Vocals
While we suspect there will be a lot of overlap between people hooked on the guitar and drums in Rock Band, we're guessing the singing aspects may attract a completely different brand of gamer.
With an interface that closely resembles that of Karaoke Revolution, lyrics scroll across the screen and you're rated not per note, but by how well you sing each complete phrase. If you can fill the meter underneath the lyric bar during each phrase, you'll get an "Awesome" rating, which you'll need to either begin or continue a streak; get anything less and you'll get a rating like "Weak" or "Strong" and the streak will break.
While the drumming and guitar elements of the game are pretty straightforward, the vocals can be "gamed" to some extent. You can sing an octave higher or lower if needed and still get credit for hitting a note properly, and you can slide up to a note by singing a little early and then matching the arrow in the lyric bar to the upcoming lyric. This is a good thing, as you can't just sightread the lyrics: the bar only shows relative pitch, so you have to be familiar with the songs to know what notes to hit.
As a result, some of the hardest phrases to hit aren't regular verses or choruses, but random scatting that might happen at various times. I've heard "Black Hole Sun" a hundred times and one phrase continually keeps me from getting 100% on Expert: a long climbing shriek during the solo. You'll quickly discover parts of songs you never knew existed, like a ton of vocal freestyling at the end of "Long Time."
We're also still trying to figure out how the "rapping" portions work. Songs like "Epic" or "Sabotage" are loaded with parts that, in theory, you only need to speak the lyrics to, but they consistently trip us up. It's a little frustrating when you've got a perfect run going in "Wanted Dead or Alive," and break it because we can't yell "yeah!" properly before the solo.
As with the other instruments, you can accumulate energy by getting "Awesome" ratings on key phrases. Once you have at least a half bar, you can activate Overdrive by singing or yelling during special golden sections that pop up in empty sections. These windows can sometimes be pretty small, so sneaking in Overdrive activations can sometimes be tricky. There are also special percussion sections where you simulate using a cowbell or tambourine by tapping the microphone; if you're serious about your vocals, we've found that holding a real cowbell to the mic and hitting it with a drumstick will register as a hit, so feel free to knock yourself out.
The Rock Band bundle ships with a proper USB microphone, which sounds decent if you're hooked up to a solid sound system. The game adds some mild reverb and delay effects to your voice, but if you still can't stand the sound of your voice, you can use a gamepad to adjust the volume of the original vocal, your own singing or the mic sensitivity on the fly. This should go a long way towards helping reluctant singers get over potential shyness, as you can crank up the game vocals and drown out your own voice.
The nice thing about the vocals is that they're pretty forgiving on the lower difficulties; as long as you have any idea how a song goes, you should be able to fumble your way through. The flip side is that if you've never heard a song before, failing on Easy is more than possible. Our issues with the "talking" sections aside, there seems to be a sweet spot on the Hard difficulty where you need to be pretty accurate but 100% is still extremely doable; on the Expert difficulty, you need to be pinpoint-accurate and hold every note to its maximum in order to fill up the accuracy meter, which will give pros something to shoot for.
The Karaoke Revolution games were always more party-oriented than competitive scoring games, but in the context of Rock Band we're guessing a lot of gamers will suddenly feel compelled to sing tunes repeatedly in search of a top spot on the leaderboards.
