antwondotcom (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} antwondotcom) wrote,@ 2007-10-16 18:24:00 |
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fake band theatrics ahoy
The upcoming "Rock Band" video game is on a nationwide tour of sorts at the moment, going from place to place with a stage and several instances of the game for public playthrough purposes. Ealasaid and I had the good fortune to make it to their showing outside Stanford Stadium this weekend.
The fake-guitar aspect of the game is very much like Guitar Hero, unsurprisingly. The fretboard notes are a different shape (little horizontal lines instead of big round dots), but the gameplay is otherwise pretty much as expected: watch the notes drift down and strum at the appropriate moments. After spending a couple of songs acclimating to the change, we were pretty much rocking out as competently as we ever do at home.
The fake-drums seemed both responsive and sturdy, all things considered - didn't have to make a mental note to hit them extra-soft, or extra-hard, or anything like that. The foot pedal is a welcome addition - and man, is getting that whole limb-independence thing down ever going to be a challenge. And something of a workout, given how much thrashing even this faux-drumming appeared to necessitate. (Guess that's why one rarely sees overweight drummers.)
The gameplay exhibits a lot of nice little touches along the way. If you're rockin' with competency, the in-game crowd will sing along with you during the choruses, which is all sorts of cool. And if one of your fellow bandmates fails out of a song, you can revive them and get 'em back into the fold by employing the game's starpower-equivalent. At times, the drummer gets to do series of hit-whatever-you'd-like fills in the middle of songs. (Which are scored solely on amount of mashing done during the fill - which led me to comment on Ealasaid's "creative interpretation" of some parts of "Say It Ain't So".)
Speaking of which: the track listing is shaping up to be pretty epic, all things considered. "Enter Sandman" and "Wanted Dead or Alive" and "Won't Get Fooled Again", oh my! Compared to the upcoming Guitar Hero III tracklist, one gets the impression that Rock Band has gone for maximum name-recognition, optimal-for-party-play tracks, while GHIII is focusing more on the "we demand fret-shredding theatrics!" side of the divide. Will be very interesting to see how both franchises shape up going forward.
There is also a microphone aspect of the game; I blithely assumed that this works like Karaoke Revolution and didn't bother testing it out in any capacity.
One thing this event made clear: man, there are a whole lot of extraordinarily bad practitioners of karaoke out there. 'Cuz holy god, I have mediocre pipes at best, but I am a goddamn scion of vocal competence compared the array of folks we heard butchering "Black Hole Sun" over and over. Yeesh!
The upcoming "Rock Band" video game is on a nationwide tour of sorts at the moment, going from place to place with a stage and several instances of the game for public playthrough purposes. Ealasaid and I had the good fortune to make it to their showing outside Stanford Stadium this weekend.
The fake-guitar aspect of the game is very much like Guitar Hero, unsurprisingly. The fretboard notes are a different shape (little horizontal lines instead of big round dots), but the gameplay is otherwise pretty much as expected: watch the notes drift down and strum at the appropriate moments. After spending a couple of songs acclimating to the change, we were pretty much rocking out as competently as we ever do at home.
The fake-drums seemed both responsive and sturdy, all things considered - didn't have to make a mental note to hit them extra-soft, or extra-hard, or anything like that. The foot pedal is a welcome addition - and man, is getting that whole limb-independence thing down ever going to be a challenge. And something of a workout, given how much thrashing even this faux-drumming appeared to necessitate. (Guess that's why one rarely sees overweight drummers.)
The gameplay exhibits a lot of nice little touches along the way. If you're rockin' with competency, the in-game crowd will sing along with you during the choruses, which is all sorts of cool. And if one of your fellow bandmates fails out of a song, you can revive them and get 'em back into the fold by employing the game's starpower-equivalent. At times, the drummer gets to do series of hit-whatever-you'd-like fills in the middle of songs. (Which are scored solely on amount of mashing done during the fill - which led me to comment on Ealasaid's "creative interpretation" of some parts of "Say It Ain't So".)
Speaking of which: the track listing is shaping up to be pretty epic, all things considered. "Enter Sandman" and "Wanted Dead or Alive" and "Won't Get Fooled Again", oh my! Compared to the upcoming Guitar Hero III tracklist, one gets the impression that Rock Band has gone for maximum name-recognition, optimal-for-party-play tracks, while GHIII is focusing more on the "we demand fret-shredding theatrics!" side of the divide. Will be very interesting to see how both franchises shape up going forward.
There is also a microphone aspect of the game; I blithely assumed that this works like Karaoke Revolution and didn't bother testing it out in any capacity.
One thing this event made clear: man, there are a whole lot of extraordinarily bad practitioners of karaoke out there. 'Cuz holy god, I have mediocre pipes at best, but I am a goddamn scion of vocal competence compared the array of folks we heard butchering "Black Hole Sun" over and over. Yeesh!
