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Rock Band Rules!
(”The King is Dead, Long Live the King!“)
Rock Band is out. I have purchased it, which is a given if you know me or read this blog regularly. As I realize there are some people who read this who don’t know what Rock Band is, I’ll explain: Guitar Hero was a game that let you play (by hitting 5 buttons on the neck) a 2/3-sized guitar along to mainly cover versions of guitar-driven songs. It was fantastic. Truly. Rock Band, on the other hand, is nothing short of revelatory. Not only can you play the guitar, but you can play drums (it comes with a 4 pad electronic drum set) and sing (comes with a microphone).
Unfortunately I only had time to play two songs tonight, which is killing me. Eileen (girlfriend) played drums and I sung. We chose that combo because it’s going to be challenging for both of us. She’s never drummed (I was one of those drummer band geeks in high school) and I can’t sing. Imagine a wounded panther bellowing its death screams as it sinks in an eternal pit of Jello pudding and you have the idea. Under normal circumstances I spare my fellow man the horror of my voice lifted in song but Rock Band kicks so much ass that I don’t feel bad about inflicting my cracking cry upon Eileen and Nixon (dog).
Guitar Hero transformed the experience of hitting buttons rhythmically (something I’m fairly good at) into the feeling of being Eddie Van Halen or Stevie Vai. Rock Band goes you one better. Not only can pretend to be Eddie or Stevie, but you can actually be Neal Peart (drummer for Rush) or Kurt Cobain (lead singer for Nirvana). While the guitar parts are purely game-like (insofar as they are nothing like really playing the guitar), the drumming and singing are, on the harder levels, virtually exactly like really doing those things.
Rock Band is the greatest educational game ever created. Guitar Hero is dead to me. Long Live Rock Band!
Naturally I had to buy GH2 for the 360 the day it came out last week. I’ve already got 1 and 2 for the PS2 but the prospect of downloadable songs sealed the deal.
Today, the first downloadable songs (a pack of three of them from the first Guitar Hero) was made available and I, dear friends, am not as happy as I hoped to be. The price for the downloadable songs? Over $2/song. At that price, buying all the songs from Guitar Hero 1 (which many of us have already bought once) would cost about $97, or over twice what the original game cost and that doesn’t get you an extra guitar!
I’m annoyed and frustrated at this attempt to bleed those of us addicted to Guitar Hero like this. You can’t even pick and choose which songs you want either. You’ve got to buy them in pre-configured packs of three that may include songs you have no interest in.
Having said that I will, of course, be buying/downloading them all because I’m a sucker.
Yes, 
that is Grieving and not Griefing.
Brad Delp, singer of the 70s rock band ‘Boston,’ committed suicide on Friday though I only saw the news this morning. I don’t think anyone’s going to claim that Boston was one of the greatest bands of all time, but their eponymous first album was, I believe, one of the longest charting albums ever. I recall having a tape of the album as a kid in the early 80s and remember listening to their biggest hit, “More than a Feeling,” quite a bit.
It always saddens me when someone whom I “knew” as a younger person dies, and I was moved to fire up Guitar Hero immediately and play “More than a Feeling, which is my favorite song to play in the first GH (and I’ve played it many, many, many times). I closed my windows so as not to annoy my neighbors, turned the volume on my receiver way up and launched into the opening notes of the song.
When Brad’s voice kicked in (ok, not really Brad’s voice, but the cover singer on that song isn’t half-bad, and it’s the thought that counts) I really fell into the moment and easily flowed through the song, reveling in nostalgic memories of Boston. I’ve never felt so in-sync with the song before. The lyrics “I closed my eyes and I slipped away” in the song took on some pretty melancholy overtones this time through and put me even deeper into the groove. Upon finishing, I realized that I’d just beaten my high score (currently 267,934 on Expert mode for anyone who cares).
Thanks for the music, Brad. We’ll miss you.
I played a fair amount of Guitar Hero 2 and the original Guitar Hero this holiday weekend with friends, and I’m pleased to report that I’ve managed to finally beat all the songs in the original on expert level. “Bark at the Moon” and “Cowboys from Hell” had been plaguing me for quite some time, but they fell on the field of battle this weekend, at Casa de Matt. Woot! Just 8 more songs to go on expert in #2.
After a few months where I felt like I had to look hard for games I wanted to play, I suddenly find myself knee-deep in a vertiable corncucopia of games I’m excited about. Too many, in fact, as there’s no way I have time to play them as much as I’d like. Right now I’ve got:
- Splinter Cell: Double Agent (360) - Fantastic stealth game with a story I’m actually interested in. I’m playing on the default difficulty setting and it’s still hard.
I also end up getting obsessed with getting high stealth ratings, so I end up repeating parts of some levels many, many times to find a way to do what I have to do without getting caught. The AI is reasonably intelligent too, which means that there are some slightly emergent elements to the tactics you have to use, at times. (At other times, it’s quite linear, but presented so well I don’t mind.) - Read the rest of this entry »
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his isn’t a game review site and I’m not going to get into doing ‘proper’ reviews of games, but given how often I’ve mentioned Guitar Hero on the Forge, I felt I should at least provide my impressions.
First off, this isn’t a sequel in the traditional sense. It’s more of an expansion in the sense that there aren’t really any changes to the fundamental gameplay beyond adding three note chords. Sounds unimpressive, but in fact, the original Guitar Hero was missing some obvious peripheral but useful features, like the ability to play multiplayer but on different difficult levels and the ability to practice particular passages of songs at various speed levels in order to master them. Guitar Hero 2 fixes nearly all of these omissions and simply adds polish to everything else.
I have picked up my copy of it and it is sitting next to my tv, waiting to be cracked open at 3 pm when Chris Kohnert, Iron Realms’ CTO, arrives for an afternoon of shredding, followed up by an evening of rocking (with girlfriend participation once they get off work). Review to follow tonight or tomorrow morning!
8 days from now, on November 7th, Guitar Hero 2 will be released. I am sad that I will not be rocking out on this guitar that day. It’s not that the extra five buttons have any gameplay effect, but it is simply cool to choke up on the neck to play solos. That said, I do wonder if the smaller buttons will make playing actually harder.
Gamespot has a feature on the latest build of Guitar Hero 2, due out November 7th in the US, today. (Subscription required I believe.) They have a bunch of gameplay videos from the build as well, confirming songs like:
* Sweet Child O’ Mine (we already knew that of course…I was disappointed, however, to hear that the singer covering Axl is not all that convincing.)
* Jessica - Allman Brothers
* Surrendur - Cheap Trick
* John the Fisherman - Primus (using the master track from the song, meaning actually Primus, not a cover)
* You Really Got Me - Van Halen
* XYZ - Rush
* Freebird - L.S.
News that got me excited from this feature was that Harmonix doesn’t even have the song list finalized yet because they’re trying to cram songs in up to the last minute. Apparently there are also multiple songs for which they obtained permission to use the masters.
November 7th will be a day of joy at Casa de Matt, with much competitive and cooperative rocking out in place of working.
X06,
Microsoft’s gaming conference, is serving as the platform for a ton of announcements. Here are some items that caught my eye:
- Cryptic, developer of City of Heroes/Villains, and Marvel announced that they’re teaming up to do Marvel Online. This is amusing given that Marvel was, until recently, suing Cryptic for facilitating copyright infringement.
- Peter Jackson has teamed up with Microsoft to work on two games. One is going to be set in the Halo universe (though not as part of the Halo trilogy) and one will be an original creation by Jackson’s in-development new interactive studio, Wingnut Interactive.
- Guitar Hero II is confirmed for the 360. Everybody knew this already anyway, of course, but woot! Of course, this means I’ll have to buy the game twice, as the 360 version looks to be launching after the PS2 version. It’s also apparently not a port. It’s been re-written for the 360. Downloadable content ahoy! If they put a good selection of songs up for download, I know that I, among many others, will end up spending more money downloading songs than the game itself originally cost. God, I cannot wait. Earth Eternal is going to have to do without me on Guitar Hero II release day.
- The original Doom is on Xbox Live Arcade, with 2-4 player co-op mode and everything! I will be buying this.
The other day I was out hiking with my girlfriend and started going over a list of dream songs that I’d like to see included in Guitar Hero 2. Two of the top songs that were brought up were GnR’s Sweet Child o’ Mine and Skynyrd’s Freebird, and I just read that they’ve been confirmed for Guitar Hero 2. Now, I’m not going to argue that these are the two greatest songs (or even guitar-driven songs) ever written, or that they even approach that status. They are, however, iconic, and that is what Guitar Hero is about. It’s not about playing pre-electric Dylan, it’s not about playing classical Spanish guitar. It’s about wielding the axe like a fucking rock star and those two songs will deliver, in spades.
I just beat Texas Flood on expert in Guitar Hero! Woot! That leaves only four songs to beat on expert:
- Godzilla. Very tough because of two extended solos. Edit: Scratch that! Just beat it too! More cowbell!
- Frankenstein. Just weird. And hard. Edit: The monster songs are my thing lately I guess. This one went down as well, leaving only the last two.
- Cowboys from Hell. I don’t know this song at all to start with, and it’s ridiculously fast.
- Bark at the Moon. Ozzie’s guitarist kicks my ass. I’m unsure if this or Cowboys is the hardest song in the game, but they’re both exceptionally tough.
I love this game. Can’t wait for the sequel. Maybe I’ll have beaten all the songs on expert by then, but I doubt it.