So over New Year’s I acquired this new little music game called Rock Band. And while it’s totally cool and has lots of cool tracks, there’s something about it that’s just not quite as good as Guitar Hero. It’s not the looks, Rock Band looks better than Guitar Hero in about every way imaginable. And it’s not the options, Rock Band lets you customize your character in so many cool ways that GH can’t even look directly at Rock Band without feeling ashamed. And it’s not necessarily the tracks either, Rock Band has a number of good tracks and absolutely zero Slipknot. And it’s certainly not the unholy blight that is boss battles, someone should repeatedly punch Neversoft in the crotch for coming up with that gameplay mechanic.
Still, there’s something about Rock Band that isn’t quite as good as GH3 … oh wait, I figured it out. Rock Band’s guitar sucks. While I don’t mind the removal of the clicky strum bar (GH guitars click when you strum up or down while Rock Band Guitars do not) the instrument itself seems poorly designed. Looking at the back of it, there are screws everywhere. You even have to unscrew the back panel to put new batteries in. Plus, instead of having one large bump on the middle button on the neck, the Rock Band guitar has little bumps that are hard to feel on 3 buttons on the neck (1, 3, 5). This makes it a lot harder for me to tell what button I’m actually on. And while I haven’t played the guitar portion of the game enough for it to happen, I’m pretty sure that my guitar is going to fall apart at some point here and I’ll have to get it replaced by EA.
All of this is my way to say, if I’m playing by myself and it’s just the guitar part, I’m probably going to try to play it on GH3 for now. Their better constructed guitar and massive set list make for a generally better solo guitar experience. The one area they’ve been behind in though was the downloadable track list section. Rock Band gets 3 new tracks a week (from which you can buy songs individually or as a pack) while Guitar Hero sporadically gets new 3 song track packs. Often they contain 3 songs by the same crappy pop/emo artist.
According to the GH leader boards however, there’s a new set of songs coming out that look to be awesome:
- Journey - “Any Way You Want It”
- Foreigner - “Jukebox Hero”
- Boston - “Peace of Mind”
Unfortunately there isn’t any information on which are covers (I’d assume all of them but who knows). Still, these would definitely be fun and a great set of songs to add to the game. If only they had a World Tour mode like Rock Band that would randomly through groups of songs (including ones that you’ve bought online) into sets that you have to play through to get money and fans.
January 24th, 2008 at 6:40 am
Free Bird!!!
{waves lighter in air}
Free Bird!!!!
January 25th, 2008 at 8:59 am
Isn’t Freebird already on GH2?
I pick up GH1 and GH2 tomorrow morning. I might even get a second guitar for all the Guitar Hero parties.
January 25th, 2008 at 9:04 am
yeah, Freebird is the final track on GH2. And it’s a blast to play. Of the songs on 2 that’s the one I miss the most.
January 30th, 2008 at 7:27 am
I finally failed a song on medium in GH1, some song I had never played before at the fourth venue. I took the advice of dontEATnachos and went back to easy and blew through Thunderkisss 65, Iron Man and More Than a Feeling in as many minutes as those songs take to load and play, earning 4 stars, 5 stars, and 5 stars, respectively. I have two venues to finish before I get to the song I failed but I’ll get there. I also went and unlocked twelve songs at the unlock shop. I should have every song unlocked by the time people show up on Friday for my Guitar Hero Party.
January 31st, 2008 at 7:37 am
By the way, I went with Ensemble Montage as my band name. I have not finished unlocking songs and likely won’t tonight as I have a birthday party to attend, but I can always use dontFEARnachos for quick plays.