We all know by now that the Guitar Hero and Rock Band video game franchises are a cruel joke played on the baby boomers. How torturous it must be for them to have lived through the magical era of the Beatles and protest songs and vinyl, only to watch their children play plastic instruments in front of a television screen. To make matters worse, any parents who pointed to the Teen rating any time their kids begged for a game must now come up with a new excuse not to buy “Lego Rock Band.”
It’s ironic that this blow to good, old-fashioned fun should come from Lego, which used to stand for building blocks and imagination. But there have already been “Lego Indiana Jones” and “Lego Star Wars” video games, so I guess it was only a matter of time before those little plastic men started rocking out with their C-shaped hands.
The basics of “Lego Rock Band” are the same as those of the regular series ““ players equip themselves with a plastic guitar, bass, microphone or drum kit and follow the notes transcribed on the screen. The regular games allow those of us with no musical talent whatsoever to impress our friends by playing a really sweet solo on expert.
The Lego version does not provide this same opportunity, because no one looks cool when your avatar is tiny and made of plastic blocks. I even dressed mine in a black T-shirt and studded jeans, which only made me look more ridiculous.
Of course, I am not the target audience for “Lego Rock Band.” This is a family game, meant to give parents and their children something they can play together. Early on in the game’s story mode, you are asked to demolish an old building with the power of rock ““ the Lego construction workers couldn’t destroy it with their dynamite, but play the song well enough and it’ll come crashing down.
The song list, though, is much more troubling than the misconceptions that scenario will undoubtedly give kids about physics. Just as “Guitar Hero II” reintroduced a whole new generation to Kansas and Iron Maiden, “Lego Rock Band” will give the young folks a taste of the tunes they missed out on.
But for every classic track in the game ““ Elton John’s “Crocodile Rock,” for instance ““ there’s a selection as inexplicable as Korn’s version of “Word Up!” Parents won’t know the song, and their kids won’t be old enough to explain why it was ever popular in the first place.
To be fair, most of the songs seem to have been chosen because they’re bouncy and fun to play. There’s more at stake here, though, than keeping the kids entertained. I fear for those children who first discover the band Queen when they play “We Will Rock You” on “Lego Rock Band.” After playing two notes over and over again for a minute and a half, they’re likely to decide that Queen is boring and cast the band aside.
And with only 45 songs in “Lego Rock Band” ““ “Rock Band 2″ has almost twice as many ““ the kids will be revisiting that Korn song quite a few times. You might as well wait a few years, then get them hooked on “Guitar Hero Metallica.”
““ Alex Goodman
E-mail Goodman at agoodman@media.ucla.edu.