Domurosoft, an Italian indie studio, is getting ready to release the full version of Rocking Legend on SteamVR headsets soon, which includes some very Rock Band-inspired gameplay which critically doesn’t require dedicated guitar controllers.
Rocking Legend can’t really boast any well-known music—its 30-song OST of original songs have all been tailored to work with virtual drums and guitars.
While it’s true you can play guitar using motion controllers to simulate strumming and fretting, the game also promises support for USB or Bluetooth-enabled instruments for a more authentic experience, which includes ones you might have left over some other games.
The game, which has just launched a free demo on Steam, includes campaign, free play, as well as online multiplayer. The free demo includes a free-play mode and a selection of three tracks to play though, including variable difficulty and a few gameplay modifiers unlocked.
Launched on Steam Early Access in 2020, Domuro Soft says it’s bringing the full version of the game at “the beginning of next month,” which is said to include an exclusive launch discount. You can grab it now in Early Access on Steam, priced at $25.
Unplugged is an upcoming VR rhythm game which makes use of full finger-tracking for a Rock Band-like experience, but with an ‘air guitar’ instead of a plastic peripheral. Today developer Anotherway announced the game’s release date for October 21st on Oculus Quest, and affirmed that a PC VR version will launch later this year.
As far as controllerless hand-tracking games on Quest go, the vast majority are using the tech for simple pinch and poke interactions (though we’ve seen some really cool ideas out there). Unplugged, on the other hand, is using hand-tracking in a creative way which promises to finally make your air guitar a reality.
The game definitely builds on the vibes of classic instrument-based rhythm games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero, but this time without the plastic guitar.
Today developer Anotherway announced that the Unplugged release date is set for October 21st on Quest.
Later this year the game will also come to PC VR, though it will only support hardware with full finger-tracking, which primarily means any headset using Index controllers (unfortunately Oculus hasn’t brought Quest’s hand-tracking to Rift S).
The studio seems to indicate that other finger-tracking hardware could be supported, but it isn’t entirely clear which they are be referring to. HTC Vive headsets technically support controllerless finger-tracking, though it’s rare to see it implemented. Many Pimax headsets include controllerless finger-tracking from Ultraleap, but it isn’t clear if they will be supported either. We’ve reached out to the studio for clarity.
'Unplugged' Screenshots
1 of 4
Image courtesy Vertigo Games
Image courtesy Vertigo Games
Image courtesy Vertigo Games
Image courtesy Vertigo Games
The studio also announced a partial song list for Unplugged featuring some well known rock songs:
Bumblefoot – Overloaded
Freak Kitchen – My New Haircut
Louis and The Shakes – On One
Lynch Mob – Wicked Sensation
Ozzy Osbourne – Flying High Again
The Electric Alley – Searching For The Truth
The Offspring – The Kids Aren’t Alright
The YeahTones – Lightning
Weezer – Say It Ain’t So
More songs are expected to be announced prior to launch.
The studio has also recruited Steel Panther guitarist Russ “Satchel” Parrish to be the in-game mentor to guide players through the experience.
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You might be wondering to yourself, “why not just do the real Rock Band in VR?” Well, actually that already exists. Harmonix, the studio behind the series, was actually an early adopter of VR and released Rock Band VR back in 2017 on Rift; though you needed one of the series’ guitar controllers to play (and an adapter to connect your VR controller to the guitar to track it).
Unfortunately the game wasn’t exactly a hit, perhaps because of the hardware requirements and a lack of any kind of multiplayer functionality (which has been core to Rock Band’s DNA). Unplugged may not have multiplayer, but at least it doesn’t require any extra peripherals. With Quest’s pick-up-and-play nature, it’ll be interesting to see how well it fares on that headset.
Harmonix went on to find more success with Audica (2019), a more abstract VR rhythm game built around target shooting.
For today’s livestream we’re playing Rocking Hero, a VR music game inspired by the likes of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, exclusively developed for VR! If you’re curious about how we livestream the way we do then look no further than this handy guide for general tips and this guide specific to our Oculus Quest setup.
Ever since Rock Band VR I’ve been waiting for someone else to come along and take a proper swing at the genre. Using the physical guitar controller was a nice touch, and it’s compatible here as well, but something that can adapt to your motion controllers is even more appealing for accessibility and ease of use. As a result, Rocking Hero feels like it could be onto something here.
Our Rocking Hero VR livestream is planned to start at about 3:15 PM PT and will last for around an hour or so, give or take, depending partially on how long my small toddler child naps. We’ll be hitting just our YouTubeand I’ll likely be streaming from a Pimax 5K+ using two Index controllers. I’m flying solo on this one.
Check out the Rocking Hero VR stream embedded right here and down below once live:
You can see lots of our past archived streams over in our YouTube playlist or even all livestreams here on UploadVR and various other gameplay highlights. There’s lots of good stuff there so make sure and subscribe to us on YouTube to stay up-to-date on gameplay videos, video reviews, live talk shows, interviews, and more original content!
And please let us know which games or discussions you want us to livestream next! We have lots of VR games in the queue that we would love to show off more completely.
I think I knew I’d hit my gaming mid-life crisis when I saw Beat Saber’s meteoric rise in popularity and thought: “This ain’t your Dad’s type of rhythm game.”
Fortunately, Rocking Hero is here to eschew me into the era of Dad bands and complaining about the state of new music.
Out today in Early Access, Rocking Hero is a strange mix of the novel and nostalgic. It’s very much a call back to the Guitar Hero/Rock Band-era of rhythm games that shined so brightly before rocking a little too close to the sun and crashing in spectacular fashion. And, like the oft-forgotten Rock Band VR, you can grab one of your old plastic peripherals and play it as a clean and amicable throwback.
But Rocking Hero is at its most curious — if also its most flawed — when it embraces fully VR.
You can play the game’s 10 tracks (some of which, admittedly, sound like they were lifted from a karaoke CD) with just your motion controllers. You grab a clip on your guitar to position it where you’d like, then slide your left or right hand along the neck to corresponding notes, strumming with the other. Your hands are essentially glued to the required areas so, even if you pull your strumming hand back a bit to a more comfortable position, it should work.
And when Rocking Hero does work, it’s a brilliant bit of air-guitaring fun. Sliding down the neck to hit notes carries rock star satisfaction and it’s possible to fully immerse yourself in the dream of performing, even if it is just to an empty VR environment.
But, without the context of an actual neck to guide you, gameplay lacks the grounded, tangible feel you need to really become a master. Sliding your hand up and down the neck is a bit of a guessing game, but you can at least adjust the sensitivity of your hand slide to give yourself a little more control. No matter where you position your guitar you’ll also struggle to maintain consistent positioning, and I wish there was a control scheme that just let your ax follow wherever your dominant hand holds the neck. It’s telling that, for someone that never graduated above an intermediate level in Guitar Hero, I could handle Rocking Hero’s forgiving tracks on the hardest difficulties – it clearly knows the control scheme can be a handful and makes up for it.
It should be noted too that you can also try the game with the Index controller’s finger tracking. My Index is busted so I couldn’t try it out but, judging on the accuracy of the feature from my time with it in other games, it’d probably a pretty finicky experience.
Rocking Hero’s Early Access release does feature a custom track editor and it’ll be interesting to see if a strong community gets built up around that. But I’m hoping to see stronger post-release tracks and for developer Domuro Soft to keep experimenting with control styles. There is something here, for sure, it’s just fleeting and rough. With more fine-tuning, Rocking Hero could be the Woodstock to Beat Saber’s Coachella.
Community Download is a weekly discussion-focused articles series published (usually) every Monday in which we pose a single, core question to you all, our readers, in the spirit of fostering discussion and debate. For today, we want to know why you think VR music games are so insanely popular compared to the rest of the VR market?
Back when consumer-grade VR was first starting to really take off in its current iteration in 2016, I did not expect music-based rhythm games to be the genre to really take the medium mainstream. I was wrong.
Ever since Beat Saber exploded onto the scene things have changed. Between Beat Games’ viral sensation, Audica from Harmonix, Audioshield from before both of them, and a slew of other music-based VR game, it’s impossible to look at Steam, PSN, or any of the Oculus Store platforms without coming across a few rhythm VR games. They’re truly everywhere.
My question then is: Why? What about rhythm, dancing, music, and generally audio-heavy games and experiences are so addictive and alluring in VR? Conventional wisdom might tell you that visually immersive and physical content would be the most popular in VR, but in reality it seems like Beat Saber defied logic and single-handedly created its own interpretation of a genre that’s fallen out of fashion with non-VR gamers.
What do you think it is about VR music games that makes them so popular? Is it just left over nostalgia and excitement from the era of DDR, Rock Band, and Guitar Hero, or is it something else? Let us know your thoughts down in the comments below!
Videogames have always had a very symbiotic relationship with music, helping create mood and ambiance that can set the tone for the entire experience. Have a favourite title, then you’ll probably remember the theme tune – Nintendo had some classics – as music has a way of emotionally connecting you to the gameplay in a way visuals can’t. With the advent of consumer virtual reality (VR), music – and especially spatial audio – is just as important, if not more so, than ever before. Yet music exists in VR in various form factors, with a growing trend to interacting, visualising and creation.
For the majority of videogames and players, music exists as something in the background, maybe telling you when danger is nearby or when you’ve reached a safe place. On the other hand there are those titles like rhythm action videogames which get you properly involved, or for those musicians amongst you creation tools from the very basic to the professional.
Undoubtedly one of the most popular forms of musical videogame comes from the rhythm action genre, with titles like Guitar Hero and Rock Band two of the most synonymous. Oculus Rift owners got a taste of that with Rock Band VR, as the Oculus Touch controllers came with a little accessory to attach one of them to the head of a Rock Band guitar. This proved to be a successful match with VRFocus giving Rock Band VR a four star rating in its review.
But you don’t need an additional chunk of plastic to jam in VR. There are plenty of titles that make use of the motion controllers that come supplied with the various high end headsets. Audio Shield, Audio Beats, Thumper, Beat Saber and many more utilise some drumming rhythm, requiring well timed actions to build multipliers and score points. Such is the energy and physical output needed that some developers have harnessed this for fitness. BOXVR for example requires a player to preform punches, hooks and upper cuts to a beat, burning and calorie counting along the way.
If you’re not interesting in working up as sweat then what about making your own music? There are certainly one or two apps that can accommodate depending on your musical inclinations. Naturally dance music is and easy go to, where you can become a virtual DJ using TheWaveVR to create thumping electro beats for people to dance to. After something a little more traditional? How about The Music Room. Here you can play the guitar, strum a laser harp or unleash your inner Keith Moon or Lars Ulrich and drum away to your hearts content as drum companies such as Pearl, Ludwig, Sabian, Zildjian, DW and Gretsch have all helped in its creation. The app also serves as a midi controller for those who know what they’re doing.
At the top end, for those that really know what they’re doing and just want to play around in VR there’s always AliveInVR. All the apps and videogames previously mentioned work on their own, self-contained experiences to enjoy. AliveInVR is not. It works as a VR midi controller for Ableton Live, a very serious piece of software that musicians use to create tracks. Similar to TheWaveVR music can be controlled through a series of interactable objects, differing due to the shear amount of options and control Ableton offers – which is why it isn’t cheap.
When it comes down to it VR can literally put music in the hands of VR fans around the world no matter their skill level. Whether you just want to have some fun wildly flailing around to your favourite tune or want to get into the nitty gritty of music development there’s a VR app for you. One day there might even come a time when the latest club land summer smash comes from someone who wants to make music in a virtual world.
The Rock Band Guitar Controller is the least essential of all the input solutions for the Oculus Rift, simply because it only has one compatible videogame: Rock Band VR. However, your choice of Rock Band Guitar Controller – given the openness of the PC format – is pretty easy-going.
Compatible Rock Band Guitar Controllers
According to Oculus VR, Rock Band VR for Oculus Rift is compatible with any of the following:
• PlayStation®4 Fender Stratocaster*
• PlayStation®4 Fender Jaguar®*
• Xbox One Fender Stratocaster**
• Xbox One Fender Jaguar**
*Requires Bluetooth
**Requires Windows 10 Anniversary edition.
All purchases of Oculus Touch come with an adapter to allow a single controller to be attached to any Rock Band Guitar Controller. However, an Oculus Touch controller is required in addition to a Rock Band Guitar Controller to play Rock Band VR.
Rock Band Guitar Controller Price
The various Rock Band Guitar Controllers that are compatible with Rock Band VR and the Oculus Rift do vary greatly in price. Typically priced at around £50 GBP, some of the above listed Rock Band Guitar Controllers, as stated, may require a separate purchase of a Bluetooth adapter.
How to Use the Rock Band Guitar Controller
The Rock Band Guitar Controller is only compatible with Rock Band VR, and as such has limited use cases. The installation process will be familiar to anyone who has previously installed an external input device of any nature and Rock Band VR will automatically detect whether or not a compatible Rock Band Guitar Controller is connected.
Harmonix’s Rock Band VR has been out for several months now and in that time the studio’s released a steady stream of DLC tracks for users to continue jamming to. This month is no different, with two new tracks getting added to the rock library.
Coming to the Oculus Rift and Touch exclusive experience are The Weeknd’s Can’t Feel My Face and Twenty One Pilots’ Stressed Out for fans to enjoy. These will be released next Wednesday, 7th June, 2017, retailing for $2.99 USD per track.
Rock Band VR is an immersive reimagining of the classic guitar playing series, where gamers find themselves in front of a virtual audience, ready to thrash out chords and rifts in a more organic setting. VRFocusreviewed the title, giving it 4 stars and saying: “Rock Band VR is definitely built around having as much fun with the experience as possible. There’s no right way or wrong way to any of it, just the sheer enjoyment of playing some classic tunes in a far more relaxed manner.”
Several years ago rhythm action videogames like Rock Band and Guitar Hero were all the rage, with gamers eager to jam away on plastic guitars to their favourite pop and rock songs from the last few decades. That interest waned however as the genre struggled to offer anything new and improved. Then in comes virtual reality (VR) with an entirely new way of immersing players, and so Oculus supported Harmonix in creating a newly updated version for the technology, Rock Band VR, which has hit all the right notes.
First and foremost, Rock Band VR isn’t the experience you may remember from the original titles. Over the course of development Harmonix has learned that while staring at a confined area on a TV works for normal consoles that methodology wouldn’t (or couldn’t) transfer into a VR experience, it’s just too ridged. And so the studio has built a far more open, free-playing system that allows you go for 5-star highscores or just rock out anyway you dam please.
And this new system has certainly benefited Rock Band VR. You now find yourself on a proper stage, with band mates, pedals, and swappable stage locations to make that feeling of immersion evermore apparent and grounding. When playing a song, you’re no longer fixed to the exact chords and changes of the actual tune – you still play it of course but there’s no failing it as such. Instead the studio gives you a bar that floats above the crowd with certain areas highlighted with particular notes to play to maximise your score, if you wish to adhere to it.
By that reasoning you may think you can just thrash anything out and it’ll sound ok – which it kind of does – but to delve into the rich sound variations takes time, with much more to master than the original versions. It’s a much more easy going videogame than its forebears, the pedals let you tweak the sound how you wish, and with the more modern guitar (this was a Fender Stratocaster) with its higher note buttons, let you chop and change the sound so the same song can be played multiple ways.
But there is something missing. This style of gameplay feels like the saying ‘winning doesn’t matter it’s the taking part that counts’. There’s no direct difficulty to it, you won’t get booted if you can’t keep up or just play rubbish. When you perfectly completed a song on the original title at the hardest difficulty there’s a sense of elation that comes with it, whether you managed to repeat the performance never mattered, the score always stayed as a reminder of the hours of practice put in. Whereas the core Rock Band VR experience doesn’t have that, it wants you to feel good no matter how bad you play.
There is a flip side to this, Harmonix has added a classic mode which brings back the traditional scrolling neck for those that want it. Seriously though don’t bother. The addition perfectly illustrates why the studio veered away from this design in the first place. It just doesn’t do VR justice in anyway shape or form – the videogame would have got a 1-star if it had stuck to that.
Rock Band VR is definitely built around having as much fun with the experience as possible. There’s no right way or wrong way to any of it, just the sheer enjoyment of playing some classic tunes in a far more relaxed manner. Does it sometimes feel a bit much having to wear a headset, strap a guitar to you and have an Oculus Touch in the mix as well? Yes, yes it does, but quite frankly you probably won’t care when thrashing out some Bon Jovi.
Developer Harmonix has revealed what new DLC is coming up for musical rhythm games Rock Band VR, Rock Band 4 and SingSpace this month.
As usual focusing on well-known songs by popular bands, Rock Band VR’s song library will be getting two songs that hit number 1 on the US Modern Rock Chart, which will be available to download for $2.99 (USD) each:
Green Day – Basket Case
The White Stripes – Seven Nation Army
In addition, social karaoke experience on the Samsung Gear VR SingSpace was launched earlier in the month and is already receiving new DLC tracks to add to the library. The title uses a subscription model where users can pay as little as $1.99 per month to get access to ongoing updates.
Last week saw classic Queen tracks Bohemian Rhapsody, Somebody To Love and Under Pressure added to the subscription library, and four more tracks will be made available to subscribers over the next two weeks:
Bad Romance
Black Horse & The Cherry Tree
DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love
No Scrubs
Rock Band 4 is getting additional tracks, too, with the following songs available to download for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 users for $1.99 each:
Montell Jordan – This Is How We Do It
blink-182 – Bored To Death
The Isley Brothers – Shout
MGMT – Kids
Keep an eye on VRFocus for further updates on upcoming DLC for Rock Band VR and SingSpace.
Compatible Rock Band Guitar Controllers