Sure, you can kill zombies with your keyboard, but did you know you can kill zombies with your Guitar Hero or Rock Band guitar, too? Behold Rock of the Dead!!

There are mindless beasts that take basic three- or four-strum combos to take out, but then there are ones that’ll lob projectiles at you – these knives/bombs only take a couple of fret flicks to get rid of, but unless you take down the guy that’s throwing them out at you, you’ll just be endlessly downing those objects. When the screen fills with a half-dozen beasts at once, you have the ability to discriminate and target specific ones by “typing” out the combo of the one you want – the game’s smart enough to know which beast you’re “aiming” at because it locks in on the enemy as you’re pushing out its fret button code.

Periodically you’ll have to take down larger enemies in rhythm fashion: this is basic Guitar Hero/Rock Band gameplay as the notes must be played to the beat of the background music to take down the threat.

The game has extra geek cred because it features voicework by Neil Patrick Harris and Felicia Day, too. If you don’t know who those people are, I forgive you.

Unfortunately this game is Wii-only, which means I won’t be able to play it — but it sounds awesome, and I totally support destroying zombies with the power of fake plastic rock!

So the Rock Band Network should launch any day now, and per the always excellent RockBandAide, we can look forward to these announced downloadable tracks and artists on launch day:

• Steve Vai
• Widespread Panic
• Gov’t Mule
• Reverend Horton Heat
• Stroke 9
• Bif Naked

• Evanescence – Going Under
• All That Remains – Days Without
• All That Remains – Forever in Your Hands
• All That Remains – Undone
• Flight of the Concords – Business Time
• Flight of the Concords – Demon Woman
• Flight of the Concords – Most Beautiful Girl in the Room
• Ministry – Let’s Go
• Ministry – Life is Good
• Ministry – Watch Yourself

I am a huge, HUGE Flight of the Conchords fan and I cannot WAIT to bust out some Business Time on the mic.

As originally promised, RBN also opens the doors to more experimental stuff and new genres of fake plastic music, like this full-on Jazz track by Bill Bruford’s Earthworks. Check it out: saxophone as vocals, piano as guitar!

Don’t think a sax could actually play those vocals? I beg to differ! Witness a trombone player scoring a perfect on the vocals to the execrable “I Get By”.

Sorry Honest Bob fans, but that song is a crime against music. A trombone is the best thing that could have ever possibly happened to “I Get By”.

Imagine the joy of finding a copy of The Beatles: Rock Band or Guitar Hero 5 under your Christmas tree this year. Now imagine what you’d feel like if, instead, you unwrapped a copy of an ultra-chintzy, bottom dollar Guitar Hero knockoff. Behold.

Guitar Superstar

(picture courtesy of the always-excellent Rock Band Aide)

Featuring, according to the box, 12 “hit” songs:

• Santana – “Stormy”
• Motorhead – “Fight”
• Fall Out Boy – “Dance, Dance”
• Alice Cooper – “Billion Dollar Babies”
• System Of A Down – “Forest”
• The Vines – “Get Free”
• Aerosmith – “I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing”

There must be multiple versions of this thing, because this one features the song Granite Man. Not Iron Man, mind you, but … Granite Man.

Oh, but wait, there’s more!

Shredmaster Jr.

This one has a similar tracklist, but a totally different gameplay UI.

• Smoke on the Water
• I Love Rock and Roll
• Iron Man
• You Give Love a Bad Name
• Billion Dollar Babies
• Hotel California
• Paradise City
• Smells Like Teen Spirit
• Paranoid
• Master of Puppets

I’m not sure which one is worse. I don’t think there can be a winner when both are so bad. This is gameplay that would have been barely acceptable in the 8-bit NES era, and “songs” that are painful, barely recognizable MIDI deconstructions of the originals.

There’s even a drum superstar, though it’s so profoundly bad I couldn’t find any details on it, or videos of it in action.

Any kids who got these crappy knockoffs for Christmas instead of the real thing, you have my condolences. I’m sorry your parents don’t love you!

I am in fact a huge fan of The Beatles: Rock Band. I’ve been enjoying the heck out of the recent Abbey Road DLC, so much so that I’d call the 16-minute B-side medley — playable as one continuous song — the high point of my entire fake plastic rock experience to date. It was seriously that good!

So I jumped at the opportunity to run a (very!) small, sponsored contest courtesy of our pals at GameStop.

Up for grabs are two copies of The Beatles: Rock Band for Playstation 3.

Here’s how it works:

1. Leave a comment describing your favorite Beatles song in the game. Just a short paragraph is fine.
2. Be sure to leave a valid email address in the comment so I can contact you.
3. I will select my two favorite comments (you have to convince me — at least a little!) and your copy of The Beatles: Rock Band for the Playstation 3 will be shipped directly to you.

That’s it!

And, if you don’t win in the comments, there’s always the Share Your Love contest which runs until the 16th:

Create lyrics for your own love song using at least ten titles from songs by The Beatles. You could win a VIP trip to Las Vegas, complete with airfare, stay at The Mirage, tickets to The Beatles LOVE by Cirque du Soleil along with the chance to perform your winning submission before the show.

Also, if you already own The Beatles: Rock Band, get out there and buy that Abbey Road DLC! Harmonix is taking a “wait and see” approach to future Beatles DLC — meaning, the more Abbey Road sells, the more likely it will be that we’ll get more Beatles tracks.

Do not disappoint me! You guys know what to do, here! :)

The full track list for Lego Rock Band was recently revealed — and it’s a doozy!

The game contains 45 songs, all of which can be exported to Rock Band 2 for flat fee of $9.99. I’m pretty sure this is tied to the code inside the manual so there’s only one export per copy of the game.

Click through to see YouTube videos of any song, if you’re not familiar with it.

In addition to the fantastic, first-class song export experience (I hope the Guitar Hero series is taking notes), there are some features that are new to the any Rock Band game to date:

• Any Rock Band DLC that “passes through a content filter” will be available for play in Lego Rock Band, so it’s effectively another front-end for your song library. Awesome!
• Failing a song does not end play; it only causes the player to lose any “Lego studs” earned during that song. Furthermore, all the lost studs can be regained by playing recovery phrases in the same song.
• There is a “super easy” mode where only strumming is required, no button presses. This was first introduced in Guitar Hero: World Tour.
• There is an option to automate the drum kick pedal to make drumming more accessible.
• Each song can be played in “full” and “short radio edit” versions. I’ve only seen this in karaoke games to date.

Most of these enhancements are to make the game more accessible to kids — but I think they’d be a good addition to all future Rock Band games, too. Even the achievements list for Lego Rock Band are kinder and gentler as well.

We saw a preview of this newfound focus on accessibility in The Beatles: Rock Band, where selecting easy automatically turns on no-fail mode. As far as I’m concerned, more accessibility is never a bad thing; us hardcore folks who like to play on hard and expert can continue to do our thing, and those who are new to the genre can have a more gentle introduction than having a giant SONG FAILED blasted in their face.

Lego Rock Band will be available for Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360 sometime between November 3rd and November 10th. Personally, I can’t wait!