toblix

Crock Band

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Amazing, amazing game. So fun with four people. I just finished up the medium tour of drums, and am really liking getting used to a new plastic instrument. The guitar lines are easier than GH3, but for my skill level (beat GH1&2 on expert, didn't succeed/spend enough time on trying to 5-star a game, surrendered on GH3's eighth set on hard/seventh set on expert, never beat Jordan/TTFatF) that's perfectly fine. I'm doing terrible at vocals, although I'm not entirely sure whether it's my lack of absolute pitch control, some audiovisual desynching, or just not being familiar enough with the songs.

Again, I have to say I'm in awe of both Miffy and Tommy. Nice job guys. Just...wow.

Pity about all the hardware issues. A friend of mine had his bass pedal snap in half during a playthrough of the Metallica DLC on expert, and I have to send back my Rock Band guitar due to a defective strummer. Plus, I feel like a chump owning four guitar games (GH1/2 PS2, GH3 and RB 360), three guitars (GH1 PS2, wireless GH3 360, RB 360), and only being able to play co-op on ONE game (RB 360) because of the Harmonix/Red Octane squabbling.

By the way, has anyone actually tested what signals both wired guitars send out? My laptop recognized the Rock Band guitar as a 360 controller. Do they send out the same signals for the same actions, which would mean there's some software blocks on unsupported peripherals, or does the RB guitar not hold to the same "standard" as the original? Also, Frets on Fire (a Guitar Hero PC clone) worked great with the RB guitar... while it worked, at least.

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I think it's Activision and Harmonix, but I'm not sure. I read somewhere that Activision are claiming that Harmonix need to pay a price to order to let Rock Band's guitars work on Guitar Hero... Annoying! :(

Edit: I've read your articles. Very nice! Look forward to the indepth discussions!

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I see in your review you were into the 30 Seconds to Mars song. I'll admit that I don't know any of the songs that were released on Christmas, so I didn't download any of them. I'll give that one a look. Any other recommendations from that group of songs? After all, they're only a dollar.

I was more referring to the $1 price being cool, but I do like 30StM (there are two songs available). Some people (my sister) absolutely hate them, so definitely watch the videos on youtube first. Joystiq has been linking to YT vids for each DLC update. Here are the $1:

Attack - 30 Seconds To Mars (80 MS points/ $1)

The Kill - 30 Seconds To Mars (80 MS points/ $1)

Dirty Little Secret - All-American Rejects (80 MS points/ $1)

Move Along - All-American Rejects (80 MS points/ $1)

Song With A Mission - The Sounds (80 MS points/ $1)

We didn't get any of the others. I'm sure I could play AAR a few times and it would be okay (we're really sick of the stock songs by now), but if they kept forcing us to play them in random sets, I'd go crazy.

I think it's Activision and Harmonix, but I'm not sure. I read somewhere that Activision are claiming that Harmonix need to pay a price to order to let Rock Band's guitars work on Guitar Hero... Annoying!

That's right, for the PS3, Harmonix made a patch that will let GH controllers work with Rock Band, but Sony won't release it. It's pretty clear now that Activision just wants money:

Activision: "We believe we should be compensated for the use of our technology."

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Thunderpeel, I wanted to adda comment to that blog thing about geeks, but the little picture wouldn't show up, so then I tried to transfer my blog over to google, but it wouldn't let me even register. Anyhow, here's the post:

I agree completely, and was thinking about this a few years ago. You can effectively call someone a geek if they're really into something. Thus you get skateboarder geeks, computer geeks, sailing geeks, car geeks, DJ (music) geeks etc. Geek is essentially a derogatory word used for someone who is interested in something. As far as I'm concerned, if you're not a geek, then you aren't interested in anything in particular - which has got to be dull. Ok, so real geeks perhaps aren't very interesting to others outside their chosen field (I know some bad ass mechanics and scratch DJ's that I would call geeks, and who would describe themslves as being so if they were being honest), it's just that some people's interests are viewed as 'cooler' than others. Declaration of interest: I'm a car, music and computer geek by the way. :)

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Hi Norfolk, thanks for the comment! It's a shame you couldn't add it to the blog, but it's much appreciated. I think you said something which I might have forgotten to make clear... but you summed it up perfectly in a sentence: People without interests are inherently dull (surely?)... not the other way around! But you're right, to people outside their field, geeks are probably impenetrable at times. Saying that, I enjoy seeing enthusiasm in people, even if I don't necessarily 'get' their particular love.

Thanks again, it's nice to know I'm not the only one who feels this way about these things! :tup:

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Saying that, I enjoy seeing enthusiasm in people, even if I don't necessarily 'get' their particular love.

Well I've

. :clap: I totally agree with you though. My new favorite quote is that "geek is the new cool." Do you know anyone who isn't into movies? Maybe not at the same level as others, but still. Music? Technology? iPods are everywhere, cell phones, computers, it's all "cool" now, at least for our generation. It's sad that some people care so much about what others think of them.

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I tried out a bit of comedy material early last year, about how geeks forge new ground, and then it becomes popular and they are forced out by cool-seekers. Meanwhile the geeks go in search of the new thing. Geeks are basically pioneers.

Hopefully it was funnier than that, but that was the message. Maybe I'll pick it up again sometime.

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I tried out a bit of comedy material early last year, about how geeks forge new ground, and then it becomes popular and they are forced out by cool-seekers. Meanwhile the geeks go in search of the new thing. Geeks are basically pioneers.

Hopefully it was funnier than that, but that was the message. Maybe I'll pick it up again sometime.

Sounds like a damn cool message... No idea how you managed to mine comedy from it, though!

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I'm going to level the same criticism at Rock Band that I've leveled at all Guitar Heroes as well. It's really obvious which difficultly level the structure of the tiers was designed for. That level, I'm going to venture, is Expert. Guitar, for example, the flow from song to song as the difficulty builds throughout the game is brilliant. I've heard complaints about hard, but haven't played a guitar game on hard since I five-starred everything on that difficultly level in GH1 so I can't say for myself. I can, however, relate firsthand the progression on drums, which I am currently 29 songs into the solo tour of Hard mode on, having beaten Easy and Medium.

I'm sure this difficulty curve makes as much sense on Expert as the guitar does, but on Hard, everything seems disproportionate. Why is it that I can only barely sweat and curse my way to a 3 star rating on the New Pornographers' Electric Version but the very next song (the Killers' When You Were Young) I get 5 stars and 97% notes hit?

It's not a matter of familiarity with the bands, for damn sure. I've been following the New Pornographers for a while now, as I live only a 7 hour drive from their hometown and they often tour the neighbouring cities (Yes, Europeans, in Canada a 7 hour drive is considered "neighbouring." The four cities band will usually put in a Western Canada tour are Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton. I live in Calgary, the NPs are from Vancouver.) for quick summer shows. I have attended many. Before GHIII and RB put in When You Were Young I had only heard of the Killers from my younger sister. Given that I know the New Pornographers' song well and it's lower on the tier, I should have an easier time of it, yeah? Apparently not.

I just really wish that the developers of either game would take a look at their note charts when making the difficultly levels up and maybe consider rearranging the song order by how hard each song is for the difficultly I'm playing at. It can't take much to slightly change the order that each song appears in the game. It's not like you're swapping in new songs or anything.

------

Oh, and I think I'm through that damn wall I'd hit on Vasoline. I couldn't do a damn thing, maybe getting one or two lines into the first verse, before failure. Then I remembered there was a practice mode. One run through that on 80% speed and back to the game. Four stars first try. Why do I never bother checking practice mode until I'm ready to put my head through a wall? Stupid me. :frusty::fart:

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I'm sure this difficulty curve makes as much sense on Expert as the guitar does, but on Hard, everything seems disproportionate.

Well, not exactly. On my [currently suspended] site, I mentioned what songs gave me some trouble, and they're kind of all over the place. "Dead on Arrival" is pretty low, but I did terrible on it. People have trouble with different things, so it isn't possible to have a universal difficulty order. Some people die on off-beat bass notes, some have trouble doing simple patterns fast, and so on. There's a drummania song that's listed at 74 that I could "S" (that's good) when I was normally playing level 40 songs. But whomever created that chart thought something in it was fairly difficult, and I just happened to be good at whatever that was. I'm sure there are *some* issues with the order, but it can never be perfect.

Why is it that I can only barely sweat and curse my way to a 3 star rating on the New Pornographers' Electric Version but the very next song (the Killers' When You Were Young) I get 5 stars and 97% notes hit?

Electric Version is pretty fast, which might be what gave you trouble. It could even be that you're playing it correctly, but your drums aren't registering the faster notes. *shrug* They may have felt that When You Were Young is more complex (I can't remember the charts off the top of my head), so that's why it's "harder."

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Well, yeah, I always figure there'll be a little discrepancy between my own skills and what the game thinks is hard. For example, skip beats don't seem to give me much trouble but for whatever reason, drum rolls kill me. I just can't get the timing down. Given that I hear most people making the opposite complaint, I can't expect the game to be tailored to my skills. The thing for me was the huge difference in scores. From 80%-ish to 97%? Too much. I'd be cool with a jump from 85% to 90% or something like that, but that's almost a 20% difference in notes hit, and seems extreme for two songs that are right next to each other.

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...of course all this makes no difference now as my kick pedal snapped in half during a play through of Black Hole Sun about 5 minutes ago. Goddamn it.

EDIT: Wow. I gotta say, given all the crap people are talking about Rock Band breakage, no one has said anything about the painlessness of EA's replacement system. Fill out one form and they say a new one will be shipped 2 day air, all paid up, tomorrow. Right on. Just gotta send 'em my broken one back in a box that they provide, postage and all. :tup:

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drum rolls kill me.

Try rolling lighter. You shouldn't have to, but the drums register better if you don't hit as hard. When I beat "Run to the Hills," I had to do the whole thing playing lightly.

EDIT: Wow. I gotta say, given all the crap people are talking about Rock Band breakage, no one has said anything about the painlessness of EA's replacement system.

People have mentioned that on the RB forums.

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Well, given that I'm waiting on a kick pedal now, I've started really digging my teeth into the vocals while I wait. 11 songs left to do on Hard now, and getting somewhere between three and five stars every time. Of course, this doesn't surprise me on vocal as it's entirely dependent on the player's range and familiarity with the songs. I do better on songs that I know where I sound a bit like the singer. Fair enough. One thing that does irk me a bit about the vocals is that the mic does not seem to do much of a job of picking up growls. Any kind of gravelly voice, really. This means that when singing something like Enter Sandman or Main Offender if I try to sound like the singer, it will show that I'm getting the right note and hitting it dead on, but the arrow will flicker because it can't tell that I'm actually holding the note while I sing. In other words, now that I'm on the higher difficulty levels of vocals, I have to smooth out my voice and sound really weird singing that kind of song, or fail. The fact that the voice recognition for spoken word bits is a bit dodgy is already well known, so I won't harp on that. I'll just suggest to others that I have had far greater success with spoken word things when holding the mic about a foot from my face rather than my customary 4-6 inch distance while singing. Seems to do better when you're a decent distance away.

Given the fact that I'm doing pretty damn well with any and all songs I know most of the lyrics to, I'm actually starting to get pretty confident about being able to successfully attack expert vocals quite soon. Something about the fact that the game would rate me an expert singer seems fundamentally broken, but hell I'm enjoying myself so whatever.

If I can eventually get past the last 3 tiers of hard drums, I'll have made my way up to full expert level in about a month of play. Yay! :woohoo::D

...and yeah, I'd be playing a bunch of guitar, but frankly I'm having a lot more fun with stuff I can't do blindfolded. Love the songs, and they nailed the note charts for fun (DLC especially. I played Number Of The Beast about 5 times in a row the night I downloaded it. Same goes for Hard To Handle. So good.) but until I've got my drumming and singing to the point where I can swap between instruments in a flash and not miss a cue, I'm having a hard time finding guitar as enthralling as I otherwise would.

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I beat Blackened (expert drums)! :clap::woohoo: It was actually only my fourth try, but after my first time trying it, I really doubted being able to get through it at all. There's a really fast part, with lots of bass, that's repeated a bunch of times throughout the song.

[see

if you haven't seen it. The part right after is still fast, but it's really easy to play.]

It's hard because the notes are so close together they're difficult to read. Luckily I was able to get Overdrive in the first fast part, which saved me. The rest of the song isn't too hard, so I always had overdrive ready. I ended with 4.5ish stars because I saved all my overdrive. 93%.

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More C&C!:tup: (cover:tdown:)

Week of Jan. 22: Oasis Pack (440 MS points/ $5.50)

Don't Look Back in Anger (160 MS points/ $2)

Live Forever (160 MS points/ $2)

Wonderwall (160 MS Points / $2)

Week of Jan. 29: Progressive Pack (440 MS points/ $5.50)

Siva - Smashing Pumpkins (160 MS points/ $2)

Working Man - Rush *Cover* (160 MS points/ $2)

Ten Speed (Of God's Blood and Burial) - Coheed and Cambria *Cover* (160 MS Points / $2)

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Yeah, that whole Progressive pack gives me shivers. Can't wait.

In other news, my new drum pedal is here and seems much more solid than the first batch one I had before. This one moves less, and that takes a bit of getting used to, but it also doesn't give at all when I press down on it. I could feel the old one buckle with every beat and it always made me uneasy. Very happy with it. And now I know for sure that the reason I can't beat (Don't Fear) The Reaper on Hard is my own lack of skill, not my equipment malfunctioning. Up to 94% now though. Can get through those damned rolls, now it's just the really complex end segment that kills me. I'll get there one day...

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I do find that you get used to the covers quite quickly (if that's what you're unhappy about TG?). The master-tracks didn't really add that much fun to GH3 (in some cases it was great, but I still get more enjoyment from the cover-driven GH2).

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After hours of merciless bashing and strumming by at least 30 different people, my Rock Band gear's just about on its last legs. The bass pedal's connector needs to be taped into a certain position or it won't work, the guitar only strums upwards and one of the stricks is broken - its shattered end replaced by a rolled-up sock.

But it still just about works, and adds to the vibe of being a struggling rock and roll band, heaving faulty equipment across the country and surviving gigs by the skin of your teeth.

But mostly it's just annoying.

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I do find that you get used to the covers quite quickly (if that's what you're unhappy about TG?). The master-tracks didn't really add that much fun to GH3 (in some cases it was great, but I still get more enjoyment from the cover-driven GH2).

Covers don't really bother me, but masters are always preferred. Someone mentioned that "The Number of the Beast" was a cover so they could tone down the drum difficulty. In cases like that...eh...makes sense I guess, but why not just make the chart easier? On everything but expert you're never playing all the notes anyway.

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Well, at least that way they could keep saying that you're playing all the notes when you play it on expert. I'm with you though. I love having master tracks, but it's nowhere near a deciding factor for me. Covers or not, Number of the Beast, Hard to Handle, and Tom Sawyer get a hell of a lot of play on my system. Had a ton of fun last night playing a giant co-op session with my buddies. Our band, White Guy Drowning in the 80s, has made it up to playing on Hard as a minimum on each instrument. Myself and one of my friends both drum on Hard, all four of us are competent singers, and the other three all play guitar on Hard, so we're set. Even more fans per song if I'm on guitar, given the extra bump in difficulty. Still haven't cleared out any one city, but very close to clearing several. Great times.

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Covers don't really bother me, but masters are always preferred. Someone mentioned that "The Number of the Beast" was a cover so they could tone down the drum difficulty. In cases like that...eh...makes sense I guess, but why not just make the chart easier? On everything but expert you're never playing all the notes anyway.

I suppose they could have overlaid their own drums onto the exiting master tracks...... but I guess that might have upset the band!

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