We got the new Rock Band game into the PC Labs a few days ago, much to the consternation of our bosses. Who can work when there's a drum set, two guitars, and a mic just sitting there unused?

Anyway, being something of a musician myself, and one with some Guitar Hero experience, I can tell you that Rock Band rocks GH's face off. But that comes with some pitfalls, especially for musicians. You see, as South Park so ably demonstrated in the Guitar Hero episode a couple weeks ago, Guitar Hero skills do NOT translate into real guitar skills. Neither do Rock Band guitar skills. This is great for musicians...when the kids are playing video games instead of instruments, it means less competition for sales help at Guitar Center, and less competition for girls in the real world (Guitar Hero skills don't translate into groupies either).

But the problem is Rock Band's drums...playing on Rock Band's Expert level is basically playing the real drum parts to real songs, and the whole experience isn't much different from playing Vdrums. Except Rock Band goes a step further and demands tempo control, too. If the game catches on and enough players are patient enough to take on the drumming portion of it (it's a lot harder than the bass, guitar, or vocal portions) the rising generation will be full of skilled, perfectly metronomic drummers...and they will have learned it from their Xboxes and PS3s. More hands-on impressions after the jump.

For those of you living under a rock (no pun intended), Rock Band takes the Guitar Hero/DDR idea and extends it to not just guitar but bass guitar, drums, and even vocals. It comes with the game disk, a guitar controller, a microphone, and a small drumset.

My favorite things about Rock Band are 1) the song list, which is bit more varied and less hard-rockish than Guitar Hero's; and 2) in multiplayer mode, you really are playing as a band. In other words, if the drummer gets off tempo, it's going to make it harder for the guitar player and bassist to stay on the beat and hit their notes. When one player is sucky and gets shut down, it's up to the other players to play well enough to "save" them and get them back into the song. If they can't, the whole band flunks the song.

Also, the guitar controller is better than Guitar Hero's. For one, the buttons extend all the way across the frets, so it's easier to get a comfortable grip that you can maintain for hours. For another, there's a second set of buttons at the top of the neck for additional rockage.

There are some bummers to the game, though. For one, the clickety clack of hitting the drum pads is way too loud, and can actually drown out the song unless you've got the volume turned up. I draped a sweater over the pads and that muffled it, but you might wanna put some foam on them or something. Also, there's a bit too much latency between the time you hit the drum pad and when the note registers. As a result, you always have to drum a bit ahead of the beat, and when you play a "fill" or a solo, it sounds weirdly disjointed with the music, which throws off the other players.

But those are minor quibbles. Overall, Rock Band is completely awesome. It's sold out on Amazon for $169, and good luck scoring it before Christmas.