I love video games.  I love music, specifically, rock music. Obviously these two intersect at a converging point that is Rock Band (and I guess of Guitar Hero as well, but I’m not a fan of THAT series, we’ll save the partisan fanboyism for another article.) Which is why I look forward to Tuesdays, where Harmonix unleashes new DLC onto the XBL network for me to consume.

I admit, I have a disgustingly large library of over a hundred songs including stuff I’ve played maybe once or twice. I’m such a rabid collector of this music and I like having people over and saying “oh wow THAT’S in the game.” So Tuesdays on Cotinuous Fire will be Rock Band DLC Tuesdays discussing what I’ve most recently downloaded with my hard earned Microsoft points on.

This week was another (almost) full album release from Harmonix, cobbling together 13 of the 15 tracks from No Doubt’s singles collection. A quick look over at Amazon.com reveals that “New” and “Trapped in the Box” the former something I might have actually downloaded the latter a total “huh” to me.  I pretty much avoided everything off “Rocksteady” and “Return to Saturn”, they just didn’t seem like songs that would be fun to play nor are they that popular. Here’s what I got

Spiderwebs

A suprisngly fun song on guitar. Enough variety but not blisteringly hard, it’s got mostly a scale progression with some chords. I guess most are wondering how it compares to the Guitar Hero chart and they’re for the most part similar with some overcharting on the GH side (to be expected.) Drums is quite fun, it’s got a few nice little rolls but is pretty standard for the most part and vocals provides an ok challenge. To me this is the perfect kind of party song, a nice deep challenge that’s not going to punish people to a fairly well known song.

Don’t Speak

A deceptively tricky guitar song for something that’s tier 2 if for no other reason that it has a ton of triple chords as most of the acoustic songs seem to have. Drums are pretty much int the same boat as well, being a little harder than the tier 2 status indicates. Everything else is ass easy, vocals especially if you know the song (and I’m guessing most people who lived through the 90’s do)

Just A Girl

On guitar and bass this is a rather fun song, jumping all over with a cute pattern. Seriously I was afraid that the No Doubt songs would suffer from the pop/punk syndrome of constant repeated chords. Just A Girl isn’t hard but once again it changes things up just enough to be fun. Drums for every song I’ve downloaded have been quite a thrill too for the same reasons: everything gets changed up fairly often and you’re not stuck in a loop of difficult (or overly simple) patterns.

Sunday Morning

I admit, I only got this song for its insane drum roll at the beginning. It didn’t disappoint. For all bassists out there, this song is actually pretty interesting on it as well, keeping up with difficult and variety as guitar.

It’s My Life

A begrudging purchase while this cover isn’t BAD I most certainly wish this was the original Talk Talk version. I guess I have to settle with this, a fairly fun song once again though.

Tempted

Ok we’re cheating a little, Tempted was released LAST week, but I want to talk about it and it’s MY blog so we are. I’m of the opinion that NO ONE should be without tempted in their Rock Band song library unless they’re an angry hermit who plays this game only to hide in the basement and practice day and night to FC Pain Killer. Is tempted easy? Insanely, it makes Eye of the Tiger look like Green Grass and High Tides but everyone knows it, loves it and can join in on it, it’s the ultimate drunken party Rock Band song AND it’s only a dollar. You owe it to yourself to pick it up!