So… Took the day off from work, picked up the game from GameStop earlier in the afternoon. I’m gonna be brutally honest, please don’t hate my guts… I’m very disappointed so far with this game.

So far I’ve played it for about seven hours, so this is obviously a very early impression of the game, and on day one to boot, so things will likely improve. Also keep in mind that I’m playing with friends on the Xbox One, so these problems may or may not apply to you dependent on your set up.

First, what I do like:

– The UI is not much different from Rock Band 3 when you are in gameplay, and the chart runs at a very consistent 60 fps, which is great. Menus are simple, just like the past games.

– My friend brought over his band in a box, so we got to play the game both ways. The new guitar is not bad as far as build quality IMO, it seems to be fairly sturdy. The drums are alright too, the mic seems the same (I think it may be improved as far as the equipment, not sure the specs of it).

– The adapter for old instruments seems to work well, I noticed no issues with it (opposed to the new instruments other than the mic, which I’ll get to in a moment).

– Dynamic fills and improv solos are a nice new addition to the classic core gameplay mechanics. 

What I don’t like:

– The pre-show cutscenes aren’t even there anymore. The most story you really get is the menu text before being shoved into gameplay. I was disappointed by the slim amount of story telling in Rock Band 3, but this is worse so far.

– Character creation is stripped down quite a bit. No face paint, no tats. It SUCKS.

– On a similar note, having played an hour after my two friends left, it seems you can no longer assign your own created characters as stand ins as far as I can tell… that really sucks.

– Animations seem under-baked to me on most songs that I’ve watched the background on while not playing. They seem even downright unfinished on some songs (Halls of Valhalla and that one Protomen song that I can’t remember the name of right now, are by far the worst examples I’ve noticed so far when watching my buddies play while I took food and beer breaks). 

– The setlist is by far the weakest of the four for the most part. You can now improv solos but you don’t have many very good songs to do this with. This is going to be very subjective though, and the next issue is mainly why this is a big problem for me to start with.

– A LOT (at least 75%) of my old DLC isn’t loading into the game. For example… ALL of my Iron Maiden DLC is unavailable. Also, I’m noticing that some songs that I’ve already bought are asking me to buy them again. This will hopefully be fixed sooner than later.

– The new guitar and new drums have a lot of issues. The new guitar often just randomly drops out, despite having full charge. Both the guitar and drums will randomly not register strums/hits. This happens constantly for both instruments.

Basically, this game feels really rushed to me, which is a darn shame. It feels like they got the engine working alright on the new hardware, then rushed it out the door. I hope they iron out the issues, but for now, I’m gonna probably sell this game and buy something else. At this point in my life, I need a game I can play immediately after I get out of work without much trouble, and right now, Rock Band 4 doesn’t give me that. I’m sure I’ll pick the game up again some day and I’ll be happy with it, but for now, I need to pass. The DLC issue is what really broke the camels back. Once I know that that is completely fixed, then I may pick it up again, but I really like Rock Band 3 more as far as features and content right now.

Don’t get me wrong, we had some fun playing the game when we switched over to the old instruments, but we definitely wanted more from the setlist, and the new instruments being so buggy was especially disappointing.