Rock Band 4

Are there goes any potential of durable drums.

 

Rockband 1 drums were awful, Rockband 2 drums lasted a bit longer but the pedal was still bad. Doing your own DIY work on the RB2 drums added up to a year or two worth of life to them, however buying third party drums (most commonly seen on YouTube as the ION Drums). I can say personally that if you care about music and actually play the drums yourself/are interested in doing so. Buying something like the ION Drums for Rockband is 100% worth it without a doubt.

I've been in a couple of Rockband Tournaments for charity while I was still in high school and it was incredibly fun. I remember playing with my friend Joe and trying to FC (Full Complete, aka: not missing any notes while at the same time not dropping your note counter, so no double hits etc) all the tough songs. We doubt so many DLC songs and never really looked back. Truth be told RB2 and RB3 were probably one of my most played games in that generation.

I hope these guys can nail it as this game can be HUGE.

 

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This feels like a last ditch effort from Harmonix. I think they cancelled a first person shooter music game and Amplitude was funded by KickStarter. I hope they do well because I really enjoy their games. Rock Band and Dance Central are really fun!

 

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Part of the problem we had with Guitar Hero and Rock Band is that Activision kinda forced an arms race with the games that lead straight to oversaturation of the market.

 

This might have been bad for the companies themselves, but to anyone who liked those games / is passionate about music probably enjoyed the stupid amount of competition. I know I did at the very least.

 

To an extent, yes, but while Harmonix stayed relatively restrained (max of 2 releases per year with a total of six games, not counting Rock Band Blitz), Activision churned out Guitar Hero to a ridiculous extent. After Activision took over the series in 2006, they put out 13 games in four years, not counting the Xbox 360 version of Guitar Hero II. Most of these games were released in 2009, when the genre crashed. While this meant that fans had a lot of options and a lot of songs/games to play, it also meant that more casual players and fans are going to get sick of having to buy new games to keep up and due to the way Activision did things, it also meant a lot of disc swapping if players wanted to play songs from another entry of the series.

There's a reason the Rock Band strategy, despite being a yearly franchise, of supplementing a few games with a **** load of DLC was far more preferable. It was easier for any kind of fan to manage, while the hardcore fans had the option of importing songs to the next entry in the series, which practically eliminated disc swapping unless players wanted to play The Beatles. Even the physically released track packs were simply compilations of DLC meant to be imported into the central games.

 

Yeah I get what you mean, and I guess that is just one of the many reasons that I preferred Rockband over guitar hero. Don't get me wrong, GH3 was the **** and its what got me into the "Rock" rhythm game genre, but damn Rockband is so much more well put together.

 

Don't know I much prefer the mechanics of guitar hero, my favorite one is the 80's. Still I played rock band and I am happy that my guitar won't go to waste.

 

That's how I was until I heard about a local Rockband tournament. I picked up the game (Rockband 2 at the time), and after a while I much preferred the styling and game engine in general. I don't know, to me it is much easier to keep track of when things get complicated. As an actual musician myself, the worst feeling is "knowing" you can play something, but having a cluttered barely readable piece of music to read or in this case a guitar hero/rockband chart. Although I suppose that is just my preference.

 

I wouldn't know how the game stands for musicians (as I don't play anything), but gameplay-wise I still think GH was better(AS A GAME), There are a few modes that are sickly insane that they added in the latter games (when people stopped buying), eventually there was a mode where you could play against your friend and BE A D-I-C-K TO HIM, instead of star powers you had sabotage moves that screwed your friend over... good times.

 

While yes they are nothing like each other, I don't really think it is fair to call them "awful". That is like saying Call of Duty is a terrible game because it is nothing like killing a real person. For both of them being rhythm games with fake instruments, they did what they set out to do very well. Be a rhythm game.

 

From a game design perspective, Guitar Hero relied on cheap tricks and fake difficulty to keep it interesting. On top of the underhanded way that Activision constantly tried to get big names into exclusivity agreements (succeeding in the cases of Van Halen and Metallica, plus a few others) and trying to snipe artists normally associated with Rock Band (Megadeth, Rush. I'm pretty sure that Activision tried to get both of them into exclusivity deals, but failed).

While there were things I would have liked to see Harmonix adopt (open bass notes for example), it didn't feel as nice as Rock Band. Partly because the timing windows are laughably wide in Guitar Hero, playing the notes felt "soft" in a way and very detached. An actual sense of rhythm wasn't as important for Guitar Hero as it was for Rock Band. And that's where Guitar Hero's biggest failing is. The reason Harmonix is seen as one of the greatest rhythm game developers is because almost their entire staff is made up of musicians. Remember the bonus songs in Guitar Hero I, Guitar Hero II and Rock Band 1? Many of those bands are the personal bands of developers who work for Harmonix. Freezepop, Anarchy Club, Bang Camaro, Tijuana Sweetheart/Vagiant, Abnormality and Tribe are all bands with members or former members who either currently work for or at one point worked for Harmonix.

It is their understanding of music that makes them so damn good at making rhythm games. The biggest difference for me with Guitar Hero and Rock Band is that I actually have the illusion of playing music with Rock Band. A much stronger sense of rhythm is required because the timing windows are far less forgiving.

From a music fan's perspective, Rock Band was always sold as more than just a rhythm game. It was always sold as a music platform where the game was just one more way to enjoy music. This is why they did things like expand to keyboards, add vocal harmonies (easily one of my personal favorite features of the series) and pro instruments. This is why they created the Rock Band Network. This is why they featured the bonus tracks from the original Guitar Hero up to Rock Band 2. This is why they took the expense and effort to relicense the songs from Rock Band 1 and Rock Band 2 to be imported into later entries in the series, something Guitar Hero only did (extremely poorly) to say "but we have that, too."

With Rock Band, I can enjoy the same songs that I was playing in 2007 with the first game in the series. With Guitar Hero, only World Tour and Guitar Hero 5 offer any songs to be imported and it's less than half of the set lists. It's the same with DLC. 99% of the DLC from the entire Rock Band series imports into Rock Band 3 and Rock Band Blitz. A ridiculously miniscule amount of DLC carries over across Guitar Hero games.

I had fun with Guitar Hero. I wouldn't own most of the series if that weren't the case. Hell, I'll still occasionally throw in an old Guitar Hero disc and play some of the highlights, but Rock Band is still and will always be my go to because not only is the game better, I don't have to do any disc swapping to play every one of the over 500 songs I have, save for the six or so that didn't import forward because of licensing issues.

Also, Guitar Hero III's duel mode was ****ing broken.

 

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