Rock Manager

Everyone ends up in a band at some point in their lives - in my case it was after leaving school. Few of us however end up anywhere near the lower reaches of the Indie Top 100. For me the dream of ever snorting cocaine from a nubile young groupie’s cleavage ended when the lead guitarist’s dog ate the spongy bit on the end of the microphone and in doing so turned our Cure-meets-Mock Turtles rock combo into an instrumental outfit. We never recovered and The Wintermixtures were no more.

I retreated to university a broken man, sold my axe for $50 and spent the money on beer. The only remaining evidence of my designs for world rock domination are a couple of TDK tapes and a bundle of hastily written lyrics chronicling my adolescent angst. As much as I would love to get the lads back together for one last crack, I have been completely put off by playing Rock Manager.

As its title suggests, Rock Managers all about managing rather than actually doing much rocking, with you licensing and recording songs, keeping your wannabe stars happy, arranging gigs, bribing magazines for good reviews (it happens, apparently) and booking world tours. However, much as it sounds like it could and should make for a great game, Rock Manager is far too wrapped up in its own deluded world of wackiness to actually provide much in the way of meaningful entertainment, with all the effort expended in making it seemingly spent on trying (and utterly failing) to be funny.

Mama Weer All Crazee Not

No risk of spontaneous sidesplitting unless you’re a close friend of the developers then, but even underneath the caricatures and outrageous stereotyping there isn’t much of a game. Eight missions are all you get, all of which require you to piss away money on getting a song to the top of the charts - realistic perhaps, but really quite boring in the sense that all you're effectively doing is playing keepy-uppies until you win or run out of money.

Rock Manager is the latest in a long string of simulation style games. The concept itself is interesting. There are several missions that you have to complete and specific goals within each mission. The challenge varies from mission to mission, but produces some fun and amusement in short bursts. The problem I found was that I was more frustrated than amused while playing.

When you think of rock music you expect there to be controversy, swearing, and attitude problems, and this game doesn't let you down, at least in that department. It's the other departments that are disappointing. Being a rock game, I was expecting good sound and it was definitely lacking. It may have just been my computer, but there were several times where the sound would skip and become choppy from accessing the CD.

The one great thing about the game is that every time you play a mission, you unlock another one, but you can also replay any previous ones you have unlocked and do them differently. There are no controls to learn because you only use the mouse, but it is tricky to figure out how to use items in the recording studio.

While the game does allow you to control everything in the rock world from making the band to purchasing songs to picking fights with other bands, the game failed to hold my interest. For those of you who have the need to play 'God' over computer characters that complain, swear, and pick fights, you will enjoy this game' for a little while. For everyone else, feel free to pass on this game unless you have a need to beat every game ever created.