‘Green Day: Rock Band’ may leave you jaded - Military Video Games, computer games - Air Force Times

‘Green Day: Rock Band’ may leave you jaded

Only a few bands have catalogs deep and versatile enough to carry their own version of “Rock Band.” The Beatles have already pulled it off. But beyond the Fab Four, it’s a short list: the Rolling Stones, The Who, maybe Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin.

Green Day? Not so much.

This is a band I like a lot. The problem is the lack of variety in its set list. You have your fast, punky songs and your slow, melancholy ballads, but a sort of sameness settles in after a few hours of “Green Day: Rock Band.”

That becomes even more apparent when you play the career mode.

Developer Harmonix pulled out all the stops when it came to the Beatles, producing elaborate, psychedelic animations for the songs. Green Day, however, gets just three venues to play in.

The disc has 47 songs, including every track from 1994’s “Dookie” and 2004’s “American Idiot.” There’s a smattering of singles from the period between those two landmarks, including “Brain Stew/Jaded,” ‘‘Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” and “Minority.” And about half of last year’s “21st Century Breakdown” is on hand. But if you want the rest, you must pay to download it.

And that’s ... well, infuriating. If you’re paying $60 for “Green Day: Rock Band,” the publisher should throw in those extra six tracks. And if you want to transfer the songs on the Green Day disc to your hard drive (so you can play them in other “Rock Band” games), you have to fork over another $10. You get those things free on the $70 “Green Day: Rock Band Plus” edition, but it feels like MTV Games is nickel-and-diming its loyal audience.

If you’re a huge Green Day fan, this is an essential purchase. But with “Rock Band 3” right around the corner, casual admirers of the threesome aren’t likely to get $60 worth of fun out of this edition.

Game review

Green Day: Rock Band MTV Games, for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, $59.99; Wii, $49.99