Rock Band vs. Tap Tap Revenge 3: Battle of the Bands

Ever since Guitar Hero hit the home console scene back in 2005, music games have been all the rage amongst gamers and music enthusiasts alike.  Tracing the iPhone’s roots back to the music-only iPods of yore, it seems only natural that the genre would eventually make its way to the iTunes App Store.  We take a look at two of this season’s most popular music games for the iPhone and let you know which one we think is the real deal.

Tap Tap Revenge 3: As the leading music game franchise on the iPhone since the platform’s launch, Tap Tap Revenge is the name to beat if you want to get anywhere in iPhone rhythm gaming.  While we’ve seen a number of licensed entries on the market over the past year (Tap Tap Coldplay, Lady Gaga Revenge) TTR3 marks the third real revision to the series formula.  This time out it brings a wealth of new changes while still maintaining everything we know and love about the franchise.

If you’re new to the series, here’s the quick rundown; Tap Tap Revenge is a music game that, like most other music games, is about tapping out notes in rhythm to the music.  Unlike other series, TTR uses a 3-note system that seems to be a perfect fit for the iPhone.  Players can wrap their hands around the device and put two thumbs on the screen, darting one of those over to the middle track when necessary.  The gameplay is easy to pick up and well-suited for the device, but the coolest feature you’re going to find here isn’t in how you play but in how you play with a friend.  Local multiplayer can be tackled via split-screen on the same iPhone, with one player holding the top of the device and one holding the bottom.  Online multiplayer is also available in a cool score-battle mode that pits you against a room full of strangers that you can chat with between rounds.

Tap Tap Revenge 3 changes things up in a few noticeable ways.  A new single player campaign mode exists where you’ll need to level up RPG-style to unlock songs.  The game now offers a customizable avatar, which can be dressed and armed via coins earned during in-game play.  And biggest of all — TTR3 now offers in-game downloads of paid content.  This means that — in addition to the 200 or so free songs available — new content from major artists will be made available for purchase every week.  Duran Duran, LCD Soundsystem, The Killers — it’s astounding the depth and range of content that’s already available.  Everything from Marilyn Manson to New Kids on the Block is in the store.  Many of these purchases have their own skin for the in-game presentation.  Oh — and did we mention you can import songs from previous premium versions of the game?  Yeah, this thing is pretty much made of win.  A+

Rock Band: Bringing a massive 4-instrument multiplayer experience to the iPhone is a hefty concept, and for what it’s worth EA Mobile handled the transition fairly well.  Rock Band has always been about that living room experience, and so long as you’re hanging out with other iPhone rockers you’ll be able to get the band back together flawlessly.  The game supports 4-person local multiplayer over bluetooth and wifi with each iPhone playing a different instrument in sync with the rest of the group.  Online multiplayer exists too, but it comes off feeling pretty pointless.  I challenge anyone to notice a difference between single player and online multi — the experiences are identical.

When playing in single player you’ll have the opportunity to jam on whichever instrument you choose, with each having it’s own individual note tracking just as Harmonix intended.  The gameplay itself isn’t without its flaws, though.  Each instrument offers up four tracks, unlike Tap Tap Revenge’s three.  This makes for tough times for the larger fingered among us, as trying to hit two notes side-by-side can just as easily spill over into the next note column.  It’s not a game-crippling issue, but it becomes pretty apparent that 4 note tracks is just too many for an iPhone music game.

The instruments themselves don’t vary as much as they do in the console version.  Removing concepts like the kick pedal and the whammy bar means that, despite different note tracking, each instrument feels pretty much identical to play.  The biggest disappointment here had to be the vocals, which — instead of offering up SingStar fanatics an opportunity to bust out our karaoke chops — just offered a vertical variation on note tracking.  Going vertical actually made the 4 tracks more user friendly than the other instruments, but I wanted to sing, dammit!  I can understand that requiring the mic to sing would have limited the available market for the game (1st gen Touch’s have no audio input), but it doesn’t seem fair to the rest of us to cripple the experience across the board.

We were also a little bummed to see that Rock Band didn’t take advantage of the franchise’s massive pre-existing music store, instead opting for an iPhone specific store that (as of this writing) offers only 11 downloadable tracks.  At least the 20 included tracks rock the casbah, offering a much better “big name” selection than TTR3.  Besides — any game that offers Freezepop’s Super Sprode as a downloadable track is a winner in my books.  B+

Winner: Tap Tap Revenge 3.

While the general vibe of the franchise is still in tact, there were simply far too many missed opportunities here to whole-heartedly recommend Rock Band over the competition.  Tap Tap has known what it’s doing since day one, and the experience is only getting better.  And to think — we made this decision without even beginning to factor the price disparity between the two into the mix!

Download Tap Tap Revenge 3 for free by clicking here, or buy Rock Band for $6.99 by clicking here.

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