Edible Apple

Not too long ago, we reported that EA Mobile was on the verge of releasing an iPhone version of the popular console and music oriented video game, Rock Band.  Well that day has finally arrived, and despite offering a plethora of good and varied music (indlucing songs from the Beastie Boys, Blink 182, Blondie, and The Smashing Pumpkins), initial reviews of the relatively expensive $9.99 game have been less than enthusiastic.

TUAW writes this game seems to be an unsucessful attempt from EA to cash in on the popular Tap Tap Revenge series, and that customers would be well-advised to wait for an inevitable price drop before forking over 10 bucks.

… the draw of Rock Band has been getting together with your friends and jamming out the hits on those fake instruments, and touching a button-less screen by yourself doesn’t have the same effect. Singing is included, but you’re still just tapping out notes for that — it seems like they missed a lot of potential fun there. And even some of the fun things from the console version like the drum fills for overdrive and the character avatars are missing here.

CNET, meanwhile, writes that Rock Band “doesn’t exactly rock.”

As for multiplayer, you can jam with up to three other players, just like in the real Rock Band–but only over Bluetooth. That’s inconvenient, to say the least. Why no support for Internet multiplayer like in Tap Tap Revenge 3?

My main disappoint lies with the vocal aspect of the game: there isn’t one. Granted, you can choose to play vocals, just like you can guitar, bass, and drums, but you don’t actually sing–you just tap pedals on the left side of the screen.

With Tap Tap Revenge coming in at a much more affordable price point of $0.99, EA really had to bring their A game when they released Rock Band for $10 if they wanted to actually compete, and from the looks of initial reviews, they mailed this one in.