The Rock Band games by Harmonix have always been favourites of mine, for those of your who have read my earlier review will know that I prefer the Rock Band series to the Guitar Hero series marginally mainly for their more, in my opinion, polished finished article. That and if you create characters in Rock Band they don’t all look like Heroin addicts in a hall of mirrors.

The bigger strength with the Rock Band games is the sheer multitude of the DLC available which gives it such an advantage over the Guitar Hero series, which instead will repackage another retail together rather than actually listen to the fans about what they want to play. However of late, the DLC for Rock Band has completely gone down the pan. As a member of the rock band community, well I registered for the profile on rockband.com, it gives you the opportunity to suggest what songs you would like to see as DLC. It’s just that it’s becoming apparent to me that these “suggestions” are just completely wafer just looks like a conduit for Harmonix to listen to the fans.

Since the turn of the year, the DLC has been bollocks, with myself a self-confessed DLC junkie having only downloaded a handful of tracks this year. From what I’ve gathered from the rock band community on the forums, the real hardcore players are like me and have very similar tastes in music to myself, which is why it’s all the more perplexing as to why we’re treated such crap which in the grand scheme of things doesn’t really fit into a Rock Band environment as it were. Casing point of this is Spongebob Squarepants. Now it’s very frustrating as big rock fan as to bewaiting for so long to see my favourite bands pop up to play but instead be treated to an annoying kids television character with a series of stupid songs. Another bone of contention for rock band was the big pack for Lady Gaga. Now I personally feel that that shit should be for Lips because that’s the sort of clientelle such genre of music will appeal to, same way that the Miley Cyrus pack is a joke.

Granted they have released packs from my favourite bands such as The Used, Avenged Sevenfold and Slipknot, but they’re more like one off packs, rather than the 500 songs packs for the Foo Fighters. I do like the Foo Fighters and Disturbed  but having pretty much every single song in their repertoire is a bit testing and I would fill up my entire hard drive with the discography from two bands. But then again the more mainstream bands have been overlooked, for me My Chemical Romance certainly should be available seeing that The Used and 30 Seconds To Mars have DLC, but not enough may I add.

And what’s with all the country music? It’s not Banjo Hero is it?!?!  Rock Band games are designed for having a great laugh in four player either all at your house or on Live but I can’t see people having a decent hoe-down in their living rooms, it’s constantly bad choices from the DLC committee there.

The Rock Band Network is a giant cop out too. In theory its a great idea but when you get other people, who have PAID a subscription to tab songs, badly may I add, and then CHARGE you for downloading it. It’s like receiving money for someone else doing your job, and it’s crap. I downloaded “Higher” by Creed because its a favourite song of mine, only to find some over-zealous tabbing making my fingers do a merry waltz at 800bpm in the style of a Dragonforce solo during fast forward. It’s mad!

Rock Band, sort your DLC out and put some decent rock music on. I’m fed up of shitty pop numbers and country music. And please no more Foo Fighters…