The music game genre has been around now for a long time and has gone through many iterations. There have been controller based games, dance pad games, and even plastic instrument games. Now, Harmonix, the team responsible for the plastic instrument subsection of the genre goes back to its roots with Rock Band Blitz. Rock Band Blitz is a controller based rhythm game that isn’t just a rehash of Harmonix’s classic Frequency though. It is a compilation of all that the company has learned from and grown with since they embarked in to the world of gaming and music in 1995.

The Long . . .

The first thing you are going to notice is that Rock Band Blitz isn’t your standard rhythm game where the goal is to hit 100% of the notes on screen. In fact, it is impossible to do so. The reason is because Rock Band Blitz is designed to let players choose their path for which notes they want to play. Instead of a note highway assigned to each different player’s instrument, Rock Band Blitz is a one player game with four or five lanes all running next to each other. The player must make choices on which path to take to hit the most possible notes to get the highest score.

The note highway consists of four or five lanes, depending on the song. Each lane only has two notes that can flow down it at once though, a right or left note. It seems simple enough… until you see the four other lanes of notes passing by. This is where the strategy kicks in quick and gives Rock Band Blitz its legs.

A few weeks ago, we reviewed Rock Band 3, letting you all know it still holds the title for the best party band game by far.  One of our reasons for this is because of the ever expanding library of music constantly being added to it. Now, we mentioned we are going to be having a live event in Connecticut with some Rock Band 3 prizes coming up in December but until then we have some awesome DLC codes to give away for any Rock Band 3 owners over our twitter.

With the help of Harmonix’s own @HMXhenry we have acquired four codes to giveaway Bon Jovi’s Greatest Hits packs for the XBox 360. The packs include three revamped Rock Band 3 pro guitar versions of “Livin’ on a Prayer”, “You Give Love a Bad Name” and “Wanted Dead or Alive” in addition to nine new songs never before seen in the Rock Band series.

Check out the full list, and get the giveaway times after the jump.

*** Note – The following Rock Band 3 review does not formally review the Keyboard, the Pro Guitar peripherals or Pro Mode since they were not available to us at the time of the review. This has been reflected in the review score.***

Harmonix began taking the music genre by storm with their work on the initial Guitar Hero. After parting ways from Activision, they took the game to the next level by making drums and vocals the new standard.

They also came up with the idea of the Rock Band franchise as a platform rather than an annualized release like Guitar Hero has taken (Guitar Hero being on their sixth consecutive yearly release with Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock) After two years since Rock Band 2, Harmonix looked to step up their game by adding an additional instrument in the keyboard to the band mix as well as a Pro mode to help players learn how to play guitar, drums and keyboard using music in the game.

They also took concepts from other spinoff titles such as Rock Band: Green Day like vocal harmonies and brought them to the fold as well.

Gameplay:

Not much has changed for Rock Band 3 for the standard band format. Two guitars and a drum set each have a cascading highway of notes down the screen as the vocals scroll across the top.

There is now of course the substitution of a new instrument in the keyboard which can even be used to play the guitar parts of older Rock Band music that hasn’t gotten the keyboard face lift.

Apologies to all but the rigors of E3 and some technical glitches means the podcast is coming out today instead of yesterday. Still, better late then never, right? Anyway, on with the show.

This week on The Flickcast Chris and Matt are joined by games editor John Carle to talk all-things Electronic Entertainment Expo. With E3 in full swing the boys have lots to discuss including all the news and announcements from Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony as well as  thoughts and observations about upcoming games, the Kinect, Sony’s Move and the Activision preview event/concert complete with indoor fireworks.

Your hosts also made some great picks this week and in keeping with the E3 theme, all of them picked a game or technology they were most interested in or excited about from the show. John picked Marvel vs. Capcom 3 while Matt decided to choose Portal 2 and Chris took the somewhat obvious choice of Call of Duty: Black Ops.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook and MySpace or via email.

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Video games are a big part of the world these days. People love them and they far surpass pretty much any other form of entertainment in terms of revenue. Yes, they even beat the movies. One of the most popular game titles to hit stores in the last few years has been the Rock Band franchise. Rock Band 1 and 2 have sold millions of copies and now Rock Band 3 has been announced and looks to add millions more units sold to that already impressive total for the franchise.

Some of the new features and tracks announced for Rock Band 3 include access to the most music available in any video game with more than 1,500 tracks and growing, a new keyboard gameplay and three-part harmonies for up to seven players rocking together, Rock Band Pro Mode and much more. We could go into all the new features and song that will encompass Rock Band 3 but instead, why not hear it directly from the people who are bringing you the game. So, here’s all the info directly from an official Rock Band 3 press release. Oh, and at the end we’ve also included a couple preview videos for the game as well so be sure and check them out.

The Most Music. Period.

The Rock Band 3 disc soundtrack contains 83 of the best bands from around the world, including bands that have never appeared in a music game, as well as support for existing Rock Band tracks (Rock Band and Rock Band 2 discs, downloaded songs, track packs, AC/DC Live: Rock Band™ Track Pack, LEGO® Rock Band and Green Day: Rock Band™).
Additionally, Rock Band 3 will give players immediate access to a music library approaching 2,000 songs by launch, with new content added regularly. Rock Band’s gigantic music selection dwarfs that of any other music game on the market.