Rockband Unplugged

Yes, Unplugged brings all the red, green, yellow and blue notes you know and love from the home versions of the Rock Band franchise and crams them onto a tiny UMD. Instead of playing with mini-bass guitars and tiny drumsticks, you'll control the onscreen action with the Left, Up, Triangle, and Circle buttons on your PSP. Yes, the bass, drums, microphone and guitar are all here, but you'll play them one at a time. Notes fall on a specific instrument's track, you tap them out as they cross the indicator line, and you score massive points. When you're done with one instrument, you'll use the shoulder buttons to scroll to the next one. Now, as you're tapping out the tunes, you'll notice a white box around the track you're on. This is the phrase indicator. When you hit every note in the phrase indicator, your multiplier increases by one and the track you were on plays by itself for a while so that you can jump to the next track that has notes falling on it. If you flub a note in a given phrase, the indicator moves further up the track so you can start again in a second. Of course, flubbing means that one of the other tracks is about to get notes on it and you're going to be missing them. So you flub and get closer to failing on the instrument you botched, and then you start getting closer to failing on the instrument that now has notes that you're ignoring because you're trying to nail the one you just botched. Whew. Just like every other version of Rock Band, you can save an instrument that has failed out by deploying Overdrive (white energy you've amassed by hitting a series of glowing white notes) and you're allowed to fail three times in a song before the music is cut short and you're deemed a loser. Unlike the other Rock Bands, if the drums are too hard for you at one point, you can jump to another track and try to wait out the insane beat on the skins or whatever instrument has you stumped. If no one's failed out, you can deploy your Overdrive energy (via X or Down) and get your multiplier doubled. This is key to getting a five-star performance.