Rock Band Unplugged is growing on me as more and more info’s leaked out, like a drip from a drainpipe, on what I’m calling 2009’s first must-have PSP game. EA’s delivered a smorgasbord of info this morning including a trailer, a bunch of screenshots and some deets about the game itself.

It’s all looking brilliant, if only because it’s a reincarnation of a Harmonix classic…read on to see why for yourself.

Rock Band Unplugged, promises the press release, “creates a full band experience in the palm of your hand by combining traditional beat match gameplay with key elements from both Rock Band and Rock Band 2, such as overdrive and chords.” In other words, it’s Amplitude with (guitar) knobs stuck on. In other words in other words, it’s going to be brilliant.

If you’re not familiar with Amplitude (or its prequel, FreQuency), here’s a quick rundown. You essentially controlled a spaceship which zipped along a completely inexplicable highway of notes, with each “lane” of the highway representing various parts of a song: bass, drums, melody, vocals, and so on. Using L1, R1 and R2 to hit left, middle, and right notes, the two games were the stepping stone to Guitar Hero and remain two of my favourite rhythm games ever.

Rock Band Unplugged looks like a back-to-basics approach for Harmonix. The trailer reveals all; using the left and up buttons on the PSP’s d-pad along with Triangle and Circle, you’ll play out notes on four lanes, each one representing either drums, bass, guitar or vocals.

While it might not be exactly what you were expecting, I can assure you that it’s a hugely enjoyable type of game to play. I’m not sure how using half of the d-pad and half of the PSP’s face buttons will hold up to playing with three shoulder buttons, but I guess the only way to find out will be to play the game itself. Hopefully a demo will cater for this so Harmonix can prove me wrong.

If the 40-odd songs (with some, um, all-too-familiar faces) don’t cater to your tastes, Unplugged will come ready and loaded with it’s own DLC music store, pretty much indistinguishable from its console counterpart. You’ll be able to download songs straight to your PSP from within the game using your PSN account, or access the PlayStation Store on your PC and grab some songs from there.

What’s more, the game itself looks crisp and clean as any PSP game should, and the interface has been lifted straight from Rock Band to great effect. All in all, I don’t think Harmonix can really go wrong with Unplugged, even if a doubt or two about the controls is clouding my judgement. Guess we’ll find out on June 6th!

We’ve got the first screenshots sitting on our Flickr…go check them out!

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