AC/DC Live: Rock Band Track Pack review

AC/DC Live is the laziest title we%26rsquo;ve played in a long while. It%26rsquo;s the ultimate in barebones gaming; just eighteen songs and virtually nothing else. There's no band involvement a la Guitar Hero: Aerosmith; there areno interviews; no documentaries%26hellip; AC/DC themselves don%26rsquo;t even make an appearance, in person or in digital form. Fan service? Hardly.

Adding insult to injury, AC/DC Live falls back on Rock Band%26rsquo;s mechanics instead of RB2%26rsquo;s. Career mode is segregated into solo and multi-play rather than the drop in/drop out progression tree which should now be the standard. The ability to import your existing band would have been welcome, but even that%26rsquo;s not an option here. Nor is choosing your character. Turn the game on and you%26rsquo;re thrown into a generic band of chumpheads. Which schmucks do you play as online, we hear you say? Well, astonishingly, there isn%26rsquo;t any online component. At all.

Rock Band connoisseurs will find the lack of features appalling, especially for a game marketed towards AC/DC fans. At least the music itself is a perfect fit for Rock Band%26rsquo;s template, and Harmonix%26rsquo;s superior note chart patterns continue to shine through. As a track pack, AC/DC Live is a great success.

The price tag, however, soon erases any smiles. Thirty bucks is a big price tag for 18 songs, and the ability to input them all into Rock Band 2 means the standalone game is redundant. This release marks a step back for Harmonix to the days before DLC became a viable content expansion option. We recommend the track list to any AC/DC freaks out there, but this type of retail release shouldn%26rsquo;t be encouraged. AC/DC we salute you. Harmonix: you should know better.

Jan 5, 2009