 If you've ever wanted to feel like a rock star, you might have lived out that fantasy through a little video game called Rock Band. But what if you could do the same thing in virtual reality and make it feel more real than it ever has? That's what Harmonix Music System, which has made games like Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and Dance Central, is trying to do. Rock Band VR isn't just the normal rock band ported into the Oculus Rift. It's a total rethinking of the system and what it actually means to play rock band and live out the fantasy of being a rock star. So we went to the Harmonix offices in Boston to check it out for ourselves. Rock Band VR uses the same plastic guitar as older versions of the game, but it's not the rock band you remember. For one thing, you'll be adding an Oculus Touch motion controller, which brings that guitar into the game. For another, you'll be playing with a completely different system. This is your classic rock band formula. When the song starts, individual notes start rolling down what's called a note highway. To ace a song, you have to hit the right buttons on your guitar at the right time. Unfortunately, this doesn't work in virtual reality. On a normal TV, you don't really care about what's behind or around the note highway. You're pretty much just staring at a box in your living room. In a headset, the point is that you feel like you're on a stage with your bandmates. As it stands, you're spending the whole time staring at that line, whether it's floating in the crowd or coming out of the end of your guitar. What Harmonix came up with turns a game about notes into a game about chords. Instead of a highway, you can see the structure of the whole song, with dots that represent different chords. When one is coming up, your guitar's headstock starts flashing the pattern you need to play. You'll get points for hitting it on the beat, and... well, that's it if you're doing the bare minimum. The rest of the song, you can play whatever you want, or you can stop playing altogether and teleport around the stage. For casual players, the game is more about having the rockstar experience than nailing guitar riffs. The VR crowd isn't going to start booing, and whatever you play, it'll sound alright. The game also gives you specific, optional challenges to meet. Being a high-level player means finding good rhythms for each song and staying on beat, while still mixing up your chords and patterns. Or at least, that's what Harmonix tells us. I didn't have time to go deep into the system. One of the great things about non-VR rockband is that it's such a social, approachable experience. And right now, VR isn't great at those things. Instead of a full band, Rockband VR only has one instrument, the guitar. You've got bandmates inside the game, but the rift separates you completely from the real world. If you get embarrassed by other people watching you rock out, Rockband VR will at least let you avoid seeing them. But if you like putting on impromptu concerts with your friends, it's a little isolating. And even if you're totally alone, not being able to see your own fingers is weird. In future generations, Harmonix wants to put the band back into Rockband, but it'll be a different kind of social experience. Instead of making you round up four headsets to play locally, the game will let you team up with people around the world. If everything goes right, you'll feel as close to them in VR as you would with your friends in real life. But there's still something intimate about playing with people in the flesh, and VR hasn't captured it yet. Rockband VR is a launch title for the Oculus Touch controllers, and it's one of the most exciting games we've seen for the Rift. Not because it's the most polished one, but because the underlying formula is so solid. But we still haven't been able to answer one big question. How much of a game will it be? Being a rockstar in VR is fun for a while, but without a challenge, or with a challenge that's too confusing to meet, it's hard to imagine coming back to it over and over. And that's the kind of thing you can't figure out in a few songs. So are we fans right now? Definitely. Will we still be fans in October when the full game comes out? We're still waiting to decide.