Rocking with this game is harder to revolutionize than Konami hoped.
To start off, on the DS there are a lack of instruments add-on (makes sense, it is a handheld) however the gameplay with the touch screen is just so horrible, it's like they didn't even try. To guitar you either go up or down, of course there's the occasional but strangely difficult circle movement. Weird enough, the circle movement does not register for me, no matter how many circles in a row, that or it just doesn't like to display the score for me.
Now guitar is pretty easy. The only instrument I found hard was the drums. Now I'm not a very good color kind of guy nor am I good at suddenly being forced to play 50 notes at once when I don't even know the placement of the colors on the screen. I started with All The Small Things by blink 182. Drums were by far difficult, I didn't understand what was going on until the 5th try. At that point, I just gave up.
Lastly, vocals. Now the mic isn't bad, not bad for all you need to do is simply to blow into it. Honestly I didn't have to sing or anything, I just randomly blew and my bar went to the max and I got random scores like Great! or Okay!. It's the fact that I had to make sure my voice reached the mic was the biggest problem. I was worried the game wouldn't register from a distance in which I was able to read the words. It didn't matter in the end because we all know top vocalists blow in the mic as they sing.
Career mode is a joke, playing through songs has never been more lame. You make your band out of the 8 selectable characters, 4 girls, 4 guys and you being the lead instrument of your choice. Me being a air drumming fan, I chose the drummer. Bad choice, with no idea what I'm doing I've been thrusted with a bad interface and a lack of understanding of the game. All it told me was to rock! and to play at gigs. Well I figured that much considering this is a music game.
I have yet to try multiplayer, to be honest I don't think there'd be enough people out there with the game to form even a proper band. Let alone play as one.
Now for song tracks, I have to say, I know most of the songs, but they've already been used or covered in other music games such as Elite Beat Agents or Rock Band. And I must say, these are HORRIBLE cover, listening to Blitzkrieg Bop felt like a sharp nails scratched on a board while I eat a bowl full of rotten cherios with my ears. It's that bad.
Overall if you want a bad experience with music, shallow gameplay and to see the most annoying intro ever. Then this my friend is your game.