LEGO Rock Band has no business being entertaining in any way. With the exception of a few stand outs its track listing is mediocre at best. It comes in on the tail end of what has been an avalanche of plastic instrument music games of varying degrees of quality, in a year which has shown that the entire genre may be slowly fading in popularity. Irrespective of its competitors, it follows up a cross generational band-centric release that is almost as much fun to watch as it is to play. It even managed to come out on the same day as the confusingly titled Band Hero/Guitar Hero 5 in neon pink. LEGO Rock Band’s only distinguishing feature is the LEGO in its title. Oh, and the fact that it makes good on its name sake by plugging directly into a massive library of pre-existing downloadable content, not to mention most of the songs exported from the first Rock Band, plus all of its own songs can be exported to the music platform otherwise known as Rock Band 2. LEGO Rock Band is not an island; it allows long time fans to use what they already have and at the same time pulls in new people with a slightly diminished price point and blocky new look. There was no choice, really, Harmonix wins my monies again.

There are many things in the wide world of gaming that I do not understand despite my rapidly advancing years. I do not understand the mouth breathing fascination with multiplayer first person shooter grinding and the rubbing of virtual tea bags in virtual faces. I do not understand how anyone who lacks clairvoyance can play through the hot, laggy mess of Tekken 6 online and be successful, and I really do not understand why taking an established property and building it out of LEGO’s makes it instantly more amusing, but there is no denying that it does. Travelers Tales hit on something magical with the first LEGO Star Wars, and it has remained so right on through Indiana Jones and Batman. I admit with no shame that I have played and enjoyed them all, though I was suspicious when LEGO Rock Band was announced. How could the whimsical feel of the LEGO franchises, in which you never really die, you are just put back together, be translated into a music game?

Part of the answer is just that: the whole game exists in no fail mode. If a player manages to fail a song it does not stop like in all the pervious titles. Instead, the track keeps right on going and points (or ‘studs’ in the LEGO world) are deducted. The player is even given the chance to earn them all back by hitting recovery notes. This does a few things: first, it encourages players to try the harder difficulty levels by removing the sting of a game over screen. Secondly, it allows even players who are truly terrible to still have fun without cheating, and finally it changes the focus from just completing a song to completing a song with as many studs as possible.

Aside from internet bragging rights, points are pretty much pointless. In LEGO Rock Band, however, the studs are used to unlock just about everything. Playing through story mode makes many items available, but the player still has to pay for them. Nothing is free, not even in LEGO land. Playing on the lower difficulty levels severely hampers stud accumulation, giving another reason for beginners to try to move up to using more than three fingers at a time. Playing through a song in expert generally nets enough currency to buy anything unlocked by that song, which provides a constant flow of new mini-figs, instruments and bits of junk to decorate your band’s digs. There are also quite a few entourage members to hire who unlock new gigs and increase the studs and fans earned, so there is almost always something new to buy. Each band member, right along with the members of your crew, can be customized in any way. It sounds silly and pointless, and it really is, but it’s a fun diversion while waiting for my hand to un-cramp. I really enjoyed swapping out band members, or sometimes just swapping their heads. Dracula himself was my lead guitarist for quite a while, with a skeleton on the drums, until a little LEGO man bearing as striking resemblance to Angus Young became available. Seeing little LEGO Angus playing a Jackson 5 song was hilarious, and it manages to avoid the creepiness of Kurt Cobain belting out Def Leppard tunes or Gwen Stefani singing a Rolling Stones song about nailing a prostitute. Plus no one at Harmonix is getting sued.

The story mode in LEGO Rock Band can suffer from the same repetitiveness as Rock Band 2, with both custom and random set lists appearing on most of the venues and new songs being occasionally repeated. All of the venues can still be unlocked if these specific set lists are avoided, thankfully, plus it is really only a problem if you have no downloadable content. Having been on board from the very beginning, I have 200 plus songs available, some of which I have only played once on one instrument. LEGO Rock Band has provided a wonderful excuse to sift through all my old songs and play them again, giving even the weakest of tracks a second chance. It also creates a distinct urge to go out and buy more songs to pad my collection. As of this writing, the song store built into LEGO Rock Band does not seem to be working correctly, with all available songs just dumped into one list and the album section not working at all, but anything downloaded directly from the dashboard will import just fine. This modularity makes coming back to LEGO Rock Band in the future more appealing then jumping back on to the Beatles release. As good as Beatles Rock Band is, there just aren’t that many songs yet. LEGO Rock Band has hundreds, with new ones clamoring for your money every Tuesday.

I know full well that the music game fad will pass, if it has not done so already. Harmonix has taken a more conservative, and more intelligent, approach than Activision when deciding how to milk this cash cow without killing it in the process. Not counting hand held titles, there have only been two Rock Band releases this year, and there were only two last year, yet there are more songs available for the Rock Band family than there are for all the Guitar Hero games combined, and there were five Hero games this year. By burying the public under $60 games, Activision has driven many Guitar Hero fans to apathy.

On the other hand, I still look forward to the weekly songs from Harmonix, and a second game from them this year doesn’t feel excessive, mostly because all of the new songs will export, not just a select few. Dropping a kid friendly skin and oodles of collectable knick-knacks on top of it makes LEGO Rock Band just different enough to keep everyone, even jaded rhythm vets, entertained. Plus, LEGO David Bowie, LEGO Freddy Mercury and LEGO Spinal Tap are just cool, in a ‘this shouldn’t be cool, but it still is’ way. Anyone who says otherwise takes themselves far too seriously and probably shouldn’t be indulging in video game based music fantasy to begin with. The entire genre is build around undersized plastic replicas, it is only fitting to be playing it with plastic people.