Green Day fans, this Rock Band is for you

If you own most of Green Day’s albums and perhaps have a poster or two of the band on your wall, Green Day: Rock Band is for you.
Otherwise, you should pass on this band-specific entry into the growing list of music games.
Green Day: Rock Band holds fast to the basic framework that has cemented Electronic Arts’ franchise as a slick, easy to pick up, enjoyable music experience.
For those who have never played a Rock Band game, players simulate a jam experience by playing plastic drums, guitars and microphones, hitting the right notes on beat to rack up a high score.
Developed by Harmonix and published by MTV Games, the game guides players through Green Day’s successful career as punk-rockers, picking up with their mainstream debut album, Dookie, released in 1994. The band’s Dookie days are captured in the game with a concert staged in a grimy warehouse venue.
Virtual doppelgangers — complete with tattoos and dyed hair — of singer-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tre Cool age as the career mode continues from the warehouse to the band’s concert at the 65,000-capacity National Bowl in Milton Keynes, England — which focuses on tracks from the American Idiot, Nimrod, Warning and Insomniac albums — to the final venue in the Fox Theater in Oakland, where the band plays songs from its newest album, 21st Century Breakdown.
The game includes 47 tracks from six of Green Day’s eight albums, including the entire Dookie and American Idiot recordings. Through the game, players unlock images and movies, including interview footage, outtakes and performances.
It’s a tour de force for diehard Green Day fans. However, music games such as Rock Band gain much of their momentum from a karaoke-like friendliness, with the most fun had playing in groups and at parties. Green Day’s appeal is just too narrow for a dedicated game.
When playing Green Day: Rock Band for a few hours with friends, it quickly becomes apparent that there are only a few Green Day songs everyone is comfortable with. The rest are relegated to solo play during the career mode.
Band-specific games are not easy to sell to a wide audience. They need more than just a concert experience and a few albums’ worth of songs — they need purpose. For example, The Beatles: Rock Band tapped into the boys from Liverpool’s rock-gods status to pull off a successful game in 2009. It truly felt like a tour through a rock ‘n’ roll museum, and the game served to introduce the band to a new audience.
That kind of reverence simply can’t be re-created in Green Day: Rock Band.
While the game itself is technically well-done, the band simply isn’t diverse enough instrumentally or vocally to generate much enthusiasm.