You can tell that someone who loves Internet memes helped program the mobile version of Konami’s “Rock Revolution.” While playing through “Dance Dance” by Fall Out Boy and fumbling with the controls, the game kicked me out on account of 21-straight “Epic Fails.”
Is an excellent way to react to a botched musical performance to call the effort an “epic fail”? That’s exactly what “Rock Revolution” mobile does, and caused me to do a double take while playing it last night.
“Epic fail” is one of “Rock Revolution” grading descriptors, by far its funniest. I’ve played plenty of music games in my time, and how each game handles failure varies. “Dance Dance Revolution” would mock you, but the announcer was so over the top you couldn’t help but laugh. In text form, “Rock Revolution” is the same way, but it stems from a new geek culture steeped in Internet in-jokes.
The other grades, in order:
* Awesome!!
* Rockin!
* Yeah!
* Meh…
* Fail
* Blah…
* Epic Fail
“Rock Revolution” is about what you’d expect from a mobile version of a music game, not dissimilar to what Activision has done with “Guitar Hero” or what Tapulous has popularized on the iPhone with “Tap Tap Revenge.” Unfortunately, due to the limited power of most mobile devices, you’re playing along to ugly sounding-MIDI tracks.
The iPhone has raised my expectations of music games on a mobile device, but for a lower-end mobile phone, this could suffice on a boring commute.
Still, one fact remains: “Tap Tap Revenge” won’t try and make you laugh (or cry) at your own failures. “Rock Revolution” will, and that's kind of awesome.