Well, as I'm sitting here at 6:30, waiting to get tired enough to sleep, I'm totally going to bitch to every reviewer that reviews music games: What are you thinking?

Firstly, you're horribly misinformed about almost every game you've been playing. I think the tipping point was Xplay calling beatmania a rip-off of Guitar Hero. To the uninitiated, beatmania has been out since 1998 in Japanese arcades and essentially set the standard for every music game you see before you today, from DDR to the mighty Guitar Hero. The entire "pick a song/difficulty" archetype comes directly from this game, and 99.9% of people in the US don't even know it exists. Pity.

But at this point, I have to redirect my anger back from the residents of the US(You know who you are), to the reviewers. Many of these fine fellows are singing the praises of Rock Band due to its "innovation", yet to anyone that's been to a decent arcade in the past... oh... 8 years, should have noticed a little something called "Guitar Freaks and Drummania". Now, I'll admit that this is a silly Japanese game that is full of Japanny songs, with Japanny words, and Japanny everything else. I don't expect everyone out there to enjoy such a game, since it is incredibly chock-full of Japan, but some people need to get their facts straight: There is very, very, very little innovation left in the entire musical game genre that hasn't been played out to death in the past 10 years. Christ, we've had maracas, keyboards, 2 types of drums, 2 types of guitars, dancing with hands and feet, turntables of all sorts, and... christ, I could go on forever.

The point is: There is nothing innovative about music games anymore. Nothing. Guitar Hero essentially stole the entire gameplay of Guitar Freaks, added 2 extra buttons and a whammy bar. This is not innovation. Rock Band has been played in Japanese arcades(Minus the vocals, because who the shit wants to sing in a noisy arcade?) for years in the form of sessioned Guitar Freaks and Drummania cabinets. Therefore, Rock Band is not innovative. Frankly, I wouldn't even care if it was some douchebag on the street claiming these things, but these are paid reviewers that can't seem to do a lick of research to get their facts straight.

Bottom line: Anything that involves hitting scrolling things to music? Not innovative at all. Fun? Sure. But not innovative.