TheGreatDave
Banned
Johnkers said:
Controversial.
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Rock Band Platform |OT|
- Thread starter BenjaminBirdie
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Controversial.
TheGreatDave
Banned
xbhaskarx said:
I have a problem with it being pretty...nothing on guitar. I mean, it's not awful or anything, but I'm not as excited playing it as I thought I would be. And as for drums, it's way beyond my skill level, which always taints things for me.
Yes also is one of the few progressive bands who wrote some songs that are listenable. So they get my vote as well.Crag Dweller said:
The only issue I ever had with bass in these sorts of games is that it simply doesnt translate well.
In these games there is no pocket, groove or feel to play with... Only accuracy. Also, there is a lot of right hand technique wich is simply impossible to get across with a strum bar.
I've grown to accept that in these games bass is guitar for people who find lots of chords intimidating or whatever. At first (as a bassist) I found it a bit irksome, but whatever. Its a game.
More difficult bass songs would seem to take away from the gameplay niche that they have carved for the insturment in the game.
That said, something featuring Victor Wooten or Les Claypool might be cool even if I find that kind of playing to be somewhat boring. I could get down to "tommy the Cat"
Has that ever been in a music game?
Gang of Four, had some songs whose bass would be fun to play IMO, but I dont think thats the sort of playing ya'll are asking for.
TheGreatDave
Banned
GGAHT is the hardest song on medium. Ignore the bass kick unless you can get OD and you can make it.
When you play on hard, you'll breeze past it.
When you play on hard, you'll breeze past it.
BigBlackGamer
Member
when you play on expert you will breeze past it as well. that song is just a bigass endurance test.
TheGreatDave said:
I still haven't made any real inroads into hard mode (some of the early songs just absolutely kick my ass - there seems to be a huge jump in difficulty from medium to hard, even on the first couple of tiers, and I've been out of the country a lot recently) but I'm working back through some of the medium stuff to try and get everything 5-starred. Going back to GGAHT I found it far easier - the straightforward hat+kick, hat+snare rhythm that gave me fits the first time round seems perfectly manageable now, even if it's just a little too fast for me to be comfortable with at the moment. The fills still give me fits - either I miss them or it takes me too long to recover from them back into the main rhythm - but rather than struggling painfully through and just scraping a success by abuse of overdrive and carefully ignoring the kick drum as I did the first time, I comfortably five-starred it with 95%+. Playing other stuff really does make it a whole lot easier.
For the first run through definitely make sure you've filled up your overdrive bar before it hits that section, and survive as long as you can before you kick it in. You don't lose much by simply ignoring the kick, and hitting the hat and snare which is pretty easy. You may find that a little time spent on nailing that pattern in practice mode lets you hit the full thing in the actual song, though.
How did other people find the jump to hard? Some of the songs there I've had no problems with (the first song on the second set for example was pretty much trivial) but some of them completely floor me. I think it's mostly the more complicated kick patterns. Did you find you could just jump straight in and sightread through them, or did you have to actually put in practice for this level?
iapetus said:
I think the jump is pretty jarring on drums and guitar. There should have been a way to ease you more into it. For example use some more cplicated kick pattern on medium and for the guitar they should add some songs that use the fith button.
My problem btw isn't the pattern but tha tit's just so long and fast. If it was shoter or with more pauses I would get it.
TheGreatDave
Banned
Enter Sandman and GGAHT could be switched in tiers and I don't think anyone would mind.
BigBlackGamer
Member
shit I forgot how hard the Foreplay/Longtime intro is on expert drums. I can beat it but I can't seem to do it right now. :lol
In Tahoe for the weekend...no Rock Band for me. Did check out the video of GH being played with RB drums, and it reinforces my position that the GH drum charting is shit. Having yellow handle both crash and HH is moronic.
Also, I'll still not understand the people who look at the upcoming DLC and go "welp, nothing for me!" Why not wait to see the charts? Why not wait to see how fun any of the songs are? Or how well they work in the medium?
"But I don't listen to Motley Crue!" Looking at just the stuff on disk in the GH and RB games I can find dozens of tracks that I love playing by bands I would otherwise never listen to. Heck, I can find a bunch of songs that I DO like listening to that just aren't fun to play.
Now, I know I like Motley Crue, but I don't think my bias is swaying me too much when I say that Dr Feelgood will easily sit as one of the top 6 packs in terms of overall band fun. For the record, I'm not a fan of the Grateful Dead, but feel that their pack is excellent. Likewise, I love the album The Cars, and don't think it's one of the best things to download.
Oh, and Dave is right, "Rob the Prez-O-Dent" is indeed amazing.
Also, I'll still not understand the people who look at the upcoming DLC and go "welp, nothing for me!" Why not wait to see the charts? Why not wait to see how fun any of the songs are? Or how well they work in the medium?
"But I don't listen to Motley Crue!" Looking at just the stuff on disk in the GH and RB games I can find dozens of tracks that I love playing by bands I would otherwise never listen to. Heck, I can find a bunch of songs that I DO like listening to that just aren't fun to play.
Now, I know I like Motley Crue, but I don't think my bias is swaying me too much when I say that Dr Feelgood will easily sit as one of the top 6 packs in terms of overall band fun. For the record, I'm not a fan of the Grateful Dead, but feel that their pack is excellent. Likewise, I love the album The Cars, and don't think it's one of the best things to download.
Oh, and Dave is right, "Rob the Prez-O-Dent" is indeed amazing.
The first time I heard Kickstart My Heart, it was in this Vent harassment video. Now every time I hear it, I think of Beavis, Butthead, and series-of-tubes guy. :lol
AndresON777
shooting blanks
TheGreatDave said:
You head bang sitting down LOL
AndresON777
shooting blanks
Xater said:
I practiced GGAHT on medium for a while, once I got it it was just about maintaining that beat and not so much looking at the chart. Now it's one of my favorite songs to play on hard, I do it all the time even got the outlaws cd.
RocketDarkness
Member
For me, both. Usually the songs grow on me if they aren't too obnoxious. And for me, most songs aren't. I probably wouldn't have nearly as varied a taste for rock music if I never played any of HMX's guitar games.birdman said:
iapetus said:
You're talking about the drums here but I have ALWAYS thought that the difficulty jump for guitars from medium to hard needs more work. It's too fucking steep. The way I see it, it can be a lot more gradual especially since the jump from hard to expert is comparatively far milder.
That's the best challenge in the game. Mix it with random songs and you're just praying the game doesn't pick AfterLife or a Megadeth.Mo the Hawk said:
The worst one is "hey, you want to swap the last song for a challenging song!" Yes Rockband, I think Round and Round is a much harder song then Bad Omen.
rohlfinator
Member
Maybe they should put a tip on one of the splash screens suggesting jumping from medium guitar -> hard bass -> hard guitar.ElyrionX said:
Playing bass is a really good way to get accustomed with the orange fret without having to deal with some of the faster guitar work. A few of my friends and I learned that way, and it was a lot more manageable than jumping straight into hard guitar.
I dunno, it's always going to be harder going from medium to hard than it would be going from easy to medium, or hard to expert. There's the whole slide in the former example, you don't have to worry about moving your hand at all, you just have to utilize your pinky finger. With the latter example, you can already move your hand for the orange fret easily, so you just have to worry about strumming more notes and hitting more complex hammer-ons.ElyrionX said:
With GH2, for example, if you can complete Hangar 18 and Madhouse on medium, you can do Heart Shaped Box and Surrender on hard. It's fine the way it is, you just have to bite the bullet and get used to moving your hand on the easier songs. Once you've done that, you're good to go.
darkressurection
Banned
Platinum and Bladder of Steel GET!
So, back in June or July or something, I pre-ordered the Drum Rocker from ION for the depressing sum of ~$350, placed on credit card #1. About a month later, BigBlackGamer mentioned in the last thread that Amazon was selling pre-orders for $299. Since I was in the middle of a two week trial for Amazon Prime, I jumped on it. I made the order on credit card #2. I then went ahead and cancelled my order with ION. I got a confirmation via email and all that.
So, I got my drums from Amazon within a reasonable period of time, and all was well. Until I saw that I had a pending charge on CC #1 for ~$350. The charge from Amazon had cleared on CC #2 a few days back. I was pretty sure it was from ION, but it was pending and it was the weekend, so I figured I'd just email them, and then do a followup call on Monday. Two emails, three phone calls, no answer on any of them, and we're into Wednesday. At this point the charge had cleared. I called Bank of America, told them I was being charged for something I had cancelled, and I had no product to show for it, or even an email confirming shipment. I forwarded the cancellation email to them, and blah blah I got a claim through.
Fast forward two weeks, I get a surprise giant box at my door. It's another Drum Rocker. I tried calling them again, emailing, nothing. I'd just ship it back the way it came, but the charge was still in my account, and I didn't want to fuck myself over. Now, today I just wanted to check on my accounts, and lo and behold, the charge is gone. Bank of America did a full chargeback on them. So now, I have a brand new Drum Rocker in box, that I didn't pay for.
You know, I'm really not that big of an asshole, I'll keep contacting them.
Seriously though... who thinks they're actually going to answer my email, or my phone calls now? :lol
So, I got my drums from Amazon within a reasonable period of time, and all was well. Until I saw that I had a pending charge on CC #1 for ~$350. The charge from Amazon had cleared on CC #2 a few days back. I was pretty sure it was from ION, but it was pending and it was the weekend, so I figured I'd just email them, and then do a followup call on Monday. Two emails, three phone calls, no answer on any of them, and we're into Wednesday. At this point the charge had cleared. I called Bank of America, told them I was being charged for something I had cancelled, and I had no product to show for it, or even an email confirming shipment. I forwarded the cancellation email to them, and blah blah I got a claim through.
Fast forward two weeks, I get a surprise giant box at my door. It's another Drum Rocker. I tried calling them again, emailing, nothing. I'd just ship it back the way it came, but the charge was still in my account, and I didn't want to fuck myself over. Now, today I just wanted to check on my accounts, and lo and behold, the charge is gone. Bank of America did a full chargeback on them. So now, I have a brand new Drum Rocker in box, that I didn't pay for.
You know, I'm really not that big of an asshole, I'll keep contacting them.
I did apparently make a woman cry in class today, but that wasn't on purpose.
BigBlackGamer
Member
sell for profits!!!
BreakyBoy said:
Sucks about all that hassle. I've had poor luck with their customer support as well. I had used the form on the website to ask about the cymbal sensitivity and the packaging damage to my yellow pad, but only got an automated email referring me to the FAQs on their page which had nothing to do with my issues. How are your cymbals responding? Are they as sensitive as the pads? Usually I play with a light touch so it's rather disconcerting to have to nail those cymbals to get them to register. The same goes with the fills and free mode. It's like the noise cutoff in the brain or game are set wayyy too low. It's really a shame since the pads work like a champ.
lol ) or PS3 Drum Rocker yet. They say later in the year but there's not even a pre-order up for it.BigBlackGamer said:
Isn't that against the very concept of a pre-order? I mean, it's not just to reserve something in advance, it's also to give the store an idea of how many they need to order.
I'm continually amazed at how crappy the system of pre-ordering and more or less forcing people to pre-order is in the video game world. For comics pretty much everyone pre-orders everything all the time. There's basically one distributor and they put out a big catalog every month for $5 or so (unless you just get the info online or many other methods) and aside from hyping everything it has the order codes for what will be released roughly two months later. If you don't already have a standing order with your shop (or some require you to order every issue individually) you submit what you want ordered for you and every Wednesday you go in and pick up what's waiting for you. If you order something, they have it barring any shortages or mistakes. Otherwise, well, depends on how good of a shop it is and how high the demand is for a title. They might not have ordered any or they might have sold out quickly. Comics are not returnable so inventory is a tricky issue. If it doesn't sell then the owner is stuck with it, hence a system very reliant on pre-ordering to track demand, make certain you get what you want, and a lot of conservatism in many cases on what to order by shop owners. In some ways it sucks, but in other ways it works wonderfully. As long as you have a title on your pull list (or a subscription or however it's referred to) you will almost always have it when it releases and nobody is going to hassle you about trying to pre-order everything else that comes out.
Staccat0 said:
I have to agree. It would indeed be very hard to get bass to work properly. At the same time the game just keeps reinforcing the idea that a lot of people have that bass is just an easier guitar for people who can't really handle chords or two more strings. The idea that bass is sort of an alternate "easy mode" for most of the songs just bothers me.
Playing bass generally means losing out and being punished by having to play what's perceived as a dull, repetitive part. Aside from people who think it's easier and try to stick with it I think a lot of people wouldn't really care if they ditched bass altogether. Even Harmonix seem to feel this way when they didn't put a bass career in RB1.
Part of this is due to the modeling that they're capable of and part of this is due to the music they've chosen. If they could get some more interesting parts I think it might help make people a bit more interested in playing bass and seeing some of the appeal. I think they ought to break out of the niche they've established because, well, it's one that we can have already just by playing a notch or two lower on the difficulty for guitar. It needs to be acknowledged as it's own instrument, not "loser's guitar".
As a matter of fact, for most of those songs, I do end up liking them. "Move Along" is a perfect example. Would never have picked up the track, but the drum track is just so much damn fun. Still not interested in AAR's music (have checked them out more since) but Move Along I get into when it plays.birdman said:
JonathanEx
Member
I don't know how I forgot that on the summary. What else did I forget?Belgand said:
AMUSIX said:
Well there you go then. You find out that you actually like the song on it's own merits. I'm not sure about everyone else here, but each week I listen to the songs coming out to see if I actually will enjoy the song, and then see the charts that tuesday to further check if it warrants a buy. I'll give Dr. Feelgood the same chance as all the others, but I won't be surprised if I still only buy the title track and Kickstart My Heart. Unfortunately I seem to be one of the bad Rock Band players in that I buy a song if I like it, and not just because the charting is good.
xbhaskarx said:
The use of Live recordings should only really be a last resort if studio recordings are non-existent or not usable. Anything's better than a cover or just skipping the band altogether.
xbhaskarx said:
We also debated that. Major points included:
- Live is better than a cover or not having it at all if we can't get masters, others would prefer not having it than having it be live, and others still don't care about covers at all
- The game is a simulation of live music, not studio performance
- Live tracks are often better and some bands (e.g. the Who) often play better live
- The album version is typically the better-known version and some people prefer what they already know because new things are scary and take them out of their precious comfort zones
- Brian Johnson would be singing Bon Scott songs which is fundamentally wrong; also he has no live endurance
Personally I'm fine with live tracks and sometimes greatly prefer them.
Oh and I just noticed the x's. Way to go. We need more people on the edge around here. Still not as bad as (apparently) SA where it sounds like people think the only point of the game is to play it while drunk. I'll never understand why people would want to drink and play RB. I mean, it'll screw you up won't it?
birdman said:
I'm often the same way, but I find I often have different needs when it comes to charting. I want the song to remain fun to play and this concept of "fun" is elusive and hard to explain. Sort of how I enjoy Vagiant because even if the songs are chuggy I find them fun.
I rarely find that enjoy a song if I don't like the song. No matter what the chart is like. That said I was playing "CrushCrushCrush" yesterday and while I am still strongly opposed to Paramore it had a somewhat fun chart and wasn't entirely loathsome.
Nu-metal is the worst of this: terrible songs that are amazingly unfun and often challenging enough to just plain hurt my hands. They are pretty much the worst things to put in the game.
Belgand said:
Likely to have something to do with the supply side rather then EB thinking they aren't going to sell. I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if Activision couldn't handle demand and were focusing on getting the cheaper SKUs out first.
Who says a stand alone Drum set won't come out in the new year either
Skipping the song maybe, but that's some strong cover hate. As much as most of the covers are pretty butcheringly bad, there are some in there that I find perfectly fine
http://www.rockband.com/forums/showthread.php?t=90409
Some podcast interviewed hmxsean and according to several people who've painstakingly listened to the whole thing, the 20 free songs are going to be from (paraphrasing here) "newer bands most people haven't heard of."
Some podcast interviewed hmxsean and according to several people who've painstakingly listened to the whole thing, the 20 free songs are going to be from (paraphrasing here) "newer bands most people haven't heard of."
TheGreatDave
Banned
No way man, the 20 tracks are being released the same day as GH:WT and are going to be made up of 50% songs from that game, and 50% AWESOME stuff that will make everybody stop buying GH.
birdman said:
Because nu-metal is an abomination.
Johnkers said:
I suspect it's more that the stores don't want to stock large, expensive items that take up a lot of space (most of their stores are pretty tiny) and cost a lot so they won't be moving all the time. They just can't be bothered to actually order enough to cover all pre-orders as well as a few for the shelf because their ordering system isn't designed that way. Because they're idiots.
When I worked in retail (Godiva) we would constantly get products we didn't want because they rarely sold, but we had little ability to actually order the stuff we did sell a lot of. This is because most of the ordering was done at a corporate level and we only had a say in a small portion of what we got. Other things were just crazy. Our coffee pot was broken so we no longer did sampling for it, but this never stopped corporate from 1)getting it fixed (though this was honestly more the fault of my incompetent manager who once went to make a bank deposit and phoned three hours later saying she wasn't coming back (including not bringing back the receipts or the bank bag) because on the two-block trip there she came across a pet shop doing adoptions and got a dog and had decided to take it home) or sending us a new one 2)not sending us so many coffee sampling kits that we had about eight of these giant, useless boxes filling our tiny stock room.
Johnkers said:
I strongly suspect as much. Just like what happened with RB. People will have drums break or all sorts of other things happen and will want them. Plus they're selling a guitar bundle so they'll want to be able to up-sell in the future. It's also a great way to get people buying it all ala carte and end up paying a lot more than the bundle.
Duck said:
I certainly hope this is "awesome indie bands that I know well but are not mainstream" as opposed to the far more likely "MTV made us put out this crap and it's all a marketing stunt for the store and for the shite music they're being paid to promote".
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