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It’s sometime in April 1995 and I’m alone in my bedroom with my new favourite album, Green Day’s “Dookie”, playing at full volume. Air guitar is going like the fucking clappers. Enter my dad:

DAD: “For fuck sake son, turn that bloody music down will ya?! What is that shite you’re listening to anyway?”

ME: “It’s Green Day, dad.”

DAD: “Green who?”

ME: “Green Day, they’re some new band that I heard about in Kerrang a few weeks ago. They said that this album was really cool so I went and got it. It’s deadly so it is.”

DAD: “It’s shite is what it is. Fucking Green Day. What is with you liking all these sucky bands? Now Led Zeppelin, there was a real band… I hope you enjoy your ‘Green Day’ while it lasts son, cuz I’m telling you now these guys will never have another album. Load of fucking shite.”

ME: “No way dad, Green Day rule. You wait and see, this band is going to be huge, massive, one of the biggest bands ever!”

For once in my life, I was actually right. Green Day have grown to become (arguably) the biggest band of our generation, and so EA’s recent release of Green Day: Rockband should come as little surprise to anyone – this type of cross-media merchandise merely goes with the territory. I must admit, having played much of Green Day’s material on guitar myself, my first concern was that the guitar aspect of this game was going to be a piece of piss. For anyone who has even an intermediate understanding of the guitar, Billie Joe’s power chord thrashings can hardly be described as challenging. Needless to say, the developers have found a way to up the guitar’s difficulty level (in some cases by forcing you to play notes that, in reality, are created by effects pedals) thereby preventing us from completing this instalment in record time.

In fact, the difficulty level is probably the most annoying aspect of this game. Easy mode is to waaay too easy. Medium is also pretty easy. Hard is near-impossible and expert mode is just taking the piss. For me, there’s one or two difficulty levels missing between the boringly easy and the infuriatingly difficult. Now, before you say it, we all know someone who is awesome at the guitar and/or drums on expert mode in Rock Band – good for them. But for the average gamer (i.e. not the basement-residing-unemployable-freaks) the dedication required to succeed in the harder levels is probably not going to be there. Having said that, due to Green Day’s mass appeal, this installment is probably more likely to please at a drunken house party than the previous Rock Band games.

The game centres around Green Day’s “Big 3″ albums – Dookie, American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown. All of the songs from these three feature in the game. There’s also a handful of  tracks from the less-successful albums Insomniac, Nimrod and Warning, however, there’s nothing whatsoever from Kerplunk or indeed from their earlier EP Compilation release 1039 Smoothed Out Slappy Hours. As I was a huge fan of Green Day in the early days (not so much now), I was somewhat disappointed that there wasn’t a more even distribution of tracks spanning their entire career. The venues too, represent real-life gigs that took place around the time of release for the three aforementioned albums.

All in all, the die-hard Green Day fans will welcome this addition to their gaming collection, as will those who regularly have friends around for drinking/gaming sessions before hitting the pub. For the half-fans and everyone else, this title will surely provide some amusement – but to be honest we’re talking days here, not weeks.

6.5/10