Overdrive
Overdrive (OD) is the
Game_RockBand Rock Band∞ version of
Star Power. Going into Overdrive generally doubles your multiplier, although it can instead save a bandmate who has failed out of the song.
In order to be able to go into Overdrive, your Energy Meter must be at least halfway full.
- Guitar/Bass can go into Overdrive at any time by tilting the guitar upwards or by pressing the back/select button.
- Drums can go into Overdrive by playing the green note at the end of freestyle Drum Fill sections.
- Vocals can go into Overdrive by making a sound during Freestyle Sections (special yellow lit-up sections without note guides).
You can gain Energy by successfully playing/singing OD Phrases. For Guitar/Bass/Drums, OD Phrases are comprised entirely of glowing white notes. For Vocals, OD Phrases will glow and have orange pitch lines (instead of green). Playing an OD Phrase successfully fills your Energy Bar 1/4 of the way. For Guitar/Bass, extra Energy can be gained by whammying held notes during OD Phrases at a rate of slightly more than one beat of Energy per beat of whammy.
Unlike Star Power in the Guitar Hero series, a player can still collect Energy from OD Phrases
while in Overdrive. Also unlike Star Power, a full bar of Overdrive lasts for 32 beats instead of 8 measures. To complicate matters further, this isn't 32 beats in the sense of quarter notes on the note track- there is another set of data in the song chart which indicates the rate at which Overdrive is consumed. A full bar of Overdrive lasts for 32 of these "beat units." Most of the time this matches the previous definition, but sometimes it is twice that or half that, and on even rarer occasions the pattern doesn't match up to anything logical. The good news is that
User_ajanata ajanata's∞ charts∞ indicate these "beat units" as vertical red lines above the note track: A full bar of Overdrive will last for 32 "beat units."
In Band play, each member has their own Energy meter and is free to go into Overdrive at their discretion (unlike Co-op mode in Guitar Hero, in which both members must activate Star Power at the same time). When one member goes into Overdrive, every member of the band is affected by the x2 multiplier, not just the member who activated. OD multipliers stack- if two members were to have Overdrive active, the multiplier would be x4. The multiplier would be x6 if three members had active OD and a whopping x8 if all four members had Overdrive active at once. This produces an incentive for the band to "stack" overdrive activations; activating separately will produce a chain of 2x multipliers, or a 100% increase over the normal x1. Each additional Overdrive layered over the first, instead of increasing the score by 100%, increases it by 200% (2x to 4x,6x, and 8x).
In multiplayer charts, there are many sections of Overdrive that occur at the same time for Guitar, Bass, and Drums. These OD phrases are given a special modifier known as a "Unison Bonus" - if at least two of the three instruments are present (Guitar, Bass, Drums), the potential for a Unison Bonus appears. If all members (Vocals are never included in or are affected by Unison Bonuses) hit all the notes during their respective OD Phrases, then those members also receive an additional 1/4 bar of Energy (in addition to the 1/4 bar that normally comes from the OD Phrase). If one member does not successfully play their OD phrase, then the Unison Bonus is not applied. Note that the game takes "at the same time" to mean "the data in the chart indicates OD Phrases start and end at the exact same millisecond for all instruments."
Category:
CategoryGameMechanics