Rock Band 3, the new "feel like a musician" game from Harmonix and MTV games was presented to us today. We got to see a selection of the new features and instruments. After the presentation the instruments were put in our hands and eternal disgrace on-stage was the result!

The new Rock Band gives gamers three games in one with a party mode where you can easily add or remove instruments or have them play by themselves during a party until people pick up the controllers in their own hands, a career mode for core gamers who want to score achievements and XP points and last but not least a challenge mode for die-hards that prefer to play with friends.

The game is playable with up to seven people including guitar, bass, three vocals, drums and last up the keyboard but we'll get back to that. Rock Band 3 contains a selection of no less than 63 great songs and those that have the previous version will appreciate the backwards compatibility as this way you get access to over 1500 songs. Because 1500 isn't bad at all the music library has received a filter in which you can select songs by year, length, artist, genre and more. Those that prefer their own setlist can save it now, send it to friends for an additional challenge, or just share it through Facebook.

None of the above, however, is a true innovation but the instruments are. Those that want can work the keyboards with a Madcatz one that can also be used as a midi device. You already have a keyboard? No problem as you can also use that one for Rock Band 3. Or you don't want to invest at all? Then your guitar can just as easily be used in the "five key mode" which in simple words means "easy". For a more realistic approach there's also a pro mode where octaves are truly correct and all keys of the keyboard need to be used.

Guitar users can choose for the Pro Guitar mode which is getting two new guitars. The first is a Madcatz Fender with six snares instead of the strum and the five well-known buttons on the neck. It isn't completely realistic yet but it's getting close. If you want to go another step further then the Fender Stratocaster is your instrument. You get a real guitar with six snares in your hands with that. The Squier can be connected to your amp while playing Rock Band 3 for a real experience. The songs show your frets and you clearly see where your hand is placed on the neck of the guitar. The chords get shown next to the buttons. The Pro Guitar mode can be played from easy to difficult and the only difference is in the amount of chords you have to correctly play at the same time.

It immediately gets noticed that Harmonix has listened to the criticism of the music world which stated their games weren't realistic. The cooperation between Harmonix and Fender now proves the opposite. It feels realistic but it's clear you'll need to spend a lot more time to get good at this game. Luckily plenty of tutorials are present so that this can easily replace oldskool written guitar lessons.