Review: You Don’t Have What It Takes To Play Rock Band: Death Grips

The Rock Band series has always been a go-to for casual and hardcore gamers alike. The next installment of the franchise continues the trend of spotlighting a specific band, which in this case is the punk/electronic/demonic/industrial/noise outfit Death Grips. Nerfwire is here to tell you that you normies don’t want to fuck with this shit.

From the moment players hit Start, this game displays an active resentment towards whoever has the gall to play it. The first song offered is the twenty-eight-minute epic Gmail and the Restraining Orders, which must be completed in its entirety before any other content is unlocked. For those uninitiated with the song, it is the audio equivalent of a stolen police truck filled with fireworks doing burnouts on just the rims.

The chaotic visuals fit in well with the cacophony assaulting the player. If the broken, bowling alley-style animations and grainy, snuff film-esque footage don’t disorient you, the music scroll will. The button prompts accompanying Zach Hill’s fast-paced polyrhythmic beats will descend onto the player as though from a rage-filled piano. The difficulty cannot be made easier, as there is only one setting to choose from: “NOIDED.”

This game will also not work with the typical instrument peripherals, requiring the “Guillotine” controllers found by looting a GameStop warehouse. The microphone will only pick up noises over 90 decibels, the equivalent of a running chainsaw, so singers must perform throat-tearing screams to emulate MC Ride’s vocals. The guitar performs as usual, with the exception that “overdrive” can only be activated by smashing the device against a wall. Bloodstains will also trigger the function, but it is currently unknown if this is intended or how it is even possible.

If you still want to attempt to conquer this behemoth, all you have to do is inspect the HTML code of the Third Worlds website for a hidden audio file which can be run through a spectrogram to reveal a deep web URL to download the ROM files. Or, you can buy it at any major retailer for $59.99 just in time for the holidays.

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