You all know this already. I love playing Rock Band. I still play it even with all the other music games that have come along, some that I haven’t even touched, namely Rocksmith. But that’s because it’s way too expensive for me to truly enjoy, and yes this is coming from someone who spent $100 on a full size Stratocaster replica.

To this day I keep playing Rock Band, mostly because Harmonix does something many other publishers and developers are afraid to do…support a game that’s nearly two years old rather than just release another sequel. To this day Harmonix is still providing new songs to play, and with the Rock Band Network, many more songs are out there for me to try out.

To think that there will be nearly 4,000 songs available soon. I’d love to see someone like EA do that.

Then again, EA previously distributed Rock Band 3 before the fall of MTV Games, and Mad Catz took over.

I admit I don’t own all the songs that are currently available, but over the years I have developed a huge library. Including Beatles: Rock Band and all of its DLC (which sadly I cannot rip into the RB3 library). I now have at least 1,000 songs with the potential for more, and thankfully once again Harmonix released something else that allows me to use them all. Well, most of them at least.

Rock Band Blitz arrived last week on Xbox Live, and in addition to the 25 songs that came with the game, it allowed me to transfer almost all of my songs from my Rock Band library. Obviously the songs from Beatles: Rock Band could not be transferred since they weren’t in the full library to begin with, but what puzzles me is that I wasn’t able to transfer the Rock Band 3 disc songs to play. I hope this gets resolved soon.

At first I didn’t like Rock Band Blitz. Maybe it was because the game was so overwhelming. The gameplay reminded me a lot of when I played the demo for Frequency, a PS2 music game also published by Harmonix. The demo was packed in with the PS2 hard drive and modem, and I enjoyed it a bit, but it wasn’t enough for me to warrant a purchase.

Before, when playing Rock Band 3, I concentrated on only one instrument, and most of the time, it was guitar, though I dabbled a little bit into the keyboard as well. But here, I had to juggle my play between up to five instruments. Needless to say, juggling back and forth between them to get the highest combination of notes started to get overwhelming.

Power ups eventually came along as I built up experience points (or Cred, as Blitz calls it) and they helped out a bit with my score. I started using the Bandmate power up, which allows one of the instruments to be played automatically as long as I had Energy (Blitz’s version of Overdrive) left in my bank.

Even powering up one of the instruments to score double points (which I designated based on their difficulty level) started to help, but even in doing so, I still couldn’t even get 5 stars, as I kept staying at the 4 star level.

I was about ready to give up, and even asked a fellow Xbox Live member who kept beating me with my scores about how he was doing so well. He told me he was also using the Bandmate power up that was causing me to fail. I just couldn’t get it.

Then I finally got the last power up, one that helped out more than I ever thought could: the Road Rage.

What Road Rage does is, it sends out a large tire that jumps between instrument tracks and collects any notes that are in its way for massive points. Needless to say it was the power up I needed to proceed, and go figure I didn’t just get a 5 star rating on my songs, but also got my first gold rating. In fact I ended up with five consecutive gold star ratings in a row. I was hooked afterwards.

Rock Band Blitz surprised me with how good the game can be. It won’t make me hang up the Strat for good, but it’s a fun distraction.

This isn’t a full review of the game, just my experience with how Road Rage ended up making the game much more enjoyable for me. However I would end up giving it 4 1/2 Gems if this was a full review. Count this as an unofficial one I guess.

Now Harmonix, transfer the Rock Band 3 content, please?

Currently Playing: Rock Band Blitz (360)

Waiting For: Double Dragon Neon (360), XCOM Enemy Unknown