ปลดปล่อยอารมณ์ดนตรีร็อกที่อยู่ในภายในตัวคุณไปกับ ROCK REVOLUTION เกมส์แนวดนตรีที่จะให้คุณได้สวมบทบาทเป็นมือกลองหรือมือกีตาร์ และสร้างมิวสิคในแบบฉบับของคุณเอง

If Rock Revolution had released before the first  Rock Band, I might've been content. It's a natural extension of GuitarFreaks and DrumMania (a pair of Konami arcade rhythm games that let you play along with J-pop tunes on guitar and drums, respectively), and it offers you the chance to rock out, Konami-style, without having to go all the way to a Japanese arcade. Instead, Revolution feels like it was released from the bowels of a time vacuum where Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero  did a great job and won over a lot of new fans -- myself included. Later, Rock Band filled in the missing pieces with microphone and drum peripherals. Still, I was genuinely excited for Rock Revolution -- the development team promised to craft an even better drum peripheral, and they presumably had time to fix Rock Band's minor flaws. 

Unfortunately, Revolution's biggest misstep is the drum kit itself. In DrumMania, the kit's spread out in an approximation of a real drum setup. In contrast, Revolution's Hasbro-inspired set is intimidating to look at, the small, cramped pads are difficult to hit, and the game forces you to cross your sticks to effectively maintain the beat. Your right hand will beat out a steady rhythm on the far left pad while your left hand plays the simpler rhythms on the right side (or vice versa, depending on your dominant hand). It should feel more like a real drum set, but trying to cross sticks results in either constantly smacking them together or winding up in a contorted, uncomfortable playing position.

Another drum-related frustration's a holdover from the DrumMania days: The bass pedal's a separate onscreen button. Rock Band and World Tour both use a vertical bar spread across the notes to distinguish the bass pedal, so no matter where you're looking, it stands out. The extra seventh button on the already crowded Revolution screen makes the game unnecessarily difficult -- and completely unintuitive for beginners. Those seven buttons can be changed to five in the options menu (effectively removing the grey and purple "cymbals"), but that reduces the difficulty dramatically and makes the drum set feel even less natural. 

Normally, graphics don't matter in music games, but Revolution puts together a terrible-looking package. The main characters don't look too bad, despite their jagginess, but their lifeless movements only occasionally match the music. And the audience is almost offensively poor -- for every venue, the same clump of five characters are just copied and pasted across the arena. They all enact the exact same animation, at the exact same time -- it not only detracts from the game's overall aesthetic, it looks lazy.

Revolution's set list consists entirely of covers -- that's disappointing, but it doesn't have to be a bad thing. Independent, game-specific tracks are a normal part of other Konami music games, and both Guitar Hero and Rock Band used in-house bands to pad out their track listings. Revolution, conversely, proffers the bare minimum in terms of track number and quality; its limited 41-song selection ranges from pretty decent (Joan Jett's "Bad Reputation") to pretty bad (System of a Down's "Chop Suey!"). I would've rather played original instrumental compositions and licensed, game-optimized Konami tracks than slog through set after set of so-so covers. 

Speaking of slogging, Revolution offers no incentive to advance through the career mode besides unlocking a few fairly bland-looking bonus characters. No narrative exists -- you're just a band playing songs from your latest record. There's no character creator, no karaoke singing, and the multiplayer modes feel tacked on out of necessity. The game doesn't even have a dedicated guitar peripheral. If you want to play guitar or bass, you'll have to rely on Rock Band, Guitar Hero, or another third party company to supply the equipment. Coming on the heels of the recently released Rock Band 2, it's a step backward in almost every way.

Revolution's only real fun is the "studio." You can alter the sound of the guitars and drums, add fills, and record an impromptu or scripted jam session. It's more fleshed out than the main game, and I can't help but wonder how much better the overall experience might've been with that kind of freedom within the core game. Even Avril Lavigne's "Sk8er Boi" could've been a blast with a banjo and a funky drum backbeat. But Guitar Hero: World Tour (which hits later this month) has already promised to take the same idea one step further -- not only will you be able to do the same freestyle jamming, but you'll also be able to create your own playable tracks and share them with other users online.

It's easy to see what Revolution wanted to do -- and, in theory, it should've worked. But the inadequate drum peripheral and minimal extra content expose the fact that development's been problematic since day one. Konami's always been synonymous with awesome rhythm games, but with Rock Revolution, the rock crown and scepter have officially been passed to a new generation of games.