

In lieu of playing a song's actual guitar solo, you're now able to "improvise" your own.

The big change in Rock Band 4 is the introduction of freestyle guitar solos.

The same applies for bass, drums, and vocals, all of which make up the full Rock Band experience. Succeed and the virtual crowd cheers fail and the guitar portion of your favorite song is replaced by some clunky blips and choral jeering. Rock Band 4 more or less keeps to the long-standing rhythm game formula: You, the wannabe rock star, play along to popular songs using a guitar-shaped controller, holding down some combination of five large buttons on the guitar's neck and plucking as those corresponding "notes" appear in rhythm. But like any good VH1 Behind the Music story, the genre is making a comeback, with both a new Rock Band and a new Guitar Hero coming out this month. Five years, 30-plus titles, and millions of plastic guitar / drum / DJ controllers later, the rhythm genre seemed to fade out of the public eye just as fast as it had emerged. After the equally successful Guitar Hero II, Activision bought RedOctane and the Guitar Hero IP, while MTV picked up Harmonix, who then created a new rhythm franchise, Rock Band. A brief history lesson: In 2005, Harmonix released the wildly successful Guitar Hero in partnership with hardware maker RedOctane and publisher Activision. Perhaps it will change soon, which we’ll update this guide for.For those who missed out on the Rock Band and Guitar Hero craze, let me just say you're also probably too young to have experienced Animaniacs or Legends of the Hidden Temple. Rock Band 4 is still new, so this process is still being worked on. It really is a pain to have to do, but it’s better than not supporting the old DLC at all, or making you re-buy it all. This will upgrade the song to your Rock Band 4 account, and add it to your game. Find each song you want to import to Rock Band 4 and essentially re-buy it for free. You’ll actually have to go into the PlayStation or Xbox Store, or just go to the Rock Band Store on the game itself. Unfortunately there is no process for re-downloading all of your DLC. Now, that handles the export/import from the main games, but what about individual DLC. Just enter it into the system as normal and follow the same export procedure. If you’re nice enough, and lucky enough, they’ll give you a key. Tell the rep that you need one, they are actually listed under Rock Band 3 so be specific that you are importing RB2 songs into it. By contacting EA support you have a chance at getting a key. You see, official support for exporting has ended, but there is a way around that, at least for now.
