So basically, we're awesome.



The End.

EARTH WIND AND CENTAUR:

NUMBER 1 ON ENTER SANDMAN.

BEGIN THE FEARING PROCESS....

NOW.

Funny story, but after playing Rock Band last night with friends(With a sickkkk modded drumset. I can post instructions later at some point) we checked the leaderboards for certain songs. And we ended up being in the top 10 for a lot of stuff.(Including number 1 on fortunate son. HOLLAR.) Keep in mind, this is without even trying. Basically, fear Centaur. Centaur. CENTAUUUUUUURRR~!!!!. CUZ WE COMIN' FO YOU, NUKKUH.

(Shameless self-promotion, I know)

And I stand by that. And it could have been SO GOOD AGH.

Basically, my friend got Rock Band 2 days ago, didn't have much of a chance to play it, and invited me and our mutual friend over to give it a shot. I was incredibly excited since the game was announced and was jumping with anticipation. I was stoked about drums and guitar obviously.(Not so much vocals, obviously)

So, after eating and running a few errands, we start setting up. We make a band, make a really fast bunch of created characters, and pick a song. I sit down and drummed my little heart out on expert, while my friends took up guitar. And instantly, something was wrong.

The bass pedal was being a temperamental ho-bag. I would prefer if the bass pedal would activate with just a weeee bit of pressure, but it wouldn't... half the time. Yes, with a certain amount of pressure, the bass pedal would activate when it felt like it. "No biggie, I guess", I thought to myself. Figuring I could just step a big harder on the pedal, I did just that. NOPE! Suddenly, my bass pedal started giving out double hits. Simple sections suddenly became a c-c-c-combo-breaking rampage. At this point, I had to find a pleasant median to hit the pedal. Which still only worked half the time. And that, right there, destroyed my enjoyment right off the bat. Sections with a lot of bass just became a score massacre.

In fact, keeping a combo was difficult regardless. The drums' angle can't be tweaked and the chair I was sitting on made me hit the sides quite a bit. Changing the height of the chair or drums didn't help at all. So, it was super lame! More combos broken, even during the easiest sections.

And here's something else that should have been fixed: Activating star power with drums makes the bass pedal line disappear. Yep. When you activate star power the play area shines a beautiful shade of gold. In fact, it's the same color of gold that the bass pedal lines are! Have fun seeing them during that 3 second span of sparkling beauty!

After the preliminary song, we were all pretty much annoyed. We were all missing a lot of notes. Especially using the Fender controller. We were playing on an HDTV, so we decided to tweak the lag offset. And because of this, I can complain about something else with the game!

The lag offset is a joke. A damn joke. Using the manual calibration on audio offset, we couldn't tell the difference between +55ms offset or -55ms. The audio was still hitting when the little blipper thing went past the icon. It was just shenanigans. Also, I've always had a bit of a vendetta against the normal lag calibration tool from GH2 and 3. Shouldn't there be a better way to test your lag and make sure it's properly calibrated?Imagine this: a section with a constant beat, that gave you a bunch of eigth notes to hit. After the initial section, the offset gets adjusted and the section replays, letting you try your new settings. As far as Rock Band goes, you can't test your current offset until you pick a song and mess around with it. IS THIS THE MAGIC NUMBER? FIND OUT! After the next song you play! After navigating a bunch of menus and waiting for load times. Not the right number? Change that offset to another 5-10ms up or down and try it again! Is it better? Worse? Who can say?

Another swell problem: The Guitar. It looks pretty cool, sure. But try playing a song with it. It makes me wonder if the R&D folks actually tested this guitar. It's that bad. The strummer feels like absolute garbage and loves giving random misses and double strums. Nobody was able to combo a song on this thing. Nooobody. Fast strumming? Eyyy! FORGET ABOUT IT!

And finally, the career mode, itself. It sounds like a cool idea on paper, but I hope you enjoy playing the same 10 songs over and over again for a while. If you're doing career, you're playing the same few songs until you lock another one or two. And then you're playing the same 11 or 12 songs. Then you unlock another one or two. Then you're playing the same 13-14 songs. Get the idea? It gets old. At least with Guitar Hero, you can go through career by only playing a song once. With Rock Band, you will probably have to play an opening song 20 times before you finish.(Pure guessing, but we played "Say it ain't so" about 5 times in a 3-hour span while unlocking only 3 songs.)

Now, I understand that some of you might be saying: GET THAT STICK OUT OF YOUR ASS AND ENJOY THE GAME. YOU FAGGOT. STOP WHINING. Well, first off, you hurt my feelings. Secondly, I think that a game is only fun when the hardware works. Imagine if you couldn't beat the first level of Mario brothers because of a faulty controller. That was bundled with the game. That was the only way to play the game. I could barely even get through all of these hardware/technical problems and even enjoy the music/charts. Is it wrong that I expect proprietary hardware to be polished and functional? That I expect it to have been thoroughly tested and revised until it is at the apex of reliability and function? The drums could have been so much better. The guitar could have been so much better. Hell, Red Octane's first Guitar Hero controller was leaps and bounds better than this controller. The fact that I could pinpoint so many unresolved problems after a single day of playing makes me want to cry.

I want to like this game, I really do. But in its current state, how the hell can I?

Recently, comparison between Guitar Hero and Rock Band guitar charts have prompted many to say that rock band was comprised of "easier, but more fun" guitar charts on expert.

Re-read that: Expert charts are easier and therefore more fun.

Now, the last time I checked, expert charts were the highest level of difficulty in the game. This should equate to them being very difficult, correct? Apparently, not. In various holes and nooks of the internet, I see people complaining about Guitar Hero 3 being too difficult on Expert. And whenever I see this, I say to myself(Because arguing on the internet is silly!) that there are still 3 other difficulties to play on. If you can't play expert, play hard. If hard is too much, move down to medium. Even play easy if you can't stomach the mediums. To me, expert should challenge players, much in the same way that changing a game setting to "hard" should make the difficulty increase. Nobody is holding a gun to your head, forcing expert difficulty upon you. When I played Halo 3, I didn't want to jump into Legendary. I'd rather NOT torture myself with ridiculous difficulty. I'd rather have fun! That's a call that I made, but at least others who enjoy the sensation of crushed balls can do so. Why should this change for music games? Does the thought of being able to pass a song on the "HARDEST DIFFICULTY" really intrigue people to that level?

I think it does. Which is why lowering the bar for games, in general, has become so common recently. But I'll probably do more on that, later.

Well, as I'm sitting here at 6:30, waiting to get tired enough to sleep, I'm totally going to bitch to every reviewer that reviews music games: What are you thinking?

Firstly, you're horribly misinformed about almost every game you've been playing. I think the tipping point was Xplay calling beatmania a rip-off of Guitar Hero. To the uninitiated, beatmania has been out since 1998 in Japanese arcades and essentially set the standard for every music game you see before you today, from DDR to the mighty Guitar Hero. The entire "pick a song/difficulty" archetype comes directly from this game, and 99.9% of people in the US don't even know it exists. Pity.

But at this point, I have to redirect my anger back from the residents of the US(You know who you are), to the reviewers. Many of these fine fellows are singing the praises of Rock Band due to its "innovation", yet to anyone that's been to a decent arcade in the past... oh... 8 years, should have noticed a little something called "Guitar Freaks and Drummania". Now, I'll admit that this is a silly Japanese game that is full of Japanny songs, with Japanny words, and Japanny everything else. I don't expect everyone out there to enjoy such a game, since it is incredibly chock-full of Japan, but some people need to get their facts straight: There is very, very, very little innovation left in the entire musical game genre that hasn't been played out to death in the past 10 years. Christ, we've had maracas, keyboards, 2 types of drums, 2 types of guitars, dancing with hands and feet, turntables of all sorts, and... christ, I could go on forever.

The point is: There is nothing innovative about music games anymore. Nothing. Guitar Hero essentially stole the entire gameplay of Guitar Freaks, added 2 extra buttons and a whammy bar. This is not innovation. Rock Band has been played in Japanese arcades(Minus the vocals, because who the shit wants to sing in a noisy arcade?) for years in the form of sessioned Guitar Freaks and Drummania cabinets. Therefore, Rock Band is not innovative. Frankly, I wouldn't even care if it was some douchebag on the street claiming these things, but these are paid reviewers that can't seem to do a lick of research to get their facts straight.

Bottom line: Anything that involves hitting scrolling things to music? Not innovative at all. Fun? Sure. But not innovative.