

Online play is basically identical to what we’ve seen from Rock Band in the past. It’s fun and effective, but nowhere near as great as playing with friends in the same room.

A Huge Leap Forward

All in all, Green Day: Rock Band is a much better product than The Beatles: Rock Band. I’m not talking about the music here, just the product itself. I can only assume that Harmonix listened to the criticism they got from Beatles (from the few of us who were aware enough to complain) and redressed many of these problems here as a result. It’s also possible that the people in charge of Green Day’s stuff weren’t jerks about the licensing. Make that probable.

In the end, I’m thrilled with what was done here. It’s a much more satisfying and longer-lived title than the previous one, even if it’s probably not going to sell anywhere near as many copies.

Four out of five.

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