There was disappointment in some quarters. Expectactions were high; some thought Harmonix might include some well known tracks in the list to steal thunder from the Guitar Hero: World Tour launch which is this Sunday.
I, on the other hand, expected the songs to be exactly what we got: hopefully fun songs to play from relatively unknown bands. It always seemed obvious to me that if the songs were really desirable, they’d be sold as DLC, not given away for free. However, I was a little worried it would be a lot of Harmonix internal bands. Not that Harmonix bands don’t make good bonus tracks, but I think I’ll have an epileptic seizure if I have to hear that Honest Bob and The Factory to Dealer Incentives song I Get By one more time.
Sure, I would have been psyched to see them release twenty Beatles tracks, or twenty Led Zeppelin tracks — but on the other hand, at least it’s not twenty remixes of Visions. And remember — they’re free! So if you own Rock Band 2, head on over to the registration page with the code printed on the slip inside the game box, and claim your bounty the first week of November.
* this is part of a new initiative by game companies to stem the growth of the used game market. Used games are over 50% of EBGames/GameStop revenue now, and note that not one penny of that used game sale revenue ever goes to the game developers. Including “one time only” codes in the game package means a used copy should be worth less, since the code will have already been redeemed for subsequent buyers. However, I’m unconvinced this will work — twenty bonus tracks from unknown artists, or a few free downloadable maps, isn’t that big of a deal in the overall scheme of things. If they really want this to work, they need to include major chunks of the game with those one-time redemption codes.
Things getting dull at home? Wish you had a way, at the touch of a button, to liven things up and make it a party? Wish no more! You too can build the Emergency Party Button!
What you’re seeing is a programmed script that does the following:
Turn off hallway light
Close the blinds
Turn on the fog machine (Takes a while to warm up)
Turn off the kitchen light
Turn off the poker light
Turn off the living room lights
Start the mp3 (Haddaway - What is love)
Turn on the blacklights
Turn on the laser when the main beat of the song starts
At the touch of the Emergency Party Button, an ordinary pair of MIT students’ dorm room is transformed into a party, featuring blacklights, sound-activated strobe, fog machine, laser light shows, pumping dance music, trippy visualizations on an LCD display as well as an LCD projector, a spinning closet disco ball, glowing fluorescent lights, and more!
Of course, this stuff is all for fun, but you can get some ideas for simple sound-activated lighting effects that might liven up the stage at your next Rock Band party, too! I dipped my toes in the LED DJ lighting scene, and it totally took our fake plastic rocking to the next level.
Konami’s oddball guitar and drum title Rock Revolution was just released, with decidely.. mixed.. results.
Rock Revolution supports standard Guitar Hero and Rock Band guitar controllers. However, this is the game with its own weirdo seven input (six panels plus foot pedal) drum controller.
The game is compatible with existing Rock Band drums — you can switch into a five input drum mode in the options. Here’s an example using The Spirit of Radio by Rush. Note that it is a cover, as almost all the tracks in Rock Revolution are covers.
Many of these songs already appeared in previous fake plastic rock games, often as actual master tracks, too.
Sal “Sluggo” Accardo posted these thoughts after playing 10 songs of the expert guitar campaign in Rock Revolution:
I’ve played 10 songs so far, and every cover is as bad as or worse than what we got on GH: Rocks the ’80s. Awful, awful covers.
The 2D vertical note layout is hard to get used to. The 3D version in GH and RB is much easier to follow.
I have no idea how their version of Star Power works. There’s something about a power meter, and crowd ambiance, and every time I think I’m activating, it lasts like 2 seconds and then it’s gone.
The most interesting thing I’ve seen so far, in terms of something I’d like to see Rock Band and Guitar Hero add to their games, is the note grading system. It’s not a binary hit-the-notes-or-not system — like many older rhythm games, there are “Perfect” vs “Good” ratings for each note you hit (although they’re not shown live, only at the end of the song in a stats screen). If GH and / or RB were ever to add an uber-expert mode, this is how I’d like them to do it — grade for accuracy, rather than add a bunch of extra phantom notes.
The other reason I’d love to see RB and GH adopt that feature (which, in fact, I’ve personally pleaded with both developers to add for years now) is that it provides a nice way to confirm proper calibration. When I finished my first song, it said I had a 50-50 split between “Perfect”s and “Good”s. Now that I’ve calibrated, I’m getting almost all Perfects and just a handful of “Good”s per song.
the Career mode tries to do some interesting things with song “events.” You need to pass a few songs to advance to the next tier, but it’s not just completing songs. There was one event where they throw fake notes you in the song, and if you hit too many, you fail. Another event slowly ramps up difficulty from Medium to Expert. A third accelerates the fretboard as you build up a multiplier. I give them a thumbs up for these ideas, which at the least play out more interestingly than GH3’s boss battles.
Each six-song set in career mode has four songs, and then 2 special events where you replay two of those four songs with one of the twists. But for some reason, you can pick the twists right off the bat without realizing it. I would have made those events unlockable, or at the least put up a big flashing “THIS IS NOT A STANDARD EVENT” sign.
I have to admit, despite all the warning signs, I’m actually intrigued. There are about 10 tracks in the game that have never appeared in any fake plastic rock game to date, and are worth playing (at least in my opinion) even in cover form. For one thing, Queen! The last Queen song we got was Guitar Hero 1’s Killer Queen, and that was over three years ago.
As for multiplayer, despite the impression you might get from all the single-player videos above, Rock Revolution does support 3 person bands of guitarists, bassist, and drummer. No vocals, however. Looks like Konami’s Rock Revolution might be decent rental if you’re a genre addict like me.
Now that the guitar and drums are fully wireless in the Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero: World Tour band kits, there’s only one band member left who hasn’t achieved glorious wireless freedom yet:
It’s a bit pricey at $80, but it means vocalists can now perform those spinning kicks in between verses they’ve always dreamt of.
USB connector
2.4 Ghz frequency
30 foot range
Compatible with all games featuring vocals for PS2, PS3, Xbox 360
USB base doubles as mic holder when not in use
Logitech’s wireless USB mic should be available sometime in December.
Another wireless microphone option, at least on the Xbox 360 platform, is the upcoming game Lips. It ships with a set of wireless mics. Not only are they wireless, they’re also backlit in sync with the vocals too!
Check out Lips’ wireless mics in action in this gameplay trailer:
If you’re on the Xbox 360 platform, Lips might be a better deal, as the game plus two wireless mics will be $70. The game will be released on November 18th.
As for me, my heart belongs to the Mad Catz M.I.C. — although it’s not wireless, it melds the controller with the microphone, which I think is the far more important feature; our Mic is always on a mic stand anyway.
As I noted in Are Rock Band Drums Like Real World Drums? the drums are the most realistic part of fake plastic rock. Or at least the most analogous to their real world musical counterparts. As more evidence supporting this fact, G4 just published an interesting review of the $299 ION Drum Rocker Premium Drum Set from the perspective of a real rock drummer.
Now that the ION drum kit has been available for a few weeks, you can hit up YouTube for a lot of real world play examples, too. For example, the utterly ridiculous “song” Visions from Rock Band 2, which I’m convinced was included as a sick joke for those people who felt Rock Band was too easy.
If you can play that.. thing.. then the ION drums have definitely earned their $299 in my opinion!
