Rock Band Blitz

Rock Band Blitz is an upcoming game from Harmonix, released through Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network, due for release in August 2012 (August 28, 2012 for PS3, August 29, 2012 for Xbox 360).

It is fashioned similarly to Harmonix' previous titles, Frequency, Amplitude, and Rock Band Unplugged. The game presents 5 different instrument tracks to the player. Using a standard game console controller, the player uses the buttons to match notes on one track at a time, and by successfully matching notes for a phrase will cause that track to continue to play by itself for a short period. The player must then switch to other tracks. Tracks that are not other played out are penalized to the player and may prematurely end the song. Upon successful completion of a song, the player is given a total score and compared to other friends via online leaderboards. Completing multiple tracks in a row for a given instrument will increase the scoring multiplier for subsequent tracks. Certain sections of tracks include power-ups that can be used to alter scoring, automatically clear tracks, and more. Project director Matthew Nordhaus stated that the game is a departure from the past Rock Band titles, "instead of having the focus on musical authenticity, and performance simulation, it’s an arcade game", and thus at times may be "fast, and loud and silly and a little over the top".