Forget that evil Orange button and say hello to the L and R buttons.  That’s right … we got our hands on Rockband Unplugged the new addition to the Rockband franchise, this one is for the PSP.  Personally I love rhythm games, especially on the PSP.   One, cause its portable, two cause well its Rockband.

Rockband Unplugged can be best compared with DJ Max Portable and Amplitude. Rockband Unplugged has a mix of songs from both Rockband 1 and 2, with some new songs trickled in there (like Freezepop *swoons*).  It seems that there will be DLC for this title as well, as suggested by the MUSIC STORE option on the Main Menu.

When you start the tour, you have only four options of where to start, there’s no NY love this time.  You get a choice of Amsterdam, San Fran, Chicago, and Dublin.   After you pick your hometown, you do the usual band setup (hair, name, instruments, skin color, etc).  Customize all the band members, that’s right, you play all of the characters!  I had fun with my band adding Dre, our daughter Maddie, and then some random character, the band’s name is The Pimps of Scooby!  Oh yes, we are PIMP!

Playing through the songs are fairly easy if you are good at rhythm games, like DJ Max Portable.  Me I went straight for Hard, gameplay for the songs is fairly straight forward, there are four bars across the screen, vocals, drums, bass, and guitar.  To play the notes you have RED (left), YELLOW (up), GREEN (triangle) and BLUE (circle), to get Overdrive you can either hit DOWN or X.  To move from track to track, you use the L and R buttons. You play a section of the song, for each instrument, and then when its completed a “PHASE” you move to the next section.  The “PHASE” of each instruments allows the user to play another area while the instrument just played plays automatically for awhile.

All the great features are jammed into this title as well, you still have employees, extras that can benefit the band (like benefit concerts for more fans) and there are plenty of setlists in each area.

Another great feature they’ve added is WARM UP MODE, via the extras menu.  This mode allows you to just play one instrument or move around as you please without worrying about the PHASES of each instrument.  I had a lot of fun with the WARM UP MODE, I was having fun with that doing EXPERT and just focusing one area rather than jumping around a lot.  The only thing with WARM UP MODE is that if there is a solo in the song, which is usually all the songs, you have to do those areas even if you don’t want to.

Great thing about the extras also is that you can unlock all the songs from the get go!  It’s a shame though that the song list is kinda short I expected more, but I guess that’s what the MUSIC STORE is going to be for.

The only thing that I would like to have seen is possibly multiplayer, so that each person could play one part of the band, that would be great at least if it was Ad-Hoc!  I would love to get some band sessions going at a meetup, especially with TPN crew (The PSP Nation).

Only time will tell … it’s only a few short weeks away!!