I’ve been playing Rock Band a fair bit since I got it a few weeks ago and… I LOVE IT! The Guitar controller is a MUCH better shape for me and although the strumbar having no clicky sound throws me a bit I think it’s probably better and wish I’d started out with a silent strumbar so I’d be used to it.

The drums are really good fun, but sadly I have ELs so they have no sensitivity whatsoever (no sock mod for me). I haven’t even got around to finishing the Easy Drum Tour yet, but there is another reason for this. The drums are pretty loud to people downstairs (and I can’t do a lot about it since I have ELs) so I can only play during the day. This means I play the guitar tours mostly… but… and this shocks me. When people are out I’m actually finding the Vocal Tours the most fun! Took me a while to get into it. I don’t sing unless I really have to, which is usually never, I mimed my way through assemblies at primary school. It shows that whilst I obviously can’t sing my guess of the pitch is pretty spot on (which is all RB cares about). I am slightly worried about the ones I keep 100%ing though. I mean ‘Maps‘ (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) is easy so that’s expected, but ‘Celebrity Skin‘ (Hole), ‘In Bloom‘ (Nirvana), ‘Black Hole Sun‘ (Soundgarden) and ‘Enter Sandman‘ (Metallica)..! Is there a grunge kid trying to get out here? Am I reliving my flannel-shirted teens?? ‘Sabotage‘ (Beastie Boys) is a nightmare for me though as it doesn’t seem to think I’m saying the words right and there’s no actual singing in it. You’d think it would be easier… but no. Maybe I need to put on my NY accent for that song.

It’s such a natural progression from GHII as well. I know they’re releasing Guitar Hero: World Tour, but really… as soon as they add in Co-Op Career on-line I’m content with Rock Band and just getting DLC for it every now and then. Talking of the downloadable tracks – wow! There are millions! OK, slight exaggeration, but there’s a bit of everything in there. I’m not downloading any (except GLaDOS’ ‘Still Alive‘) until I get to the point in it where I’m totally at my level and have to try to pass songs. I’m working my way through Easy-Medium-Hard-Expert on all the instruments to get the most out of the game. Such a shame I’ll never get any of the Band Tour achievements though. No-one ever comes here, and I’m not lugging the instruments into town. On-line co-op career would be perfect.

Another thing that I absolutely love is the character customization. Soooo much better now I can have my characters looking like me! My guitarist one is scary, she really does look like (a thinner version of) me. I love the way the band interacts too. With guitarists singing along on parts of the song. Looks so much nicer than GHIII. The guitar parts are a lot easier though. In a way it’s good, but also I don’t feel like I’ve achieved quite so much being halfway through the Guitar Tour on Expert.

I really need to update my ScoreHero now, but there’s singing to be done!

Right, having played GH:III (Wii version) for several more hours now, I thought I’d re-write the previous entry:

The StarPower meter is absolute arse. It’s great that the Wii controller rumbles when you first attain starpower, but there’s nothing flashing or anything to show when it’s 100% full… so I just forget all about it. The annoying Star Power Ready text that used to explode up from the fretboard making me miss notes and therefore have to wait to use my starpower has thankfully gone. They have introduced some more annoying text that tells you when you’ve achieved 50/100/200, etc. notes in a row though. I don’t see the point in that, although the little counter that shows the number of notes in a row on the bottom left is nice. Also, why on Earth does the Wii controller use the rumble function the whole time you are using StarPower? The fret board is lit up and pretty obvious on screen, I don’t need the woooom-woooom-woooom to tell me as well. This is all assuming you can get starpower to work. You need to learn the knack of lifting slowly than shaking the controller down. It takes some getting used to. As does the new HOPO system. It was done by hand so not all of the ones you’d think are now HOPOs, but they do show up lighter than other notes which is good for working out where they can be used, even if they’ve left them out of some solos making them really hard…

I hate the male singer. In general, but mainly the close-ups of his scary, large, out of sync mouth full of shark-teeth. He’s creepy. Stop it. The crowd’s good though, the stage-diving took me by surprise and made me smile. I also giggle at the inmates synchronised dancing too much. It’s a bit distracting. The in-between ‘levels’ animations aren’t that good, and they’re a bit long. They’re amusing the first time, but nowhere near the joyful simplicity of “vroom-screeeeeetch!”

The controller is a bit pants. This is the Wii one, and I’ve been used to the old ps2 ones. I don’t like it. I love that it’s wireless and doesn’t seem to suffer from that like I’ve heard the new 360 one does. I measured it up against the old ps2 ones and it’s only slightly shorter, but that small difference is enough to have me hunched over and really uncomfortable. I play sitting down, I may have to start playing standing up. Now I have the added annoyance that the whammy bar on mine is really loose and wanders off. So I spend most of the song trying to put it back in a position where I can use it to gain star power… then it’s gone again, winding down to point at the floor. Looks like I’ll be voiding my warranty then… *whistles*

GuitarHero.com is good, linked up my account and got my friends accounts on there, nice to see it updating so quickly. This was the main reason I got it. I wanted the whole on-line thing. I’ve been using ScoreHero with Kna to fuel our insane competitiveness with the GH series but it’s always really slow when you want to update, so I end up with scribbles of my scores all over notepads. Looks like I still will though as comparing people on GuitarHero.com is nowhere near as good as on ScoreHero.

I worked my way through Easy on a friend’s Wii and annoyingly GH:III is one of those games you can’t transfer via SD card. So I’m doing it all again now just to get the bat guitar. You also earn cash and have encores on Easy which is new, the cash counts towards your career so it makes sense to play through Easy for a change. It took about 2 days for my 100% on Easy achievement Award to show up. We also had fun with the on-line scoring as GuitarHero.com got a little confused by one Wii having 2 profiles. I’ve found you have to sign in to WFC whenever you start the game too, or you’re not logged in. The scores do update later, but it takes a while as they seem to trickle through. It was updating the wrong profile for a while at the weekend, but the scores slowly righted themselves and although the high-scores look like they could be wrong, the number of groupies and percentages of the game played are now correct.

The reason why I bought this as soon as I could and didn’t pay too much heed to the crap reviews was for the on-line playing. I don’t have a 360 so this is quite a new thing for me & consoles (Animal Crossing on the DS isn’t quite as competitive). I’ve now played a few games on-line against friends and strangers and it totally rocks! There isn’t any noticeable lag at all. OK, so twice my Wii froze on me making a really nasty feedback sound, but both times that happened before I was in the match and playing, so no massive deal. I really can’t wait for RockBand to come out over here, although I may end up staying in forever :s

Links:

My GuitarHero.com Account (Hexy).
My ScoreHero Account (Hexy).