Darren’s thoughts on Guitar Hero and Rock Band
July 17, 2009 by
Filed under Blog, Playstation, XBox
I really like to pretend I am a rock star and I am guessing a lot of other people do to.
I tried learning to play the guitar but I just couldn’t get the hang of the chords etc and so I think it is safe to say I was a pretty poor player.
I am a late to the party with music games and the only party/music game I’ve played since launch is Singstar. This game isjust awesome and everyone in the family loves it. Thats where Guitar Hero comes in.
I decided to give Guitar Hero 3 a try and I must admit I was very excited at having this little plastic guitar with 5 buttons. I put Guitar Hero 3 on and found the game a little difficult at first but as with most games, you progress quickly and before you know it you are on medium, then hard and for some, expert levels. I still don’t know how some of the expert tracks in Guitar Hero 3 are even possible and if you can manage it, you really deserve a pat on the back .
I love Guitar Hero 3. The game play is great and it is just a really fun game to play, so I was really excited for Guitar Hero World Tour and I pre-ordered the whole band bundle. On release day of Guitar Hero World Tour, I rushed home from work to play the drums which I have been so excited about. I Set them up and loving the track list I hit the drum pad and nothing happened. Great stuff I thought, the drums are not sensitive enough. Activision knew there was a problem with this, which is why they allow you to request a free MIDI to USB cable to hook up to your PC and download update software tha allows you to change the sensitivity of the drum pads.When you think about it, should this of happened? I paid £150 for the full set to find my drums don’t work properly and I have to set them up myself via the software, it just didn’t seem right to me.
The gameplay felt as good as Guitar Hero 3 and I did enjoy it after being a bit annoyed with the game. The track listing is great and the features of Guitar Hero World Tour are pretty cool, for example; when you pause and then un-pause you get a 5 second count down to prepare, I like this a lot and it’s very handy, you are allowed to change the difficulty during the song, which is very handy too.
When they announced the recording studio I was quite excited, it sounded great and looked great. Well I have used this once just to have a look; it seems people did not take to the recording studio as well as they had hoped by the looks of things. It just looks confusing, there are just buttons everywhere, so I left it alone and only went into it again to tune my drums.
DLC is another problem for me with Guitar Hero, they release small updates and charge a stupid price for them, for example £1.59 for 1 song, that is silly I am sorry but why £1.59?
The store does get updated every week, but sometimes I get bands I have never heard of so I do not download the new pack.
Now I know it looks like I am really going into Guitar Hero, which I am. But I actually did like Guitar Hero 3, from then on it’s just bad and a money making scheme.
I was looking for something different to try so I went and brought Rock Band. I was very excited to see Oasis on the track list for a start which was awesome. The only downside is I could only use my Guitar as Rock Band did not get patched to support Guitar Hero World Tour drums.
At first I still loved the game play of Guitar Hero to Rock Band, but after a while I really did change my mind. Rock Band is just so much fun to play, it’s colourful, lots of things going on in the background, the crowd sing along to well known songs, which I see Guitar Hero World Tour added too. I just really liked Rock Band so much I went and brought Rock Band 2 now the first thing that I thought was awesome with this game, was that I only need one disc to play. That’s right I could export my songs from my Rock Band 1 disc to my hard drive and Rock Band 2 can pick these up, great stuff! You did have to pay £2 something for this, but I thought it was great.
“I find both of the games look nice, but Rock Band just looks better”
So Rock Band 2 is off to a great start. I could also now use my Guitar Hero World Tour drums with Rock Band 2, even with the songs from Rock Band 1. The best bit about this was that the Guitar Hero World Tour drums actually work better on Rock Band 2 than they do on Guitar Hero World Tour. No sensitivity problems at all, the game worked straight away.
The game play in Rock Band 2 is the same as Rock Band 1 so I knew what to expect. The track list was good with a few songs I really do like and not on Guitar Hero. Yes some of the songs on Rock Band are cover versions, but I did not really notice any difference, it was good enough I was happy.
The DLC on Rock Band is crazy! They release lots of songs every week and the best bit is, it’s 99p a song. So why do Guitar Hero charge £1.59 a song when Rock Band can do this for 99p.
The other good thing about Rock band 1 and 2 is that the online works, I have had many games of online with no problems at all. This puts Guitar Hero World Tour to shame.
So to end this off I would now only recommend Rock Band to anyone, Guitar Hero creators just don’t seem to care about the people who buy their game. As long as they get the money to create a new game which will more than likely have problems again, then that’s fine by them. The online problem on Guitar Hero World Tour is still around; no fix which is great news!
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You are quite right about RB2 vs GH:WT. However, GH:Metallica came along and now sits equal to RB2 in my books.
Still, I love the massive size of the library that you can have with RB2 without needing to change the CD.
(Btw, have finished all GH and RB games on Expert)
@Vic
Ah ok! I have not played GH:Metallica, I like them but not sure if enough to buy a game on them, if you see what I mean. May buy it when it’s a bit cheaper though.
How did GH:Metallica change to be equal to RB2? Is it not the same to other GH then?
I think that’s what made RB2 good for me, the fact I could take over my RB1 library with me to RB2.
Well done on finishing them on Expert!!
It shows your progress during the song as you earn stars, the note charts are perfect, and the level of polish is top-notch. You can feel the love that they have for Metallica oozing out of every pore of the game.
Now onto RB: The Beatles.