I normally wouldn’t take the time to go over a DLC purchase, but I think this warrants it. I was ecstatic last month when my favorite wallet suck, Rock Band, announced a whopping 12 pack of Creedence Clearwater Revival songs. The best part is, they are all master recordings. Real studio recordings, not live, or as made famous by. The announcement was bittersweet though. I couldn’t wait to listen to the sound quality of the tracks, which usually sky rockets when Harmonix applies their magical touch, but I had to wait to purchase because I was in the middle of a HD swap on my PS3. I figured I would purchase them when I had re-download my 600 other RB songs for the 5th time. Anyone want to take a guess how long 37 gigs takes to download? Times that by five, now that is gamer loyalty. I got the HD swapped and I couldn’t wait to lay my money down.

We all know CCR, love them or loathe them, we all know at least one of their songs. You know CCR, the bluesy sounding southern rock band. You could swear from their sound that they just crawled out of an alligator infested swamp in Louisiana, but they are actually from California. I remember them fondly as a kid, back when AM radio was still the automobile industry standard. When their songs were the cool ones on the station we got in the car, with them being spread out with other bands like Elvis, Patsy Cline,Linda Rondstant, and Gordon Lightfoot. It made the car ride feel more like a road trip when their upbeat music was on, instead of a trip to the waiting room of the dentist. When I was really young, their happy-go-lucky song Down on the Corner always reminded me of something from Jim Henson’s Christmas special, Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas. Which in turn reminded me of getting loot. I also loved their awesome Time-Life compilation commercial. Their drummer looked like an overly stoned wolfman, and it looked like it was filmed in a funeral home It also seems you can not see anything Vietnam War related without one of their songs blasting through the soundtrack. The hippies had their Hendrix, Joplin, Dylan, Dead, and CSNY. The youth in revolt, had The Who, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath. Everyone else had The Beatles and the Beach Boys, but the guys who were in the shit had Creedence. Their gritty, poor man sound fit perfectly with the environment, and gave the soldiers an anthem with Fortunate Son. Sometimes it seems we take CCR for granted, they have a ton of hits, and are played on numerous different kinds of stations. Maybe it became an over-saturation, like the Guitar Hero franchise last year, but I for one think my money was spent.

It was late, and I couldn’t sleep. I thought I would get up and put on the headphones, so I didn’t wake the neighborhood, and plow through the CCR 12 pack. When I looked at the set list I realized that every song was one I liked, and was familiar with, so I was ready to crank the stereo up and rock. Going over the set list I realized that the difficulty of the music was very low, but I don’t care I love the source material. Upon starting to play, the music coming through my headphones was pristine. Harmonix upped the sound quality to 15, as usual. Here is the track list.

TRACK LIST (with some gameplay vids)

Born on the bayou – Starts of the set list with it’s familiar guitar riff and I was hooked ready to play

Proud Mary

Travelin’ band – The speed of this song crept up on me, fun to play

Lookin’ out my backdoor – Never really listened to words in the song, but thanks to headphones…man there is weird stuff going on in there.

Run through the jungle – Just an awesome gritty song

Up around the bend

Who’ll stop the rain

I heard it through the grapevine – Most overall difficult song but worth the pack’s price just to play this through the head phones.

Green River

Bad moon rising

Down on the corner

Fortunate son(original version) – Nice to replace early RB cover if you buy the full pack, but the cover is pretty decent and probably doesn’t warrant re-purchase.

FINAL VERDICT

The songs were awesome and sounded phenomenal, and is a very easy purchase for anyone who enjoys CCR. The hardcore metal heads will probably not enjoy them as much thanks to the very easy difficulty level. I found them very fun and can’t wait for the rest of CCR’s collection of hit songs to head this way. My only hope is, that these songs have already been pre-charted for RB 3, because they would fit right in to make RB a party game again.