Rock Legend

I never wanted to be a rock star. I always knew that the life of sex, drugs and concert tours could be gained only though many years of practice and obscurity and maybe a little soul selling. Kudos: Rock Legend makes no effort to hide the drudgery and tenuousness of a music career. Finding the right band mates, practice, rehearsals, hand-to-mouth existence and getting squeezed by your record company hardly seems the recipe for fun. Oh, but it is!

You take the role as lead singer and assemble your band. You then have five years to make your mark on the music industry, starting with small gigs in local bars and working your way up to larger venues. Your band will need to stay motivated and free from stress, otherwise they’ll turn on each other or just stop showing up. When your lead guitarist quits because he hates the drummer, your rise to fame may never recover.

Rock Legend is spiced up by a couple of minigames. The songwriting game is a straight color matching exercise, influenced by your “inspiration” level and how much experience you have. It’s not very hard, but it’s nice to see that quality meter go above 80 per cent. The “music practice” game is a memory test that is best handled by simply writing down whatever pops up. You need to “practice” to stay sharp, but there’s a lot of tedium in this part. Maybe that’s the point.

Rock Legend, like its predecessor Kudos, limits you to a single activity a day and keeps the money tight to keep you hungry. It’s a better game than Kudos because the limitation fits the starving artist setting so well. The tradeoffs are compelling all the way through. Should you spend that last thirty bucks for a night out to build buzz for your next gig? When do you invest in a manager or sound mixer? When someone becomes a drunk, can you afford to fire them?

None of these decisions on its own is particularly interesting, but as a series of now-or-later choices that may or may not pay off, a fascinating fiction is created, and all without having to play a note. Getting out of the local band gutter is actually difficult, and almost entirely free of chance. It’s a little idealistic (hard work is rewarded more than hype) but the combination of good humor and delicious options will keep you humming along for a while.

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