toblix

Crock Band

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I was really looking forward to Rock Band's awesomeness, but while the game itself and the music seems totally radical, I'm getting worried about the build quality of the instruments. Obviously nobody's reporting that their instruments are working, but it seems like there's too much talk about faulty strum bars and breaking drums and shit.

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I played it (4-player co-op) for a couple of hours at a friend's house. Damn fun. The guitar parts are slightly less crazy than in GH3, but that's fine with me as that's around my current skill level. HOPO's are much harder to see, although they follow the same logic as GH 1 & 2, so are easier to intuit than GH3's HOPO's. Drums were very fun, although I was only slowly catching on to the kick pedal (in all 4 difficulties, btw). What's cool is that a drummer friend of mine was able to pass songs on expert out of the box, so I guess the claims of realism are founded to some degree. I only played it for one night, so I don't know anything about long-term peripheral quality, but what I played was very fun.

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Yeah, I guess everyone agrees it's extremely fun, and the music selection seems to be more varied than the too-much-metal one of GHIII. I actually thought the first Guitar Hero had the best songs. I also expected that GHIII would have more varied music now that it's become so mainstream, but almost everything was this crazy metal music, and then it was over.

Anyway, my point was going to be that it doesn't matter how fun Rock Band is if the instruments can't take a beating.

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Well I've not heard bad anything so far... hopefully it will be fine! :tup: Guitar Hero 3 had a lot of reports of people with poorly put together guitars with damaged contacts and sticking buttons etc, but obviously on the whole it's been good. I imagine (or hope) that Rock Band will be the same.

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With the ever-increasing frequency with which people howl about faulty Video game hardware nowadays, I'm more inclined to believe a small minority of people are doing this for a past time -- irrespective of whether there's actually any truth to ever claim out there.

Also, I feel this thread title warrants photos of hateful footwear (well, one at least):

Crocs.jpg

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It seems there's already two different versions out of both the guitar and the drum set. It seems to me that the problem is that when Harmonix left RedOctane, they also had to get their controllers elsewhere. Maybe whomever's making the Rock Band controllers don't know what the fuck they're doing. Hopefully there'll be improved hardware out by the time someone discovers Europe hasn't gotten the game yet. What the Hell? Guitar Hero III came out almost simultaneously there and here!

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There actually seems to be *three* versions of everything. I've been playing constantly for the past week. Our strum bar seems to be...weird. Not totally broken, but I miss a lot of notes when I shouldn't be. We don't have a GH controller for the 360. The drums aren't responsive enough, but I did the tape-mod, and they're WAY better now. I still want to replace them, though.

The controllers are *designed* really well, they're just not *made* well. Someone opened their drums and the pad sensor has a bunch of melted plastic around it, which explains the unresponsive rolls.

I have a big review I've been writing, I'll link it when it's up. Really awesome game, despite the bad controllers.

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Yay! Tommy lives again. That's too bad to hear. I'm still waiting on a Canadian release myself, but a friend who picked up the disc-only version from the States is coming 'round tonight so we can at least get some dual-guitar on. 'Course, I'll be using the 360 wireless guitar, so unable to provide a verdict on the pack-in, but there it is.

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Be sure to make a guitarist the Band Leader (you probably would anyway).

I actually really love the Strat guitar -- the fret buttons are amazing, strum bar...well, maybe if it worked.

If you have a USB mic you should totally hook that up, too. Singing is actually tons of fun. Kinda related -- I put up a Karaoke Revolution video of my friend Amber singing The Darkness on Expert.

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Wow, if your friend sang in the band, maybe I'd be tempted to listen to their music ;) As it is, I'm not.

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Yesterday evening at a housewarming party I played my first round of Guitar Hero III. I was shit. Easy was pretty doable, but as soon as I hit Medium with the extra blue button added, I got lost hopelessly, heh.

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Wow, I think I just played for something like 7 hours straight. I'm hoarse from singing, and my wrists are cramped, but damn did I have fun. We started off with myself on Guitar (expert), my buddy on Bass (also expert), and my roommate on the Xbox Live headset microphone (easy, then medium as we didn't know what to expect at first) and Hobocide started rolling onto the new frontier of Rock Band. Don't get me wrong here, Say It Ain't So is one of my favorite songs, but I think I've had my fill of it for a few weeks now. When we were starting out the world tour, it seemed like that and In Bloom were all we played. Both are great songs, but too much is too much. Eventually started unlocking more goodness as we went and we finally started making some real advances towards the end of the night. Friend crashed here, so the game is still in my Xbox.

After he went to pass out, I started a new character so that I could try out the vocals for myself. Kind of a dumb idea that you can only have one character per instrument (well, ok. Guitar & Bass can be played by the same character) but I'll just have to create a couple of dupes to go along with it when my copy arrives. I then took my duped character up to the 7th tier of the Medium vocal difficulty in one sitting, hence the sore throat. Most of the time I got by by imitating the singer as best I could. My singing voice is kind of like Scott Weiland's, so Vaseline was incredibly easy for me to get through, but I can't imagine anyone easily pulling off all the songs. There's simply too much variation in singing styles. Only failed once, mostly because I'd never heard the song by OK Go before and had no idea what I was doing. Good fun, but using an Xbox Live headset mic instead of the pack-in one was a bit awkward and I'll hold off any complete assessment until I've played it with the equipment that I'm actually supposed to.

The only problem I had with the game at all (even the guitar tracks were a bit more challenging than I was expecting on some of the higher songs. I actually got my ass handed to me the first time I played Highway Star) was that the downloadable content is not available in Canada yet. I know the game isn't out here yet, but if someone managed to get a copy, why the hell shouldn't we be able to give EA money to play more songs? Our dollars are worth more than theirs right now, don't they want some of them? Grumble Grumble. I wanted to play the Bowie pack...

(also, the Fallout Boy song was terrible. Sounds like the music I listened to for a few months back in Junior High School when I didn't know any better. We called them Blink 182 then, but for all I could tell the band was the fucking same. Wanted to claw my ears off, and then rip my tongue out for singing it.)

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Overall it sounds like a lot of positive responses! :tup:

Looking forward to this one!

From RockBand.com:

Many of you have contacted us regarding your guitar controllers. As sometimes happens when new products first go into manufacturing, we discovered an imperfection with the strum bar in an early production run of guitars that were shipped at launch. We want to inform you that we have since identified and fixed the issue in all subsequent production runs of the guitars. If you are experiencing a problem with your guitar or any of your other Rock Band instruments, simply visit the customer support website (http://support.ea.com/rockband) and we will send a replacement immediately. Harmonix is dedicated to creating 100% customer satisfaction and to those of you who've encountered any hardware issues, we are sorry for the hassle.

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Be sure to make a guitarist the Band Leader (you probably would anyway).

I actually really love the Strat guitar -- the fret buttons are amazing, strum bar...well, maybe if it worked.

If you have a USB mic you should totally hook that up, too. Singing is actually tons of fun. Kinda related -- I put up a Karaoke Revolution video of my friend Amber singing The Darkness on Expert.

Just watched that video... I'm surprised how entertaining it was. Wonderful voice she's got there! Wow! :tup:

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It appears that anyone who ordered a replacement guitar (maybe drums too) is getting a FREE GAME from EA. The holidays (well, that's their excuse) caused the shipments to take forever, so many people don't have their replacements yet. Emails were sent out informing people that they could have a free game from EA (The Simpsons Game was the only one mentioned, not sure what's available).

So...go request a replacement now if you want a free game, you probably have a broken guitar anyway. I don't know how long this deal will last, maybe it's already over.

Miffy: they've said the headset quality is really bad, so playing above Medium is very difficult. Definitely wait for a real mic.

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Yeah, it seemed a bit off on a few things. My voice isn't that bad, and times when I thought I had the singer emulated spot-on it told me I was down on the lower end of the note registries when what I was singing was up high. Didn't stop me from getting 99% on a few songs, but I thought I'd nailed it on the ones that I've known really well for years. The one that weirded me out was Sabotage, which is entirely spoken. I said every word, and I said it in time. Why only 3 stars? Bah, I say.

A real mic will be a lot of fun, and honestly the whole reason I'm buying this game is for the drums so playing it without seemed a bit hollow. Guitar is still great, but damn do I need to play me some skins.

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The one that weirded me out was Sabotage, which is entirely spoken. I said every word, and I said it in time. Why only 3 stars? Bah, I say.

Yeah, it's weird for me too. If you really look, there IS a lag though, so people recommend singing slightly early--the arrow doesn't appear right away. There doesn't really seem to be a way to fix it yet.

A real mic will be a lot of fun, and honestly the whole reason I'm buying this game is for the drums so playing it without seemed a bit hollow. Guitar is still great, but damn do I need to play me some skins.

Thank you for the perfect segue into what I just posted on my site! *ahem* SPEAKING OF drums...

I got two of the highest Expert drum scores IN THE WORLD*!

Also: leaderboards question, Rock Band vs. Drummania.

bang-a-gong-leader.jpg

I haven't posted my review yet, I'm going to do a lot of smaller posts, since this game is MASSIVE!

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Well done sir. I look forward to competing once Harmonix and EA see fit to finally let Canadians in. Newest estimate from EB's website is January 2nd. Bastards.

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Another night of Rock Band down and I'm seriously considering spending the extra $70 it would cost me to get it off eBay a month early so I could play me some drums. Beat the solo tour for guitar tonight, with the only song I couldn't get 5 stars on my first time through being Run to the Hills. (Triplets aren't too bad, but put a long string of them in and I'll eventually get thrown and lose my multiplier. Damn Iron Maiden.) It was a close one on Flirting With Disaster though, as I only made it to my fifth star thanks to some spectacular end wankery on the open solo at the end. I'm currently ranked two hundred eighty something on the career leaderboards for guitar. I know you've been pretty exceptional in Guitar Hero as well, Tommy. I can't compete on drums yet, but how am I for guitar?

It was nice to see that my completing the solo mode on expert also unlocked all the achievements for the easier difficulties. I was pleasantly surprised to see "Achievement Unlocked: 4 for 140 gamerpoints" instead of the 50 for expert that I was expecting upon completing Green Grass and High Tides. By the way, that song: Harder than Free Bird. My five stars hides how much of the second solo I was blinking red for. I honestly don't know how I survived it. I think it was a rather miraculously lucky bit of hammer-on that I didn't expect to get right. The solo is long and ridiculous, the rest of the song is kinda tricky but repetitive enough that it's not challenging. I actually had 5 stars before the solo started (that notifier in the top corner is cool, as a side note) and then had to sweat, fumble, and curse my way through the agony.

Also played through all the bonus songs (DLC isn't available in Canada for whatever reason) and got 5 stars on all except Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld which has a ridiculous phrase that repeats over and over. Although I think that Outside may be one of my favorite songs in the game. Fantastic guitar, and the rest sounds really good too, though I couldn't see that for myself.

My goal now is clear. While waiting for a Canadian release, which will bring me drums, a good mic, and downloadable content, I must get 5 stars on those last two songs. Also, while playing in world tour, I should start taking on Bass so I can get that perfect bass achievement. The one for getting 100% on a song on expert using all up-strums. Sounds like fun.

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