We Rock: Drum King

Preview from Yug - Sunday, 24 May 2009 @ 6:21am

It’s time to become anti-peripheral.

The latest Tony Hawk skateboard controller and the suggestion of 4 drum kits for the upcoming Guitar Hero 5 is the final straw for me. There was a time when additional hardware was a death sentence for a video game. If you needed to purchase MORE than what the hardware could provide, people would be up in arms and flat out refuse to play the game at all. With that in mind, it’s nice to see a music game that won’t break the bank.

We Rock: Drum King is a Wii exclusive title that uses nothing more than the Wii motes and Nunchuck, and lets players rock out on an invisible drum kit.

Hail to the King, baby

I managed to get some hands on with the game recently, and have mixed feelings about it. It’s inevitably going to be compared to Guitar Hero or Rock Band, no matter how hard they try, and the presentation in the game is underwhelming when stacked against the other industry juggernauts. Not helping is the fact that the songs – although licensed – are not performed by the original bands, but are covers of popular songs.

The variety of songs does seem to be solid though – I managed to play some Queen (Rock You), Europe (Final Countdown), Blur (Song 2) and Bloc Party (In too Deep). Other artists represented include The Clash, Gorillaz, Biffy Clyro and more, about 30 all up.

"It’s nice to see a music game that won’t break the bank"


It’s a bit tough though ... where guitars and singers generally get to perform a wide range of different parts within any given song, drummers tend to simply keep the beat, with the occasional ‘rock out’ if the song permits. Even worse, not many popular songs have drum solos, so for example – towards the end of Rock You by Queen, there’s a wicked guitar solo that wails for almost a minute, but as the drummer you’re just pounding away at the straight forward beat.

Is that a bad thing? I’m not sure ... I suppose it depends how much you like to drum I suppose.

The system for hitting the notes is again similar to guitar hero, as they fall down the screen you have to move either the Wii mote or Nunchuck in each hand at the appropriate time on your imaginary drums. The mechanic is solid, and once you get the hang of it the beats match your movements quite well. There are three bars represented on the screen – one for the left stick, one for the right, and a third one for the bass line, which is activated by pressing the ‘A’ button on the Wii mote.

I can see how they simply HAD to add something else into the equation, although it felt a bit unnatural pressing a button and NOT moving your hand when it was required. That said, I started to get the hang of it, and in the easy setting it’s not even switched on.

Just what the world needs ... more drummers

Despite the issues I’ve raised above, I did enjoy my time with it. I teamed up with Nic Healey (Editor of the Official Nintendo Magazine) who was at the preview event as well, and we had a bash at the multiplayer – where you can either battle or take turns during a song. Eventually I cranked up the difficultly level to high and it started to become a lot more challenging, especially the drum roll sections – still couldn’t get the hang of the A button bass line though, but perhaps I just didn’t get used to it in time.

I’ll be interested to see what this game is like in a more social environment, especially stacked next to the Rock Band/Guitar Hero alternatives, but for anyone interested in just the drumming aspect of those games, perhaps this might provide a viable and cheaper alternative.