Rock Band & Guitar Hero Games

After a month of playing with the drum set (almost everyday mind you) my blue and red pads are starting to bubble (actually happened a week ago) and my pedal cracked on the base near the heel rest. EA is sending me replacements but I figured this will just happen again. So I decided to buy the official RB1 silencer pads as I heard they are a lot more durable, and they definitely are... I highly recommend getting them for the RB2 drum set to prevent bubbling. They don't really make them much quieter (if any) but they will definitely last a lot longer, and they cover the plastic rim that I sometimes hit. Well worth the 20 bucks.

As for the pedal, even though they're sending me a new one, I decided to fix it by re-enforcing the area that is prone to cracking by screwing on pieces of steel to both sides of the pedal to hold the crack together and to make it stronger.

Also bought the cymbals (two pack). They are noticeably louder, and they tend to slide down. The threads on the top caps are also loose, so they twist off on contact and make an annoying sound. I put electrical tape to tighten the threads so they don't loosen on contact. Also used electrical tape on the posts to prevent them from sliding down. Other than that, they work quite well. No missed notes or double hits.
 
I'm a big fan of both and here are the positives of each:

Rock Band:
Much more DLC
Being able to "save" a band member
DLC and tracks from RB1 can be played in RB2
There is less forgiveness on the notes compared to GH. This makes the game harder, which is a good thing, IMO.
Online challenges.

Guitar Hero:
The bass is 10x more fun to play thanks to the open strum. I find most songs to be unplayably boring on bass in RB.
Not as many ridiculously easy songs as RB.
The calibration method is much better than RB.

The look of the notes doesn't really matter to me, nor does the menu or any of those things. The most important thing in the end will be which one has better songs and it's really a toss up. Out of the box I'd say GH wins but RB has the ability to have the RB1 songs. I've played all the games GH1, GH2, GH:80s, GH3, RB, RB2, GH:Aerosmith, RB:AC-DC, GH:Metallica and my favorite is easily the Metallica game. It is mostly fast songs (even the easy ones) and that adds a lot to it. These are skill based games and I like a challenge so I prefer difficult songs over the easy ones. The easy ones in RB can be very boring and until they developed the opens trum on base, most bass songs were very boring to play.

Frets on Fire is an open source music game like this on the PC. It is still very buggy but it has thousands and thousands of songs made by users (of varying quality). I think in another year it will be good enough to replace RB/GH for me.
 
I just decided to finally buy World Tour full band kit today. Only played a few drum songs so far (started on Hard, which seems ... Hard for a beginner :D ... but doable) but the kit seems really rather good!
 
Got to 25% now using the drums, and things have gotten hard enough quickly for me to switch back to medium. Also played a few bits using the new guitar which seems pretty decent - the click is lighter, and the scratch pads offer some interesting bits, also in the editor.

I played a bit with the editor and created a little jam using drum, bass and guitar. I had some trouble getting the synchronisation up to scratch, but it turned out it was my TV which has significant lag over the headphones, but not to audio out (that's something like 70ms in my calibration screen at least, and almost zero for video, so quite good). So I took off the headphones. ;)

I also hooked up my keyboard into the drumkit, just because I could. What I ended up being able to do was play drums using the keyboard (which is not incredibly useful if you have a drumkit ;) though if it breaks, at least I have some kind of backup :D), and play some drum-rhythms from my keyboard into the editor, which was actually quite useful at least in the editor, because there are some good drum-rhythms in my old Roland E-16.

I'm not very comfortable yet with playing melodies into the editor using the guitar, to be honest - I would have liked some more tricks for going up or down the scale, using the full 12 scale, etc. - but it's surprisingly powerful as it is and I reckon if they see it's being used a fair bit they may invest more into it. It's a great addition anyway.

The main game seems pretty good though and I look forward to playing more. As a little bonus, my not quite 1-year old son loves it also (which is amazing, I could never have imagined a zero year old enjoying a video game, but he creates a lot of funny games for himself these days as well using all sorts of objects). Of course he can't actually play the game, but he can hit the drums with the sticks and even pick different ones, and what he really loved doing is hold the drum sticks along with me, and keep holding them while I drum. It's very, very interesting.

Anyway, won't bore you with this fatherly talk, just wanted to say that I've joined the full-kit crowd and so far am happy. :) Look forward to ensnaring some visitors in a full-band setup at some point.
 
It's important to get your technique down, and try to learn how to follow the beat. Best way to practice, is to keep playing a harder song. Once you get your technique down, things will get a lot easier. In RB2, I used to play all songs on medium, and now I can get high 90's on Hard for pretty much all of the songs. I've even gold star'd 3-4 songs on Expert.
 
I normally get 99-100% on almost all the songs in RB2 and GHWT on medium.
I've finally decided to try it on hard. Still getting a bunch of fails and around low 80s for the ones I finish, but I hope to someday get to complete an Expert (I doubt it).

This is the ultimate party games for smaller size parties. Had RB2 for this New Year and no one wanted to stop. I haven't been up until 4:30 am in a long time.
 
djskribbles said:
It's important to get your technique down, and try to learn how to follow the beat. Best way to practice, is to keep playing a harder song. Once you get your technique down, things will get a lot easier. In RB2, I used to play all songs on medium, and now I can get high 90's on Hard for pretty much all of the songs. I've even gold star'd 3-4 songs on Expert.
Click to expand...

Oh I know ... :) I've played a lot of guitar hero before. The fun part for me is that whereas guitar was relatively easy for me (because I've played a lot of real guitar), the drums are a different kettle of fish. I've booked one or two drum sessions to fool around at some point, which was great fun, but that's about the extent of my drumming experience, so the learning curve is a bit greater. But that said, following the beat is generally not my problem. Learning to rest my foot on the pedal in order to prevent cramping, knowing when to bounce or strike, when to smash, etc. I also love that the game includes velocity in the gameplay for the drums.

I think I'm at 50% for Medium now, usually get around 80%, but the last one or two songs I've played were pretty tricky.

EDIT: isn't this too cute for words? Or is that just dad-deformation? ;)

 
So I got stuck in the career mode playing medium as I ran out of cash (probably partly because I bought some clothes while we were trying to recreate my wife as a rocker), and as I was also starting to wonder if some songs aren't actually easier on a higher difficulty, because you are playing closer to the actual music, I started experimenting with higher difficulty a bit. First I tried a rather difficult song, American Woman, on Hard (difficult for me that is) and then on Expert, and sure enough it made more sense to me on Expert (somehow easier and less tiring to do four consecutive kicks), even though it was of course still very difficult. Then I thought I'd try an easy song on Expert, figuring that they can't possibly make it harder than the actual song - and I figured that right, passed it first time (Band on the Run). It feels great to play a song on Expert because it really starts to feel like you're actually drumming the song. I have half a mind to replay the whole career mode on Expert now. :D
 
I find I'm using the Studio a lot, simply because it allows me to free-style - just pick a drum-kit and drum away! I think there should be a mode like that closer to the main menu. Rock Band 2 doesn't have something like that does it? I do know that Rock Band 2 has some drummer training modes that I find really interesting. I'll definitely get that game eventually.
 
For the details on how this works with XNA & Creator's Club check the XNA Forums thread here...

http://forums.xna.com/forums/t/34902.aspx

BTW, not sure anybody remembers this, but at E3 that said that there will be new music stores for each music game and that these stores will show up in the new Music Marketplace. Evidently these new user-generated songs will show up there.

Here's the official site for the Rock Band Network...

http://creators.rockband.com/

There's docs & videos there explaining it.

Tommy McClain
 
hm... interesting. Wonder how popular it will get.

On a side note... I went and got the Death Magnetic album pack. Pretty nice.... if difficult. I think I enjoy playing bass more. :p
 
So Beatles comes out tomorrow. I got to to play the Best Buy demo version last week and if you are a Rock Band fan, and have some kind if liking to the Beatles, you are going to come away highly impressed.

The UI has been sharpened up and the background animations are rather entertaining. I didn't get a chance to see the vocal harmonies but from what I've read, it's the next logical step for the series.

Full report tomorrow after I go and pick it up.
 
Having not grown up with their music... I can't say I'm particularly interested. I mean, I do know several of the songs based off of what I've listened via Youtube, but... not enough for me to go get it. :( It doesn't help that I'm not liking the highway/pots theme even if it's somewhat appropriate.

I've had a chance to listen to a fair chunk of GH5's setlist, and... there are very few songs that I like*. I dunno... not my type of music at all. It's a shame because I really like all the new features they're introducing as well as the interface reworking. :(


*being a noob with music, I tend to rely on these games to expand my horizons. ;)
 
Arwin said:
Click to expand...

Ha ha, nice ! Reminds me of my own kid singing SingStar.

I emailed Guitar Hero support for their promised keyboard MIDI compatibility, they didn't even try to reply. I'll divert my money elsewhere for music entertainment. Yamaha seems to have great MIDI titles (I sent the little guy for Piano appreciation).
 
I tend to notice a lot of people criticize these rhythm games because people do use it to find new music. Which, as far as I'm concerned is about as asinine as it gets. No matter what vehicle is used, the only thing that matters is people ARE looking to find new music. Who cares how you get there.

In regards to the Beatles, for any semi Beatles fan this is a critical release. Add to the fact that all the songs have been remastered and into stereo by one of the original Abbey road producers is pretty stellar. Also, the entire Beatles catalog will be issued on Rock Band network, which is a feat in itself.

Anecdotal story: I'm currently at a beach house, with about 15 friends/family. I haven't seen this wide of a generational gap of people be this excited about any video game. Ever. It's great that 7 of us will be able to play at the same time. I'm stoked.
 
I bought RB2 with the RB instruments today. Unfortunately it is impossible to browse the downloadable songs on PS Store, but I bought 'Live forever' by Oasis anyway. Felt good playing it...
 
Yeah, I know. I bought Live Forever in game (bit unclear in the post above), but the in game PS Store feels much slower than the dedicated PS Store. Plus, I don't feel like doing background downloading from the in game store....
 
tuna said:
Yeah, I know. I bought Live Forever in game (bit unclear in the post above), but the in game PS Store feels much slower than the dedicated PS Store. Plus, I don't feel like doing background downloading from the in game store....
Click to expand...

With not being able to listen to any of the songs in the PS Store, "that's a dealbreaker." I find really no discernible reason to ever use the PS Store to purchase RB songs. Add to that you can see the individual track rankings and difficulty.

Oh...and still enjoying Beatles. The harmonies are incredibly fun and challenging at the same time. This will be a great add to all future Rock Band versions. Part of me would love to say it would get patched into all other RB games, but that isn't going to happen.

Interface is super slick. Presentation of the Beatles, the eras, the tracks is also pretty cool. Gives it much more of a "career" feel and much improved "story line".
 
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