I think everyone wants to be a rock and roll star at one point in our lives. There is something about the glitz, the glamour, and the pools of money that just screams out, "Yes, I must have that lifestyle!" However, dreams are quickly shattered when we learn we are tone deaf and can't sing a lick, or either we purchase our first guitar, and then find we don't know the first thing about playing guitar. For those wannabe rockers who will never be, we present to you Shady O'Grady's Rising Star. You can't make it as a rock star in real life, but can you at least do so in a game?

GAMEPLAY
Gameplay of Shady O'Grady's Rising Star (simply Rising Star from here on out) plays out like a partial RPG/partial strategy and a partial sim/tycoon game. Of course, you won't be amassing an army of trolls to do battle, but there are some strategy-esque elements in some ways.

For starters, you'll start by creating your character, determining where in the United States you want to start out rocking, determining how you want them to look, what type of music you want to play, naming the band, what position in the band they would be (things like lead singer, guitarist, drummer, bass, etc.) and then handing out statistics; but unlike your traditional RPG where you assign points to things like health or magic, in Rising Star you've got Playing, Songwriting, Stage Presence, Production, Repair, and Business.

The next thing you'll want to do is head to the local music store, get you some equipment, and find some bandmates to join you on your rocking journey. Now, not everyone you see will want to be in your band, so you might have to take what you can at the time and work around it. For example, I couldn't get a bassist, so I had a lead vocalist, a guitarist, a drummer, and like a sax player and that was what I decided to work with. However, you will want to look at the possible band members and see how they react with yourself and the rest of the band you already got, as team chemistry is an import thing to any band.

After you get your band together, you'll want to get writing songs, or else what will you have to play. To write a song, you'll name it, give the intensity you'd perform it live, and then pick what members of the band write the song; band members with green lines between them work well together, yellow is okay, and red is bad. By picking members who work well together to write the song (and have a strong Songwriting skill) you'll partake in a minigame where you must match instruments by flipping over cards; a better team will have less cards to have to flip over. Depending on your skill at the game, you'll get a number assigned to the song. You'll then want to set time aside to practice the songs, but of course practicing wears down your instruments, so you'll have to repair them or buy new ones.

Money you can get by performing odd jobs, such as running around in your van to deliver magazines to dropping off something that was delivered at the wrong place. You won't get much, but it will help. You'll then use that money to do things like buy shirts to promote yourself, go to specific venues to form relationships with the place and the bands playing there, and you'll use the money to record your songs onto a disc and actually sell it or hand it out as promotional material. Sadly, money will also have to be used for the unforeseen stuff, like a drunk band member getting arrested and having to bail them out; or, you know, teach them a lesson and leave their butt in there and kick them out of the band.

You'll then take all your practiced songs and popularity in the city to start doing battle of the band competitions for more money and fame. You'll also start performing at clubs for money. However, to get the big bucks, you need to hire an agent, have them get you a record deal, start touring, and finally hit it big.

The game is amazingly complex, seemingly nailing all that I associate with a struggling band trying to make it big by starting out as nothing. The problem comes in that sometimes there is so much to do, and money is very hard to come by; your game is basically finished when you are broke. For instance, I lost all my money on paying for one of my band member's hospital bill, and would've been done and finished had another one not got a bit of loving (ie money) from his parents who at least supported him in his endeavor. The game also has some drawbacks in that there are sometimes too many menus or things aren't placed in front of you perfectly so you can click exactly what you need without having to fiddle with other icons and buttons to see what you are looking for. Plus, you have to manually drive around the cities and game world to find what you are looking for, which is sometimes easier said than done, because the band van controls horribly and the act of having to find places and drive there is time consuming and plain boring.

GRAPHICS
You ever hear the phrase about how someone or something got beat with an ugly stick? Well, Rising Star didn't get beat with a stick, someone picked up the whole dang tree and swung it at this game. Really, there isn't a single positive I can say about the graphical style of the game. Your avatars are way too cylinder and blocky, featuring something that doesn't even really classify as a face. The static menus are drab and boring. The game world is too square and vacant, with you being the only van in the whole game driving around. Destroying hotel rooms isn't terribly interactive or fun or anything at all.

SOUND
A game about music should at least contain some good sound work and great music…right? Well, think again. There isn't really any sound work beyond a guitar wa-wa noise when you level up your character, because most of the time is spent filling the game with one un-licensed music track by nobody after nobody. Given, all the bands and singers are real, unsigned bands, but in a lot of the cases I can see why that is. They make Sanjaya on American Idol sound good.

IN CONCLUSION
Is there a market for this game? Sure, there is a market probably for any game out there. However, the game just isn't that fun, and what is there is bogged down by terrible graphics, terrible sound, and an overall terrible presentation. If you like the more mainstream and popular sim games like a Sim City or Zoo Tycoon, then stay away from this game. Now, if you like the lesser known games or smaller tycoons like a Lemonade Stand Tycoon, then maybe, just maybe Shady O'Grady's Rising Star will be for you. Maybe.

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