| Jul. 13th, 2008 @ 07:18 pm Meditations on Music-based rhythm games |
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A few weeks ago, it was friday night and I had a stressful week. I grabbed a beer and told my wife I was going to play some guitar hero. Not twenty minutes later, I was wandering around the house. She asked what happened. I told her that I played "Here I am (Rock your like a hurricane)" for the first time, and that I was going to find no greater experience of rock that evening.
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Guitar Hero III contains a Sex Pistols track. Strangely, the game requires you to play strings of notes from those songs with greater precision than the Sex Pistols ever had.
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Guitar Hero II has as an encore "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight" by Spinaltap. This turns out to be one of the most fun songs to play in that game.
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I had been excited about all the announced features of GHIV, since they sounded so cool. Then I picked up a copy of Rock Band and discovered all the features they've announced save one are ripped straight from Rock Band, which came out last fall.
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Reason #1 Rock Band is better than Guitar Hero: Bon Jovi's Wanted Dead Or Alive.
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I've found that these games have made me go back and get cds of bands I somewhat knew, but missed first time around. The local library has alot of cds to borrow, so I've been using those. I've discovered a love of Weezer, and have reservations waiting for Kiss, Guns N Roses, and a few other bands.
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Reason #2 Rock Band is better than Guitar Hero: Star power within star power. In rock band, you can get more star power (called overdrive) while you are in star power mode. That means if things are timed right, you can keep increasing your bar as its depleting, letting you stay in star power mode a few minutes.
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I wish the songs from old games were available in the newest. I have to keep going back between GH2 and GH3 for those songs and on to RockBand. Rock Band 2 has announced it will allow people to play all of the songs of Rock Band 1 and DLC if you owned those in Rock Band 2. That moves way closer to it. But I'd love to get some GH2 songs in Rock Band. Why can't I play Carry on My Wayward Son, Strutter, or Woman in Rockband? I'd pay for that DLC
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Reason #3 Rock Band is better than Guitar Hero: Black Sabbath track pack DLC. I can play NIB.
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I like that both Rock Band and Guitar Hero are moving towards more master tracks. Each of them only has one Metallica song on disc so far (One and Enter Sandman), but hearing it as a master track is nice. Unfortunately, all Black Sabbath packs are still cover songs. Not a big deal in Rock Band, where you could have someone else do vocals.
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Cool Rock Band random feature: Audience Participation. When you're doing a song well, the audience will actually sing along with the vocals of the song.
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There is still no game where I can play "Don't Stop Believing". Then again, which lyrics will be on the master track, Perry or the new singer with whom they rerecorded their old hits?
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Cool Rock Band feature: Solos. Certain sections of the songs are demarkated solos. The background turns blue. Completing the solo with most of the notes gives extra points. I like the feedback for getting a potentially difficult section of the song right. Of course, sometimes its too much. A Boston song has three solos for guitar in it.
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Either of those would have been my favorite game every if they had come out when I was 15 and fucking around in my friend's basement, wishing we were rockers as we listed to Black Sabbath, Rush, and Ministry albums.
There's probably far more random thoughts I can say about these games, but that will be for another post. |
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