If you need more Rock Band songs and have been disappointed by DLC offerings in recent times then LRB is worth a look
The setup for LRB is your usual music game premise. You must design your band members and get ready to "rock the world. You'll move up the ranks of rock, from garage band to stadium legends. The twist this time is that you design characters from a choice of Lego mini-figure pieces including heads, bodies, legs and accessories. You can definitely make some far more extreme looking people than in any other music game purely because of the massive range of Lego figures that have been produced over the years. Indian chief with loin cloth and space helmet is a personal favourite! You can also customise your "Rock Den," which is basically the hub for the story mode, by adding items and decorations that you unlock in the story.
Of course the world you're rocking this time is very much set in the "Lego Universe" as hinted at by several nods to "Lego Legends" during loading screens. You'll even come across Lego versions of some of the default Rock Band 1 & 2 characters. The venues have a great Lego feel to them too, from farmyard settings, to dinosaur theme parks. It's very much a kid-oriented design approach, but it certainly doesn't detract from the music.
Unfortunately, unlike the Lego Star Wars, Indy and Batman games, there is no real element of building in the gameplay. There are some "Rock Challenges" which involve helping Lego characters out with the power of "rawk" by getting loud enough to demolish buildings and other such set-piece moments. However, even these fail to really make good on the premise of the Lego brand.
Playing the music is just as you'd expect from the Rock Band series, though the UI has been tweaked slightly (gems now look like Lego bricks). The real draw here is the mixture of songs on the set-list. From pop music like Pink to guilty pleasure favourites like Europe's "The Final Countdown" and even the Ghostbusters theme song. There are some real gems in there too that have been sorely missing from Rock Band's DLC selection, including David Bowie's mega-hit "Let's Dance." The only big issue with the music is that there isn't enough of it. There is roughly half the number of songs here, compared to RB2, and some repetition definitely starts to creep in towards the end of the Story Mode.
As you'd expect from a game aimed at kids, some of the note-charts are substantially easier than I suspect they might have been in a full Rock Band release. Though the flip-side of this is that Expert mode is a little easier than normal. There's also a new Super Easy difficulty which forces No-Fail Mode on to help ease in first-time players.
The rest of the game is roughly as you'd expect, though there is no online multiplayer to speak of, which is a surprise given that all the other RB games had it. On the other hand, there is some support for the Rock Band Music Store, though it's limited to "child-friendly" tracks. The game also supports all of the Rock Band hardware including that released with The Beatles game. Unfortunately, the calibration process is noticeably more difficult now for RB1 hardware than it was in previous games, though you should still be able to get it right after a few attempts.
Overall, Lego Rock Band is definitely fun to play, but much of that is down to the musical choices rather than the premise of the Lego brand. It feels a little bit like MTV Games saw how many Guitar Hero games were coming out this year and decided that they needed at least one full release to keep the Rock Band name in consumers' minds. Then again, there are an awful lot of songs in here that are tremendous fun to play, so you could simply use the game as a track pack and draw on the export feature to bring all of the songs into Rock Band 2. It'll cost you 800MSP, but that's a small price to have access to all of your playable music in one place.
If you're hankering for more Rock Band songs and have been disappointed by DLC offerings in recent times then this is well worth a look.