This is it kids, I'm reviewing a major blockbuster title. I'm free to be lynched Tuesdays and Thursdays.
/end bitching
As Yahtzee put it recently, summer time is the great gaming drought. After GTA 4, the next huge, huge title I can think of is obviously MGS4. Other than that, I can't think of anything that would remotely interest me that's coming out soonish.
We'll be waiting forever for Half Life 2: Episode Three. Alongside the new Kingdom Hearts games, Devil May Cry 5, Resident Evil 5, Mass Effect 2, Bioshock 2 and Final Fantasy 13. In short, for gaming, summer really sucks.
All I can recommend is to either:
A) Dive into that back-catalouge of games and finish them. (Guilty: Working on Final Fantasy 12 and Guitar Hero 2)
B) Play Rock Band
C) Whine about it on the forums.
As option C would piss off Joe, a prospect I can assume nobody wants, and A would seriously cut into your time enjoying Rock Band, I can only tell you to play Rock Band. Like alot. As in, why the hell are you reading this and not playing right now?!
I think it safe to assume that all of us have at least once in our lives seen a band in concert or listened to one of their songs and thought, "Damn, I really wish I could play that for real." I also think it safe to say that not all of us are musically inclined. Hell, I can't even switch between two simple chords on a real guitar. With Rock Band however, this is now possible.
The rising star that is the Guitar Hero series pretty much paved the way for rhythm based games in the mainstream. I've seen more videos of people on YouTube playing Guitar Hero than I care to count. Rock Band builds on that success, obviously, since it is made by Harmonix, makers of Guitar Hero 1 and 2. To make a small, apropos pun, and destroy my precious reviewer pride, this game cranks it straight to 11, and then blows out the amps in a power-chord of "Oh fuck YEAH!!!"
You have four instruments to play this time around: Guitar, Bass, Drums and Vocals. Guitar and bass are nothing new, same ol' five buttons and strumming along. Drums are mostly the same, except you have a kick pedal and you're hitting things instead of strumming. Excellent stress relief, I must say. Vocals are pretty much the same deal as Karaoke Revolution, again, made by Harmonix. You match the pitch with the guidelines, and the words during "talky" parts.
However, all of these new additions bring their own sets of faults. The new guitar will, and I mean WILL, take getting used to. Prepare to step back a difficulty level, players weaned on the GH controllers. The new notes are also a pain, as it's hard at first to tell what's a hammer-on/pull-off and what isn't. Plus, the slim rectangles are a big change from big circles, so prepare to miss some.
Drums have a difficulty curve that I find pretty dang steep. The tutorials set you up nicely for Easy and Medium, but I found the switch to Hard like leaping face first at solid concrete. Maybe I'm just bad at getting my leg to move indepentant of my two hands, but I failed a hell of alot more then I succeeding during my Hard career run. I've currently hit an impasse in Expert mode. Obviously you'll get much better with practice, but I'm warning you, this WILL make you work for the wins.
Vocals seem a bit..off. I've sang what I thought was right, only to find I'm about ten light-years off. I've also tried to get my voice to the right pitch, but sometimes it doesn't register that I'm changing my pitch. Minor nitpick here, but why isn't there ever any vocalists on Xbox Live. Seriously, we can't hear you when you sing, and if we did, we don't care.
Which brings me to be next problem: Voice chat. What's the most important part of being able to work with teammates? Being able to freakin' talk to them! As a vocalist, you can talk just fine. Just hold RT or LT during a song, or just talk normal while in a menu. No problem. But it Never. Fucking. WORKS. for my guitar or drums. There's a little port to plug in the cord that connects to your headset. That's just stupid. My old GH2 Gibson X-Plorer has a direct port that is exactly the same as the one on the controller, no problems talking then! I've yet to get it to work, and I've owned Rock Band almost from Day One! I personally don't care if the controller has to look a little silly to accomadate the direct port. If it works, that's awesome. I'm not going to split hairs over asethetics. I've been kicked from matches because my mic wouldn't work. Attention controller makers: Stop doing this, make them with a direct port, and make an adapter so my mic will work so I don't have to buy a $70 wireless one just to hear my bandmates.
I highly doubt I'll convince them to stop with just that statement. I tried to e-mail them about it, but got diddly-squat. I hate customer service.
Now, onto the massive piles of praise.
The music is obviously just as great as always, including great old bands like Deep Purple, The Who, Rush, and new ones like The Killers, All-American Rejects, and others. It's continuously growing as well, as new songs are continuously available for download over Live Marketplace. Each song can be played four ways and is fun no matter how you do it.
The real treat here is band world tour. You grab a friend or three, and go through this massive, mostly non-linear quest across the globe to rock. You play setlists consisting of just one song up to all of them in all sorts of different venues, gaining stars and fans as you go. Eventually, you'll reach the top, but will still be nowhere near finished every last gig. It's a massive time commitment, and I love it. Nothing really beats spending a Saturday with friends hanging out playing awesome rock songs.
Only problem here (last one I swear) is that you can't play the world tour over Live. I mean, why can't we invite our friends in to play a few setlists? I understand why you wouldn't open it up to the general population of Xbox Live, keeping that down to only Band Quickplay, but why not an invite-only option. Perhaps it's lag problems or something like that, but if not, then it's a feature I sure wouldn't mind seeing added.
To wrap up this wall of text passing for a review, I'd heartily recommend buying it. The price is rather high, yes. But it's basically three solo games, a huge multiplayer experience, and the world of Xbox Live rocking out all packaged into one. Well worth it in my opinion.
But for Rock Band 2, please do this:
1.) Fix voice chat.
2.) Make sure the insturments don't break. (Heard alooot of stories about this. Even experienced it. But EA was very good about it, so I wasn't too pissed)
3.) Include more songs with bad language. I know I sound like an idiot now, but some excellent songs have just a smidge of a four letter word and they can't be played. IE I'd love to sing "Monkeywrench" but it has the word 'shit' in it. Include a warning label or something. We're all adults here, I think we can handle it. Unless it's a ratings thing, in which case, pretend I never said this.
4.) Release some songs on Xbox Live by bands I actually know. Seriously, who the fuck are "Pleymo?" I wanna see more Avenged Sevenfold, some more Foo Fighters, and definately more Canadian rock bands. We rock pretty hard too you know!!
5.) Put my band in it, please?
Don't think I'll hold my breath on number five....
/end bitching
As Yahtzee put it recently, summer time is the great gaming drought. After GTA 4, the next huge, huge title I can think of is obviously MGS4. Other than that, I can't think of anything that would remotely interest me that's coming out soonish.
We'll be waiting forever for Half Life 2: Episode Three. Alongside the new Kingdom Hearts games, Devil May Cry 5, Resident Evil 5, Mass Effect 2, Bioshock 2 and Final Fantasy 13. In short, for gaming, summer really sucks.
All I can recommend is to either:
A) Dive into that back-catalouge of games and finish them. (Guilty: Working on Final Fantasy 12 and Guitar Hero 2)
B) Play Rock Band
C) Whine about it on the forums.
As option C would piss off Joe, a prospect I can assume nobody wants, and A would seriously cut into your time enjoying Rock Band, I can only tell you to play Rock Band. Like alot. As in, why the hell are you reading this and not playing right now?!
I think it safe to assume that all of us have at least once in our lives seen a band in concert or listened to one of their songs and thought, "Damn, I really wish I could play that for real." I also think it safe to say that not all of us are musically inclined. Hell, I can't even switch between two simple chords on a real guitar. With Rock Band however, this is now possible.
The rising star that is the Guitar Hero series pretty much paved the way for rhythm based games in the mainstream. I've seen more videos of people on YouTube playing Guitar Hero than I care to count. Rock Band builds on that success, obviously, since it is made by Harmonix, makers of Guitar Hero 1 and 2. To make a small, apropos pun, and destroy my precious reviewer pride, this game cranks it straight to 11, and then blows out the amps in a power-chord of "Oh fuck YEAH!!!"
You have four instruments to play this time around: Guitar, Bass, Drums and Vocals. Guitar and bass are nothing new, same ol' five buttons and strumming along. Drums are mostly the same, except you have a kick pedal and you're hitting things instead of strumming. Excellent stress relief, I must say. Vocals are pretty much the same deal as Karaoke Revolution, again, made by Harmonix. You match the pitch with the guidelines, and the words during "talky" parts.
However, all of these new additions bring their own sets of faults. The new guitar will, and I mean WILL, take getting used to. Prepare to step back a difficulty level, players weaned on the GH controllers. The new notes are also a pain, as it's hard at first to tell what's a hammer-on/pull-off and what isn't. Plus, the slim rectangles are a big change from big circles, so prepare to miss some.
Drums have a difficulty curve that I find pretty dang steep. The tutorials set you up nicely for Easy and Medium, but I found the switch to Hard like leaping face first at solid concrete. Maybe I'm just bad at getting my leg to move indepentant of my two hands, but I failed a hell of alot more then I succeeding during my Hard career run. I've currently hit an impasse in Expert mode. Obviously you'll get much better with practice, but I'm warning you, this WILL make you work for the wins.
Vocals seem a bit..off. I've sang what I thought was right, only to find I'm about ten light-years off. I've also tried to get my voice to the right pitch, but sometimes it doesn't register that I'm changing my pitch. Minor nitpick here, but why isn't there ever any vocalists on Xbox Live. Seriously, we can't hear you when you sing, and if we did, we don't care.
Which brings me to be next problem: Voice chat. What's the most important part of being able to work with teammates? Being able to freakin' talk to them! As a vocalist, you can talk just fine. Just hold RT or LT during a song, or just talk normal while in a menu. No problem. But it Never. Fucking. WORKS. for my guitar or drums. There's a little port to plug in the cord that connects to your headset. That's just stupid. My old GH2 Gibson X-Plorer has a direct port that is exactly the same as the one on the controller, no problems talking then! I've yet to get it to work, and I've owned Rock Band almost from Day One! I personally don't care if the controller has to look a little silly to accomadate the direct port. If it works, that's awesome. I'm not going to split hairs over asethetics. I've been kicked from matches because my mic wouldn't work. Attention controller makers: Stop doing this, make them with a direct port, and make an adapter so my mic will work so I don't have to buy a $70 wireless one just to hear my bandmates.
I highly doubt I'll convince them to stop with just that statement. I tried to e-mail them about it, but got diddly-squat. I hate customer service.
Now, onto the massive piles of praise.
The music is obviously just as great as always, including great old bands like Deep Purple, The Who, Rush, and new ones like The Killers, All-American Rejects, and others. It's continuously growing as well, as new songs are continuously available for download over Live Marketplace. Each song can be played four ways and is fun no matter how you do it.
The real treat here is band world tour. You grab a friend or three, and go through this massive, mostly non-linear quest across the globe to rock. You play setlists consisting of just one song up to all of them in all sorts of different venues, gaining stars and fans as you go. Eventually, you'll reach the top, but will still be nowhere near finished every last gig. It's a massive time commitment, and I love it. Nothing really beats spending a Saturday with friends hanging out playing awesome rock songs.
Only problem here (last one I swear) is that you can't play the world tour over Live. I mean, why can't we invite our friends in to play a few setlists? I understand why you wouldn't open it up to the general population of Xbox Live, keeping that down to only Band Quickplay, but why not an invite-only option. Perhaps it's lag problems or something like that, but if not, then it's a feature I sure wouldn't mind seeing added.
To wrap up this wall of text passing for a review, I'd heartily recommend buying it. The price is rather high, yes. But it's basically three solo games, a huge multiplayer experience, and the world of Xbox Live rocking out all packaged into one. Well worth it in my opinion.
But for Rock Band 2, please do this:
1.) Fix voice chat.
2.) Make sure the insturments don't break. (Heard alooot of stories about this. Even experienced it. But EA was very good about it, so I wasn't too pissed)
3.) Include more songs with bad language. I know I sound like an idiot now, but some excellent songs have just a smidge of a four letter word and they can't be played. IE I'd love to sing "Monkeywrench" but it has the word 'shit' in it. Include a warning label or something. We're all adults here, I think we can handle it. Unless it's a ratings thing, in which case, pretend I never said this.
4.) Release some songs on Xbox Live by bands I actually know. Seriously, who the fuck are "Pleymo?" I wanna see more Avenged Sevenfold, some more Foo Fighters, and definately more Canadian rock bands. We rock pretty hard too you know!!
5.) Put my band in it, please?
Don't think I'll hold my breath on number five....
