User Review : Rock Band: AC/DC

Who Made Who Think This Was $39.99 Worthy?

I am as biased to AC/DC as they come. I love their music, their concerts, their DVDs, their hoodies…their everything. When the time came when I heard AC/DC was coming to Rock Band I was ecstatic. My one complaint of Rock Band was that they were too focused on today’s generation of music and not so much the classics. Here they are, bringing (what I consider) the greatest rock band to the game. Then the news came that this was only a eighteen song pack and was going to cost as much as a retail priced game. $39.99 may be considered a discount but that’s still a hefty chunk of change for a disc that only will contain 18 songs.

The question is not how many songs are you getting per dollar, or rather how many dollars per song but is this band so good that you should shell out the cash for it? Well, coming from perhaps New York’s biggest AC/DC fan I have to say that the price is certainly not justified, but the issues come from elsewhere aside from the rather short setlist.

For those who have previously played Rock Band, there is nothing new here on how to get up and going. The menu interface and selection process remains the same. What has changed from Rock Band 1 is calibration. Which leads to my first complaint of this game. Maybe it was just me or I wasn’t understanding it well but the calibration technique in this game is terrible. I was able to find a good setting for the drums, but as of post time finding the right calibration setting for guitar remains a mystery to me. I admire the developers finding a more specific way of calibrating the instruments to make for a better experience but I don’t like how the fact that the drums work on a certain setting and the guitar doesn’t. Again, it could just be me and a problem that I have caused but such an ordeal shouldn’t be present.

Other negatives regarding the AC/DC Live Track Pack include the complete lack of customization. When you enter in tour mode, you simply create a name of your rocker. You cannot create your own character, nor can you import your character from the other games. You get a completely random made character each time. It doesn’t take away from the experience but a feature like create a character can’t possibly be a hard task for the developers considering you have said feature in the other two available Rock Band games. What did take away some of the experience for me, being the AC/DC guru I am is also the complete lack of the band in-game. It just ain’t the same when you see from fruity girl with a pink mohawk playing an Angus Young riff on screen. It would have been a cool feature to see digital versions of the members of the band in-game considering the game’s competitor Guitar Hero has done so in the past few installments (including their Aerosmith release). There is also no online multiplayer as well as no possibility of DLC.

All is not bad here; if you have listened or have watched the Live at Donington concert before you will not be disappointed in the quality of the songs here. Unfortunately AC/DC to this day has yet to release the entire set list of that concert (that occured back in 1991) on one complete CD or DVD. The closest we came to the entire set list was in the form of the 2 disc Collector’s Edition of the CD that featured 20+ songs. It’s unfortunate that the entire setlist has not made its way into the most expensive version of Live at Donington (this game). However for the 18 selected songs we have here there is no reluctance here to say that these 18 songs are great to play. You start off with “Thunderstruck” and work your way all the way down to AC/DC’s ritual closing song of “For Those About to Rock.” The sound quality is absolutely outstanding here, whether you are playing directly from your TV or through a surround sound system. It really does feel like your live at a show during certain points of each song. There are instances during certain songs on any instrument (except the microphone) where you will hear a note play in the background that you should be playing. For instance when on drums at a beginning of a song you might here the symbol being tapped in the track yet on screen you are given no cue to be hitting the pad representing the symbol. It’s a small annoyance but it’s an annoyance worth mentioning.

For once this add on to Rock Band really feels like what Rock Band should be about. I am very specific when it comes to classifying music, and have been disappointed in the past with some of choices on new Rock Band DLC. For the first time in awhile we actually get rock here, not pop, not modern age…but rock. Whether you are trying to belt out your best Brian Johnson impersonation in “Back in Black,” rocking the opening Angus Young solo in Highway to Hell” or doing your best to match the drumming of Chris Slade in “Let There Be Rock” you are dealing with pure rock adrenaline. It’s sad to say though that while this feels like the first true “rock band,” it’s also the most incomplete rock band of the three. As stated before for $40 you are only getting 18 songs. You can spend $20 more on Rock Band 2 and get more than triple that amount. It’s also a shame that this game lacks a DLC option as I was hoping that possibly one day we’d see other AC/DC albums (like the new Black Ice album) hit Rock Band. To tell the truth, there was absolutely no reason that this should have been a separate game. This is far more worthy as a DLC pack to either RB1 or RB2, and could’ve been cheaper due to it being digital content. However we feel that licensing agreements prevented such wishes of coming true. We understand that having such a delight as AC/DC in a video game probably came at a steep price with the band still neglecting to put their music on iTunes. You don’t get your money’s worth here, and I cannot recommend shelling out $40 for it. With it also being a Wal-Mart exclusive game, it be hard to find it cheaper anywhere else unless your local secondhand store is selling some on the cheap from trade-ins.

This is a real shame too. Though Rock Band by the day keeps taking down what once was a strong Guitar Hero following, especially after the dismal release of Activision’s attempt at Rock Band with GH: World Tour, there is no reason for overcharging us for a pack that was definitely meant to be a DLC pack originally. I hate to be negative about anything AC/DC but this was a $20 pack hidden in a $40 package. My recommendation to Rock Band folks out there, only if you are desperate to play AC/DC tunes right now on Rock Band, hold off on buying this track pack until you find a much cheaper price that is in the $15-25 range. Save your cash for now as there are far too many more quality releases out there during this holiday season. The quality of the songs is some of the best out there in the Rock Band universe, however with little to no features, lack of customization, and an inflated price tag with an exclusive retailer there are just more negatives than positives here. Right now we may be on the highway to hell in our economy, but keep in mind rock and roll ain’t noise pollution. Support it, but this track pack sure doesn’t help my case. It’s a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll.

Hey, I tried closing it out with some AC/DC references. So until next time, for those about to rock…ah hell just jump on the rock and roll train and go buy Black Ice.

UPDATE: (11/20) It was without this reviewer’s knowledge that all track pack songs from this disc could be exported to either Rock Band 1 or Rock Band 2. You can do so with a special authentication code. However since this was released as a stand-alone game that could be played without purchasing either RB1 or RB2, the review and score stand as this was a review of the stand-alone pack rather than the added experience to either RB1 or RB2.

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