Very fun decision of Harmonix/Backbone to revisit mechanics from Harmonix's first game, Frequency, in order to bring Rock Band to portables. Here, you switch between playing vocals, guitar, bass, and drums, using 4 buttons on the PSP. Every time you complete a successful sequence in one instrument, it begins to play itself automatically for a while, allowing you to go to another track. I think this is a great idea in terms of how to play a Rock Band with only controller buttons, even if remembering which button maps to which note can be tricky at first. It's like rhythm game resource management when songs get harder, having to decide where to go next, how to handle mistakes, and where to use your overdrive. I also really like how going to one track makes that part of the song louder, it genuinely makes the game an interesting analysis of each song and all its parts. This is a pretty basic observation, but you really don't realize how hard the bass carries a song until you play it yourself (and when you fuck up and it's no longer in a song). You can also feel how each different instrument has its own style of play through the structure of their tracks. Drum tracks are very recognizably rhythmic, and contrast with vocal tracks which are always highly melodic and always doing their own thing outside of the rest of the instruments. Again, a very basic observation but it's fun to have a game put thoughts like these at the front, playing long enough breaks down the formula of writing a rock song pretty well.

I played mostly on medium since drums on hard was always way too much for me to handle (drummers deserve some kind of medal I had no idea how scary it is being a drummer). Tour mode is also a little too repetitive, especially early on when there's only like 3-5 songs to switch between playing, and all the mechanics around making money or fans never really felt important to me. It's really mostly "play different songs or setlists until you unlock the next thing", which is fine for the pick-up-and-play style of gaming that portable games tend to have, but just not that substantive. But overall I was pretty happy to check this out, it's a good time. It also has Rock Your Socks by Tenacious D with all the swearing censored, but the "squeeze out a cleveland steamer on my chest" line still got through, great stuff.