It seems like everyone is branching out into LEGO games in order to just that younger fan base of gamers who don’t rely on fancy graphics and gory gameplay to satisfy their gaming needs, and the LEGO Star Wars and other franchises have been quite successful, rendering their characters and worlds into LEGO characters instead of something that resembles real people. And now the time has come to Rock Band, with the aptly titled LEGO Rock Band. And yes, it’s exactly what you might expect from it.

Besides Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Batman — all action games — LEGO Rock Band is on the easy side of gameplay. It feature the tried and tested formula from Rock Band and other rhythm games, and includes LEGO characters, which can be highly customized, but still, of course, they’re plastic LEGOs. The game has a great feel of LEGOs, and you’ll be seeing the famous blocks everywhere, from sets, to menus and animations. However, one thing becomes clear very early on: if you’ve played and/or own Rock Band, there’s nothing new in the LEGO version. The gameplay is almost identical, so is the system, the challenges and virtually everything else. Before starting a game, you can chose to play a shorter version of the song, if you easily get tired from hitting notes constantly for 4+ minutes on some of the songs — which does get tedious after all. However, don’t expect a slimmed down, alternate edition of the songs, rather, most of them just end quite abruptly.

The story, what of it is present, is the usual “hero rises to the top” type, seeing everywhere from sports games to action RPGs, and it follows the same points in LEGO Rock Band. Your character starts by trying out for a band, then plays a few gigs and so on, all story elements are told in a few cut scenes, but it’s rather vague and only serves as a purpose to connect the levels and challenges together. However, something is always better than nothing in this case. One of the new features in the game, while vague, is the “in-game challenges”. For instance, at one point, you’ll be playing on an old ship that is under attack by a giant octopus, and you have to hit the notes and use the music to fight off the attacking monster. It’s a nice touch, but doesn’t add anything in particular, and doesn’t affect the challenge of the gameplay. It’s just something that happens in the background.

The 45 tracks featured in the game are varied and fit it well (at least for the target audience), and include classics such as “The Final Countdown” and a bunch of pop bands that can’t really be identified as true “rock”. And if you’re not into the LEGO version of the game, you can copy the songs to regular Rock Band, however, expect to pay $10 for the privilege. You can purchase more songs online, but the selection is rather limited at this time, at least compared to regular Rock Band. Overall, LEGO Rock Band is definitely geared as the family/casual/young gamers, and, above all, just seems like a way for the publisher to nab another age group with the Rock Band hype. However, it’s still fun to play with friends if you haven’t tried Rock Band, despite the LEGO version not having any competitive or online multiplayer, which, frankly, sucks.

The Good:
LEGOs are cute as always
Decent track selection

The Bad:
Not much new compared to regular Rock Band
No online multiplayer
No competitive multiplayer
“Export” feature costs $10

Overall score: 5/10