Abyssal Pixels: Will Rhythm Games Still Be Relevant In This New Generation?

Rhythm games have probably been the reason why I didn’t have a very great sex life back in my teenage years. I sat in my room for over 8 hours, playing a plastic guitar to hell and back while mastering every song and rhythm game I could get my hands on. I got a set of drums later on as well and then went to task of mastering those as well. Barring my obsession with matching coloured buttons, it was also a great social experience with my friends that weren’t really that great with the plastic instruments. Yet, there was nothing like playing Yellow Submarine with a bunch of guys playing guitar humping me on the drums while we all sang the lyrics.

Now, rhythm games are a relic of a bygone age. Since Activision’s decision to punt literally two Guitar Hero games a year with only an updated setlist, the genre saw a sharp decline and massive loss of interest. YouTubers that made a career out of being incredible with plastic instruments have since been abandoned by everyone and are now a shell of their former self. The only place you’ll find plastic instruments is in pawn shops and the games have become collector’s items because you just do not find them anymore.

However, it seems rhythm games are making a comeback in this new generation. Rock Band 4 was announced seemingly out of nowhere, promising that we can use our old dusty instruments and importing all of our DLC to our new generation of consoles. Added to that, it is rumoured that Guitar Hero is making a return as well. Suddenly, rhythm games are coming back, but my issue is this: how will they still remain relevant at all?

Rock Band 3 had everything a rhythm game fan would want. A library of over 2000 songs, instruments that worked great, an interface that would stand the test of time and mechanics that have been perfected. Where do you logically go from there? It’s been five years, granted, but I don’t see where they can make enough changes to justify a new rhythm game in this day and age.

An alternative way to look at it is that Rock Band 4 is a remaster of Rock Band 3 for the new generation of consoles. If they come through on their promise to allow you to import all of your DLC and play with old instruments, it really can just be seen as a sort of update to the franchise. There will be a new coat of paint and even a reimagining of the game’s classic visual style, but the mechanics would remain much the same, one would assume.

Harmonix have already perfected their mechanics and so on and there doesn’t seem to be any innovation left to be discovered. The concepts for the new instruments also tell us that the formula will remain much the same with the five button input and so on. But why do this when we can easily just play Rock Band 3 without issue on our old consoles with all of our DLC? I frankly have no idea why, but I think it’s nostalgia that is making them refresh the franchise.

It’s been years since I’ve played a rhythm game and I have since moved on from the plastic guitar to the real guitar with Rocksmith 2014 and have become rather good at it, if I do say so myself. But I do miss my little plastic guitar from time to time and my clicky drums that have basically taught me how to play drums. It’s a nostalgia trip at this point and something that can be quite enjoyable to relive. There’s also the social aspect that is unique to Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Sure you can play real instruments with people, but they are expensive and it’s a massive time investment. With Rock Band, you and your friends can fire up some classic tunes and play for a while, and they can change their difficulty so that they won’t struggle as much.

While I still question the relevancy of Rock Band is this new generation, it would be nice to revisit a lost obsession of mine for a little while and I think that’s the same for a lot of people. More drunken nights trying to play Free Bird certainly wouldn’t hurt.

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