Rock Band Comments by Tom Bramwell

Something I feel I should add from my personal few hours worth of experience with the PS3 version of the game (and one other staffer here mentioned this as well) is a small amount of slowdown on occasion. Not really sure what triggers it, and it only lasts a few seconds, but as you can imagine with a game like this, it's incredibly unwelcome.

I've been playing Rock Band at the office this week and as a fan of Guitar Hero II and III, I was so excited that I'd been annoying Tom about bringing it in.
The review sums up how I found it, but I have a few things to add:

- A couple of us have noticed a few moments of slow-down during the game, which is noticeable when you're relying on the rhythm.

- The lower fret buttons take some getting used to, but are really satisfying. However, the time it takes to switch from the higher fret can cost you greatly when the solo is fast, as even the smallest amount of time misses loads of notes.

- There are a bunch of songs that most people won't know (or at least won't know well). This is fine for Guitar and Drums, but it's not for singing - you simply can't sing along to a song you don't know.

- In Guitar Hero, I hold down the strum bar when a note is meant to be held - this doesn't work in Rock Band and often causes the note to cut out. It took me a while to work out what was going wrong.

- The guitar is too easy and I can breeze through the early songs on Expert, first time.


Amazing fun though :D

Sounds fun. I am especially interested in the drums.

About the additional fret buttons on the guitar? Do you actually have to use them or are they just as the 'standard' buttons and their only purpose is to add a bit to the immersion? If you have to use them, how do they work with the GH2 or GH3 guitars which come without those additional buttons?

And any info on getting the drums stand alone? I already have two guitars from GH2 and GH3 and I don't need yet another one and I'm not keen on that mic either.

On the solo fret buttons: no, you don't have to use them. They're just a fun extra. You can still do the solos with the normal frets / strum bar combo.

I think the only thing that that'll stop me buying this is the price. If it's anywhere near £170 it's a no sale. £100 would be pushing it to be honest!

I can see this being great in student houses or for anyone who can regularly rely on getting lots of friends over to play, but for gamers who mostly play on their own, I'd go for Guitar Hero.

I'd also be concerned about where on earth I'd store the peripherals...

Better forget it then DDevil. No chance it'll be less than £150.

Join a real band, nerds

funny about the levels being off for the drums. guess they need to support headsets for individual in-ear-monitor mixes, or maybe a way to gesture at the mixing desk between songs.

also, i'm a bit disappointed that the upper frets just replicate the lower ones -- when i first saw the Rock Band guitar i thought we were in for some Eddie van Halen-style tapping antics.

Symbiote: LOL!

I believe that when you use the extra fret buttons you don't need to strum.

monkie_king: They don't exactly replicate the upper frets. On the lower you don't need to strum, so it changes quite a lot. It's cool!

I also thought about having individual headphones because even on the guitar, it's difficult to hear when someone is singing next to you.

"Join a real band, nerds"

This is exactly what I thought when I first heard about RB. It's ok playing a Karaoke game which scores you on how well you sing and Guitar Hero is mildly acceptable but a game which places you and 3 of your mates in a band set up where you're all playing pretend instruments in unison just does not appeal to me.

But if you're mad psyched for this then all the more power to you but just remember, every second you and your mates spend playing this is wasted when you could be playing in a real band practicing your own songs every night chasing attention from record companies. You'll still have enough time to play your generic FPS in your spare time.

Mouse - it's funny you should mention the slowdown because it's also apparent in GH3 which was surprising as I certainly didn't ever notice it in 1 or 2.

Is Rock Band fun to play single player? From the reviews and previews I've read, my biggest concern is that it's ace if you have friends round all prepared to join in, but if you're most likely to be playing by yourself it's not as satisfying as Guitar Hero.

Finally, I'm really excited about Rock Band but have a feeling that I'm gonna struggle to get people to actually sing. Any suggestions other than get everyone pissed?

Is there a tracklisting for this anywhere?

edit. scrap that, I found it here; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_son...

There's some good tunes on there!

@Yaster

Why is the time wasted? Sure I could spend my Friday night sat on my own doing scale training, or I could join my non-instrument playing house mates and play Rock Band. I guess I could make them all learn an instrument and then wait for 3 years. Shame you can't turn a real guitar down to medium.

"Apparently there will be a patch for online Band World Tour, but that's not much use right now."

I believe that "patch" will be called Rock Band 2. Didn't the devs say a while ago that that was too big to simply patch in?

Hope I'm wrong.

Wendelius

Wow, Yaster, I didn't realise it was so easy.

Also: Shut up.

@MBar

You can always dream

Also: you seem to take a lot of offense from something someone on the internet says

I don't see a problem with people pouring their time into Guitar Hero or Rock Band; it isn't a substitute for being in a real band. It's nothing like being in a real band; it's very very different, and that's why it's not pointless. It's just an arcade game about high scores with novel controllers. These instruments don't equate to playing or mastering their real life counterparts - the latter is a shitload more difficult, time consuming and expensive, and in many respects being in an actual band is a lot less fun.

But if you're mad psyched for this then all the more power to you but just remember, every second you and your mates spend playing this is wasted when you could be playing in a real band practicing your own songs every night chasing attention from record companies.

Typical tiresome response; I guess it never occurred to you that not everyone has the time, inclination, talent, or available funds to start a "real" band.

Bah useless if you have no mates, they should release a version with a dance mat instead of a drum kit and call it One Man Rock Band

3 less than I was expecting.

"every second you and your mates spend playing this is wasted when you could be playing in a real band practicing your own songs every night chasing attention from record companies"

This is exactly what I thought when I first heard about comments on Eurogamer. It's ok writing a rebuke to a favoured method of fun and insulting people is mildly acceptable but a commenting system where lots of people are typing in unison just does not appeal to me.

But if you're mad psyched for this then all the more power to you but just remember, every second you and your mates spend typing this is wasted when you could be typing in a real word processor practicing your own stories every night chasing attention from publishing companies. You'll still have enough time to wwrite your shopping list in your spare time.

"3 less than I was expecting."

Heh...

If this game was out before xmas I would be all over it, but if it shows up afterwards I think I will wait for the sequel. Not sure why it's not available yet, I almost bought it when I was in the USA in Nov.

Remember, every second you waste playing Tekken you could be out there in the street punching strangers in the face.

lol, as if spending your time in a real band is any more useful than spending ur time playing computer games. and i seriously doubt in the 20-40hours/gameplay there is in this that if you invested that time into learning to be a band with your m8s, you would manage to even get a single gig in.

it also assumes that everyone who might play Rock Band is even remotely interested in playing in a real band.

i'm not sure why these music games always attract such comments. you don't see people slagging off Pro Evo because you could be running around on a muddy field in real life.

(actually, i do know why: it's an attention seeking device based on the idea that playing musical instrument makes a person interesting and special).

Agreed with monkie_king. Apparently these people think we give a damn that they play "real" guitar.

It's just another brand of elitism.

haha, as if playing guitar is in any way hard, i dont know if you have noticed, but about 1million times more people can play guitar than have ever heard of guitar hero or rock band.

Nice review though.
It's refreshing to hear anything about RB that's obviously positive but doesn't make it sound like the second coming of Jesus/Gandalf/Captain America. Well done Tom for keeping feet on ground and head away from own arse.

Once you can buy a version of this for less money without the guitar or microphone I'll get it. I'm not interested in the singing at all and I'd rather use my GH guitar, so until I can get it with just the drums I'm not interested.

I've had it for a couple of weeks and I'm really enjoying it. For single player, it is like Guitar Hero, Drum Hero and Singing Hero rolled into one, and if you are into drumming, it is worth it for that alone (at least at crazy USD prices!). The band tour is even better because of the "tour" and growth aspect.

I am no GH expert, and I can see the difficulty in RB is easier, so you might want to move onto the drums and give the girlfriend/boyfriend/mate the guitar.

Haven't done the singing much - you need to know the songs to do that, so I'm learning them on the other instruments first.

Overall, a fun time, with presentation that is a quantum leap ahead of Guitar Hero.

Is no-one going to put Radiohead's Anyone Can Play Guitar on one of these games, and crank up the difficulty for extra irony points?

lmao, Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld on the bonus tracks, thats almost as class as strongbaad in GH2

"Singing to a video game is totally gay."

Yes, but the good kind.

To be honest this poops on GH from a great height, but then even though, direct comparisons are a little silly. One is focused on the guitar, the other... isn't.

I'm enjoying it - though tbh it can be a bit boring.

The feeling you get from wanking out those massively long rub-me-like-a-rubber-duck guitar solos from spandex-lycra-tight-hairspray-mental 80's rock gems simply can't be beaten by Rock Bands trying-to-be-oh-so-cool 'down with the kids' tracklisting.

For me, the pinnacle of GH was the uber-cheese awesome riifs of Guitar Hero Rocks the 80's - where it multiplied the joy first found in #1 - that feeling of 'actually playing a guitar'.

Rock Band - Its just a bit too serious at times.

The fun of SingStar PS3 and its awesome community features wins over for me at the moment and I have not played Rock Band since last Friday...

Where are pics of the kit?

If you can play this game without feeling a crushing sense of embarrassment, you have achieved a state of total humiliation without realizing it.

"What's more, you can't simply pick up the game and play any track as a group until you've unlocked them - either in Band World Tour or one of the solo modes - which limits the game's appeal as a casual party activity until you've done so."

Stupid stupid developers! When will they bloody learn.

The comments re: real musicians' reaction to Guitar Hero etc are hysterical and pretty much on the money. :) So it's kind of embarrassing to ask this: are the drum charts sensible enough that a few (dozen) hours of play would serve as training for playing real drums? I don't mean enough to make a "proper" drummer out of someone, but enough that someone would get a hang of the kick, hat, snare routine, and maybe some effective fills, and be able to back up a real band with a set of pads and a sampler? Seems like a small step from one to the other really, and "real" drummers are, on average, hard to find.

Well, experience with a real drum kit definitely makes Rock Band a lot easier, but I'm not so sure about it working the other way. The hand positions aren't the same, for a start, and it doesn't give you any training for working the hi-hat with your left foot. At best it'll help you get to grips with basic rock rhythms, but not actual drumming techniques.

@tonynibbles - you might not have played Rock Band since last Friday, but you've been using the instruments in one of your videos for Singstar ;-)

"The hand positions aren't the same, for a start, and it doesn't give you any training for working the hi-hat with your left foot. At best it'll help you get to grips with basic rock rhythms, but not actual drumming techniques."

I can imagine lots of people playing Rock Band drums, thinking "cool, I can play real drums now!" then being totally flummoxed that the right tom doesn't sound like a hi-hat at all! Gadzooks!

Depending on how rigid the note window is, it could improve someone's timing though.

Why you should, or shouldn't, buy Rock Band:

Yes, that's me singing.

Fast forward to 2:20 if you're impatient.

I'm surprised The White Stripes aren't on the track list. I would have thought that the stuff you get with the game is perfect for their songs (ie. no bass).

The drumming wouldn't be challenging enough :)

Back to the drumming: I heard that you don't play any of the cymbal sounds in any of the songs, is this true?

If so:

1) This will never get you ready to back a real band (every good fill NEEDS to end on a cymbal!)

2) Will f*ck things up for anyone who actually can play the drums, esp. if they know the songs, where the cymbals come in, etc

Can the RB guitar be used to play GH3 too? I know it works the other way around.