If you’ve never rocked out in the car when you think nobody’s watching, if you’ve never busted out a killer air-guitar solo to your favorite song, or if you don’t drum along to your favorite infectious grooves, you may want to check your pulse. As far as I know, everybody wants (at least at some point) to be a rock star. Here’s perhaps your best chance to live out this fantasy in digital perfection – Rock Band.

By now, every gamer (and a huge number of non-gamers) is all aware of Guitar Hero. It’s hard to ignore a game like that – one that becomes a cultural phenomenon seemingly overnight. GH games tapped into that inherent desire to rock sold out crowds, and it did it in a way that connected with Western audiences better than any previous rhythm games. Even the sensation that DDR became in the late 90’s can’t compare to GH fever. With GH3 being passed off to a new developer, Harmonix (the developer of GH1 and GH2) have branched out and taken this desire to rock to yet another level.

Rock Band is essentially remarkably similar to Guitar Hero in concept, but with a concept this solid that’s definitely not a bad thing. The first thing that you can’t help but notice is that rather than simply guitar and bass, you’ve got guitar, bass, drums and a microphone to jam with. The bundle version of the game (which is sold out EVERYwhere at time of posting) comes with a Fender guitar, a drum kit, a microphone and a USB hub to get them all running at once. While you’ll still need another guitar (either from GH or RB) to complete the experience, you’ve essentially got everything you need right in this one box.

The guitar is, quite simply, amazing. It feels more solid and true to a real guitar’s design than any other such peripheral we’ve played with. The buttons are flush to the neck and only colored on the side, which gives a far more realistic feel. Additionally, there’s a second set of buttons higher up on the neck for shredding solos – you can switch between the two sets of buttons at any time as they function exactly the same. The tremolo bar (whammy bar) is near flawless and really feels remarkably like a whammy on a well-bridged Fender. On top of that, the strum bar is essentially perfect. There’s no annoying ‘click’ like you’re used to with other guitars, and even the size and shape of the strum bar feel better. As if that’s not enough, there’s an effect switch that allows you to choose 4 separate post-processing effects that will be audible during solos and Overdrive mode (which is essentially just like Star Power).

The drums are equally well designed. If you’ve ever sat behind the pads of a digital drumset, you’ll feel more than right at home here. They’re well spaced and sized nicely, with height adjustments taking literally only a couple of seconds to perform. They’re a snap to assemble and disassemble for those times when you take the show on the road, as well. It’ll be a tough transition for GH players to learn to play the drums, but anyone who actually plays drums will fall right in step here.

The microphone is a little bland, but what do you expect? The sound quality is great and it feels solid in your hand, but there are no buttons on it whatsoever. That means that your singer will have to use a standard 360 controller during menus in order to get to the singing. There’s a cool feature that allows you to clap along to hit cowbell or tambourine parts, and everybody knows that we all need more cowbell in our lives. (You can also press A on the 360 controller to hit those cowbell notes, but why would you want to do that?)