EA
The Rock Band rocker maker allows lets you custom create your avatar.

­Rock Band for PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 came out in November 2007, followed the next month by the PlayStation 2 version. Wii fans got their turns on June 22, 2008.­

With Rock Band, you've got options, especially when it comes to your rhythm-inclined avatars. You can make your in-game characters close to anything you want with the game's rocker maker feature. Do you want to channel Thom York, Karen O or Ozzy Osbourne? No problem. First, select a name, hometown, attitude and physique. Within physique, you can adjust height, weight, face, skin color, hairstyle and hair color. Always wanted a lime green mullet? Done and done.

Once you've perfected your avatar, it's time to pump up the volume. If you want to go it alone, choose from solo quickplay, solo world tour and tutorial. However, bass players beware: solo world tour only works for guitar, drums and vocals. What do quickplay and world tour mean? We'll dive into those details with the multiplayer options since gamers generally agree that, like checkers and chess, Rock Band is best enjoyed with other people.

­ Within the multiplayer mode, you can select from band quickplay, band world tour, tug of war and score duel. Quickplay is the EP version of Rock Band since you can select single songs to play if you're short on time.

Things heat up when you get into band world tour. This is your chance to make it big. You start out in your chosen hometown and must shred, pound or belt your way across 17 cities and 41 imaginary venues. If you showboat well enough, crowds will actually sing along.

In world tour mode, your band objective is to collect as many fans, stars and cash along the way to buy more stuff and get to more places. But instead of just beating out a list of songs like automatons, you and your band mates have decisions to make along the way.

As you make more dough, you can hire staff and managers, buy slick tour buses and jets and even get a few hot tattoos. Managers will present special opportunities, such as a sell-out or charity gig. With sell-outs, you can really rake in the money, but charity sets bring you more fans. Live DVD offers can also triple your fan base --
if you rock out.

And speaking of fans, these virtual groupies are your lifeblood. Lose them, and things won't look so promising. Bigger venues, for instance, draw fans in droves, but hit a sour note and you'll kiss away a few thousand or so. We'll get into even more of the world tour fine print in later sections.

For a mellower, yet challenging, jam, there's also the tug of war and score duel. In tug of war, you and someone else trade off on parts of a song, and the game judges who performs better. Since competitors can select different difficulty settings, it evens the playing field. Score duel raises the stakes since both people must play the entire song at the same difficulty level. The person with the highest score wins. Unlike world tour, Xbox and Playstation 3 owners can compete in these modes and quickplay with a friend in the same room or online.