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LEGO Rock Band Review (X360)

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Warner Bros.
LEGO Rock Band is a more kid-friendly game than other music/rhythm games have been, but underneath the LEGO veneer it is still pure, classic Rock Band. It plays great, has a decent list of songs, and the trademark LEGO videogame silly humor still works really well here. It is cute, and fun, and funny, and definitely still rocks. Find out all of the details here in our full LEGO Rock Band review.
Game Details

  • Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive
  • Developer: Harmonix / Traveller’s Tales
  • ESRB Rating: “E” for Everyone
  • Genre: Music
  • Pros: Cute, funny, LEGO humor; Rock Power Challenges; nice presentation; short versions of songs; song export
  • Cons: No online play; questionable value

This is a Rock Band game first and a LEGO game second, but that doesn’t mean that the humor and fun that made LEGO Star Wars/Batman/Indiana Jones so great isn't fully intact. The cutscenes showing your ragtag group of LEGO minifigs forming a band and touring the country (and beyond) are generally well done and a nice reward while you play through the story mode. It is also nice to see all of the different LEGO building set themes (Trains, Castle, Racing, City, etc.) represented in the game as you travel from venue to venue.

Other nice touches are that your score on a song is actually how many studs (money) you earned which you can then spend on new minifigs, instruments, and items to decorate your band’s pad. We also like that there is essentially a No Fail Mode where if you fail out of a song, the track rewinds a bit so you have an opportunity to replay a section to earn back the studs you missed and then continue on playing.

One important thing that needs to be said is that there is no online play in LEGO Rock Band. There are all of the single-player and local multiplayer modes and options you would expect, but no online play.

Features

Warner Bros.
Easily the best parts of the game are the Rock Power Challenges that have you actually doing stuff with your music. Really, you’re just playing the song like normal, but in the background crazy things are happening. You do things like fight ghosts in a mansion (while you play Ray Parker Jr’s “Ghostbusters”), call down rain clouds to save a farm, outrun a rampaging T-Rex, and much more. The Rock Power Challenges really connect the LEGO license with the music you are playing and are great fun overall. I’m sad there are only 9 of them and not more.

The song list is fairly good. There are a lot of really fun songs in the 45-track list, but some stinkers that you’ll dread having to play. Par for the course on that point. One thing I absolutely love is that there are shortened versions of the LRB songs (basically they cut the last couple of minutes off) that make the career a lot easier and quicker to play through.

DLC you have downloaded for Rock Band 1 and 2 is available in game (as well as RB1 tracks if you exported them to RB2), but you won’t have access to everything. Some songs weren’t deemed “kid friendly”, so you can’t play them in LEGO Rock Band. Likewise, while you can access the in-game music store to buy DLC, only approved “kid” songs are available.

A great feature is that you can export the LEGO Rock Band tracks for use in RB1/RB2 for $10. This is great since it lets you play all of your songs in one place, but bad because it pretty much kills the value of LRB. There just isn’t much reason to play LRB once you export the tracks to RB2.

Graphics and Sound

Graphically, LEGO Rock Band is a neat looking game overall. Watching LEGO minifigs play instruments, sing, and dance around is surreal and funny. And like I said above, the venues you play in are all based on the various LEGO building set themes, so there is a lot of variety to the environments you’ll see. As far as gameplay goes, the game is exactly the same as other Rock Band games with the exception that the notes on the note highway are now LEGO blocks. It is a subtle change that doesn’t really make any difference, but it definitely helps solidify the theme of the game.

The sound is fine. The music sounds good and that is all that matters.

Bottom Line

Warner Bros.
All in all, LEGO Rock Band is a good game, but how you want to use it will greatly affect whether it is worth a purchase or not. If you have kids and want them to have a safe (as in no online play) and fun and appropriate (as in the only songs available are kid-appropriate) way to play Rock Band, this is a great game for just that purpose and worth a purchase. If you don’t have kids and are just hungry for more RB songs (and, let’s face it, having “Ghostbusters” and “The Final Countdown” to play whenever you want is awesome), you are probably better off renting the game, scraping out an easy 700+ GamerScore points, and exporting the tracks to play in RB2. I just can’t see people without kids needing to have LRB on hand unless they just really like playing in the LEGO venues. Don’t get me wrong, it is a good game, but the value isn’t quite there. Rent it if you just want the songs, buy it to give to your kids.

Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy

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