BandFuse: Rock Legends Hands On

Developer: Realta Entertainment Group / Publisher: Mastiff Games / Played on: Xbox 360

I know what you’re thinking, because I was thinking it too.

“Oh look, another music game you can play with a real guitar. Like Rock Band 3. And Rocksmith. And Power Gig.”

So I’ll skip right to the important question — what makes BandFuse any different? More importantly, if you’re an aspiring musician that has yet to sink money into any of the above options, what about BandFuse would push you over the edge? The answer comes in three parts: first; the game uses straight guitar tablature instead of scrolling notes to teach you how to play, second; this game can use any guitar with a pickup and a 1/4″ jack, and third; there’s some real marketing muscle behind this game.

Guitar tablature is the go-to method for writing out guitar music. If you’re unfamiliar, this is how it works. Rather than typical sheet music, guitar tab has six lines that correspond to the six strings on a guitar. Numbers on those lines indicate when and which fret you need to hold on the neck to play the corresponding note. It’s the standard for guitar notation, which makes BandFuse more useful as an educational tool.

In BandFuse, the note highway is horizontal across the bottom of the screen as opposed to its usual vertical orientation. Numbers stroll along the six “lanes” or “strings,” each of which must be played when it hits the timing marker on the left. The setup will be immediately familiar to anyone that has a passing familiarity with music games or guitar tab, which means the game teaches you transferable skills. If you’re used to reading tab, this game will come naturally for you. Conversely, you can spend time with this game and take that to normal guitar tab.

I had my time in a shitty high school band and played around with guitar through college, so I felt at home with the game’s notation. Of course, my skill on the six string is equivalent to that guy who piddles through the first ten seconds of a Metallica song in the cafeteria at lunch over and over again, so I was in way over my head with the game’s harder tracks. Still, I still felt like I was just on the edge of performing these songs for real.

Similar to the trio of real-guitar-games listed above, the guitar you hear through the game is your playing. Instead of detecting your press and playing a pre-recorded note, BandFuse just gives you a backing track and leaves you to play along. That means that latency will be less of a factor — it’s not about recreating the illusion of playing a guitar, it’s about actually playing guitar.

That’s why, like Rocksmith, BandFuse will work with any standard guitar pickup. At the demo they had prototype cords that adapted 1/4″ audio pickup to USB, plugging right into the front of the 360. Again similar to Rocksmith, the game boasts polyphonic detection meaning that it can separate out the chords you play to detect which notes are right and which are wrong. The game also scores tone and timing separately; if you hit the right note a little late or if you hit the wrong note on time, you’ll still come out better than doing nothing at all. I didn’t put the game’s accuracy through the ringer since it’s still very early in development, but it seemed on top of its judgments.

Finally, BandFuse is a bit of a wildcard because I get the impression it has very strong business ties. That much is apparent from the industry figures attending the preview event. Slash, former Guns ‘N Roses lead guitarist, will be featured in the game as a “Master Guitar Instructor” and was on hand to share his impressions of the game.

“It seems like a lot of people want to be able to play an instrument but they don’t want to put the work in to have to do that,” Slash said. “This takes a lot of the studious side out of it and just makes it more of a fun thing to do. All the sudden, you find out at the end of the day that you learned how to play something.”

Slash’s involvement with the game originated with Relativity Media, a motion picture investment firm that has an impressive resume in the movie industry. While I’m not an industry analyst, I understand that they have connections and money – the two things that could amount to something very special for BandFuse. What that something will become is totally up in the air, though. As the game is still a ways from release, the particulars of whatever business dealings they’re working out are still in flux, meaning they can’t be announced. Randall Cox, President of Relativity subsidiary Rogue Life, mentioned film and TV integration, which could put BandFuse in front of an audience that Rock Band and Rocksmith never touched.

That ‘we’re on to something but we can’t say what’ vibe was near ubiquitous, even when talking to Realta Entertainment CEO Steve Gomes (they’re the developers of the game, by the way). When I asked him if he could capture an audience that Rocksmith and Rock Band 3 missed, he had no hesitation.

“No doubt,” Gomes said, though when I asked him how, he was a little more coy. “There are some things I’m forbidden to talk about right now, unfortunately. But there are some very appealing elements of the game that will make it hard to resist for people to get in and do it.”

Cryptic to be sure, and maybe it’s just because the game’s playing hard to get, but I’m extremely intrigued. They also mentioned bundle deals with Fender, which means we might see a game / beginner electric guitar bundle for something in the $120 range. Pure speculation there, but at that price, you can sign me the hell up.

Finally, the most direct benefit Relativity Media might bring to the game is access to music. The preview I played already boasted some big names — 5 Finger Death Punch, Judas Priest, Maroon 5, Coldplay, Lynyrd Synyrd, and of course Slash — but I could tell the connections were in place to get the best content lined up for the game.

“That’s one of the things that I find most endearing about the game / music combination. People get exposed to music that they might not have been exposed to because it’s not current or might not be the style of music they’re listening to on the radio,” Slash said. “I know that was a popular thing for Guitar Hero. One of the things that attracted me to it was the fact that it had such a dynamic playlist. It wasn’t complicated, but it’s a bunch of songs that aren’t in the top 40 at the present time. It’s based on good material. These guys are going for the quality of the material, and a wide range of it.”

Right now, BandFuse is more questions than answers, but they’re all the right questions. In addition to directly hitting consumers, I could see BandFuse in schools and used by private instructors. Even talking about it at the office, everyone’s sentiments are the same — they want to play guitar, they just need a solution that’s easy and inexpensive. BandFuse might be that solution, but we’ll have to wait and see.

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