Green Day: Rock Band is a 2010 rhythm game developed by Harmonix, published by MTV Games, and distributed by Electronic Arts. It is the sixth console installment in the Rock Band series and the second band-centric game, following The Beatles: Rock Band (2009). It allows players to simulate rock music by using controllers shaped like musical instruments. The game's setlist consists of songs by American rock band Green Day. Rock Band features virtual depictions of the three band members performing the songs in new venues designed for the game.
The game incorporates existing Green Day songs already released for the Rock Band series as downloadable content, and allows players to export its full track list to the other Rock Band game titles except The Beatles: Rock Band. A free playable demo for the game was made available on May 25, 2010 for the Xbox Live Marketplace and on May 27, 2010 for the PlayStation Network. The demo features full, playable versions of two songs from the game, "Welcome to Paradise" and "Boulevard of Broken Dreams".
Gameplay
Green Day: Rock Band allows players to perform simulated rock music by providing up to four players with the ability to play three different controllers modeled after music instruments: a guitar controller for lead guitar and bass guitar gameplay, a drum controller and a microphone for vocals. Players simulate performances by using their controllers to play scrolling notes. For lead and bass guitar, this is accomplished by holding down colored buttons mimicking guitar frets and pushing the controller's strum bar. For drums, this requires striking the matching colored drumhead, or stepping on the pedal to simulate playing bass drum notes. When singing vocals, the player must sing in relative pitch to the original vocals. A pitch indicator displays the singer's accuracy relative to the original pitch. The game supports harmonies as introduced in The Beatles: Rock Band, allowing multiple singers to perform the vocal portion. Harmonies will be added to the six songs already available as downloadable content for the game when played in Green Day: Rock Band.
As in previous Rock Band games, successfully hitting the proper notes in sequence earns points for each player and boosts their "performance meter". If a player fails to match the notes, their performance meter drops. If the meter empties, that player is forced to drop out of play, temporarily silencing that instrument and causing the band's overall performance to drop. Any player to drop out can be "saved" if another player activates "Overdrive", which is collected by successfully completing specially-marked phrases, and for guitar and bass players, using the controller's whammy bar to alter the pitch of marked sustained notes. Overdrive can also be used to temporarily increase the number of points the band earns. Activating Overdrive is specific to each "instrument". For guitar, the controller must be temporarily shifted to an upright position; for drums, a specific drumhead must be hit at the end of a drum fill when prompted; and for vocals, a noise must be registered by the microphone when prompted. The game does not feature any "Big Rock Endings", which allowed players to improvise at the end of a song for additional scoring as in the other Rock Band games, nor includes any clapping or tambourine sections for the vocalist player, due to lack of places in Green Day's songs to include the features. Immediately before playing a song, players must choose their difficulty level; ranging from "Easy" to "Expert". A "No Fail" mode has been carried over from Rock Band 2 and is accessible from the difficulty menu. Players are also able to identify their handedness for guitar, bass, or drums before the start or during a song via the game's "pause" menu. Upon completing a song, the players are given a star rating, from 1 to 5 stars, or 5 gold stars for very high scores if all band members are playing on Expert.
Green Day: Rock Band features a Career mode, similar to The Beatles: Rock Band. However, it allows the player to immediately select any of the available songs and records to play from the start instead of stepping through specific sets. The Career mode has a "meta-game" through various challenges that subsequently unlock additional rewards (photographs or videos contained on disc), such as by completing every song in a specific set with a 4-star rating or higher. Some challenges require the players' band to earn enough "cred" to unlock them; these additional challenges three or four song challenges built around certain themes. A Quick play mode allows players to select one of more of the songs available to the game to play outside of Career mode. A drum trainer mode is available to help players become accustomed to the instrument controller. The trainer includes a set of stock rhythms that are generic for most songs, and a set of "Tre's Greatest Hits" with drum patterns and solos taken from Tré Cool's performances, including one "ferocious" solo that runs across two different lessons.
Instrument peripherals
All available Rock Band peripherals are compatible with their respective console version of Green Day: Rock Band. Some controllers designed for Guitar Hero games also work with Green Day: Rock Band. While The Beatles: Rock Band received unique instruments bundled with the release, Green Day: Rock Band is a software only release and is not bundled with instruments of its own.
Development
Prior to mid-2009, only some music from Warner Music Group (which includes Green Day's label, Reprise Records) had been included in games like Guitar Hero or Rock Band, with the gaming industry believing that the music publisher was boycotting the music game genre over how little money they saw from the sales of the game. However, Warner Music Group and MTV Games stated that the lack of songs from the publisher was due to current negotiations over new licensing costs. The two companies had reached a deal by June 2009, when a downloadable pack of Green Day songs was made available to the Rock Band series, heralded by both companies.
With the release of the song pack, speculation arose about more band-specific Rock Band titles to accompany The Beatles: Rock Band, and Green Day was mentioned among them most often. Though this was denied, MTV and Harmonix, the team who worked on all Rock Band titles, stated that they were working with a few artists and announcements were to be made soon. This was followed by Green Day's frontman Billie Joe Armstrong leaking that the band was working on a Rock Band project, but details were scarce. This was originally thought to be a track pack disc similar to the AC/DC Live: Rock Band Track Pack or another pack of downloadable songs.
Drummer Tré Cool later confirmed that the band was approached by Harmonix during the development of The Beatles: Rock Band for the band-specific game, while Armstrong stated they first experienced a Rock Band game, specifically The Beatles: Rock Band, at a cast party for the American Idiot musical performance in Berkeley, California. The game was formally unveiled on December 12, 2009 at the Spike TV Video Game Awards 2009. Green Day announced the game via a video and showed the first trailer. A subsequent press release by MTV Games confirmed that the game would arrive on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii with the entire setlist being exportable to other Rock Band titles. A 2010 release date was also stated. In addition, previous Green Day downloadable songs released for Rock Band and Rock Band 2 would be included in the game as well.
Paul DeGooyer, Senior Vice President of MTV Games, stated that Green Day was selected as the next band to focus on due to input from fans of the game. DeGooyer also claimed that the band's music lent itself well to the format, as the music is both "fun to play" and also covers a range of genres from the band's early days in punk rock to their modern, alternative-based works. MTV Games' Global Head of Sales Scott Guthrie believed the band had a larger awareness for their target market (16- to 34-year-old males) than The Beatles, and expected Green Day: Rock Band would see better sales as a result.
Harmonix's Chris Foster noted that the opportunity for making a Green Day-specific game was a matter of happenstance; at the same time they had completed The Beatles: Rock Band and were considering another band-centric game, the licensing deal with Warner Bros. Records presented the opportunity to include a large amount of Green Day's work into the Rock Band series. The Harmonix team felt it best to provide this as a stand-alone game as opposed to large DLC packs. The full game would also allow the developers to capture the "energy" of the band's members, Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tré Cool, as they perform their songs. Armstrong noted that Green Day was approached "a long time ago by people who will remain anonymous" near the time of release of American Idiot, prior to the popularity of rhythm games, but declined, believing it "didn't feel right" due to the "cutthroat" nature of the video game industry at that point.
Music selection The game is the first Harmonix game to feature a full album in the game as shipped, with the entirety of American Idiot, Dookie (except for hidden track "All By Myself"), and 21st Century Breakdown being playable. The inclusion of the full album of American Idiot was the centerpiece of the game's development, according to Harmonix' Chris Foster, due in part to the thematic nature of the album which is meant to be listened as a whole, as well as the album's success and Broadway musical. This led the team to also including 21st Century Breakdown, an album similar to American Idiot that is meant to be heard as one complete work; as Harmonix had already released six songs from the album as downloadable content, they did not want to make those that had purchased the songs have to pay for them again in the full game, and instead designed the game to immediately incorporate those songs into the game if the player had already purchased them. Once these two albums were selected, Harmonix' CEO Alex Rigopulos determined that they needed to include the full Dookie album, the major label debut of the band and one of the most requested albums by Rock Band fans, in order to complete the experience. Though Harmonix had considered including material from the earliest Green Day albums, 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours and Kerplunk, master multi-track recordings required by the Rock Band game engine to provide proper feedback when playing were not readily available. According to Cool, while the master tapes for Kerplunk exist, they are in poor shape and the process to digitize them would destroy the tape; as such, Cool stated "We're making sure we have the right dudes to do it" as potential future downloadable content for the game. Harmonix opted against using live versions of songs on these albums, feeling that the game needed to stay with the studio versions of the songs. Once Harmonix had selected to focus on the three albums, they decided against including any additional non-Green Day songs, instead focusing on rounding out the group's history to present a complete Green Day experience.