My friend bought RB2 the game and GH4 bundle and says that GH should have just stuck to the guitar game.



To be fair though, RB1 had its problems. Then again I haven't seen first hand yet how extensive the GH problems are.

haha...oops

I really want to buy GH:WT the drums look more real than RB's but..if there's some serious issues I'm gonna have to go to the RB side of things.

So here's the deal with mine. I got my full band unit at Walmart at midnight. When I got it home, the red pad and green pad would not register unless they were hit VERY hard. I mean, almost breaking the sticks hard. The blue pad worked perfectly, even with a very light tap, so I knew it wasn't just that I was hitting it softly. So I went online to check the forums and see if it was just me. That's when I saw the shitstorm that was the GH4 release.

About 8 am on Sunday, I took the whole thing back to Walmart. Unfortunately for me, they would not accept a return for refund because the game inside the package was opened. I vocalized how ridiculous that policy was and took my replacement. When I got that one home, I noticed right off the bat that the cymbals were not registering properly. 10 minutes later and the red pad was gone completely.

Another trip to Walmart, where they stated that I could only get another copy b/c the outer box (not the game itself this time) was opened. That killed my plan to replace the opened game with an unopened one I bought from Target. :P

Third unit home. Open the box and.... Only 1 nut to hold 2 cymbals on.... Wow.... The nuts and the batteries had been floating around in the box not held in by anything in all 3 unites I had bought, so that wasn't a surprise. I noticed a couple of other people with the same problem. Just to check, I connected the unit to my TV. On this one, everything worked except the green pad, which would only register when hit VERY gently.

4th trip to Walmart (btw, the store is like 20 mins away, so my gas hand is getting low). This time it took them an hour to find another unit to give me. During that time, I noticed something... There were people coming in with $100 items and no receipt getting cash money refunds. I asked, and apparently electronics are the only thing Walmart has a "fuck you" attitude about. They also accused me of stealing the drum sticks, which were apparently also missing from the case.

So now I'm here with my 4th set, which doesn't register drum rolls perfectly, but it's as good as it gets. Someone on the official forums, who also had 4 returns, put it very well. All of the drums have something wrong with them. You may not notice it on lower difficulties, but when playing harder songs on expert, the game becomes unplayable with most units. They may be only a little broken, or only slightly fucked up, but all of them have some issue... And that means it's still broken, and that is not acceptable.

Here's my suggestion, buy the software or the guitar unit and use the Rock Band 2 drums. My first RB2 set was broken (blue pad died after 10 minutes), but the second has been perfect since. Even picked up the 2 cymbal add on pack Saturday. It's actually easier to use the 4 note track instead of the 5 note track that you get with the GH4 drums. You have the same number of notes, so the score doesn't seem to suffer.

I really like the software, and the guitar is now my #2 fav behind the RB2 set, but I should have never trusted that Red Octane would get it right on the first attempt. After having 3 Les Pauls die within 2 weeks of opening them for GH3, now this, I'm counting it as a lesson learned.

Morals of the story:
1) Don't buy electronics from Walmart
2) Buy Guitar Hero: World Tour software or guitar pack and use the RB2 drums
3) Enjoy the game, even if your set has issues. It's actually really fun, despite some minor issues I have with the setlist, difficulty (it's easier than GH3 on guitar), and the menu layout.

Please forgive my grammar. I'm not proofreading this b/c I'm in the middle of a 4 song set that I am dying to get back into. :)

If you are spending $190 for a band kit, I'd say it matters a bit. :)

"It's still bad news though, and not a great start to the "new" Guitar Hero direction. If you're going to copy another game, the least you could do is make a competent job of it, right?"

Ah Jim, that's where you're wrong! They folks at Neversoft have got their copying groove down to an incredible science! Don't forget, most of the launch guitars for the original Rock Back were faulty. The people behind GH: World Tour were merely trying to recreate the experience down to the last detail!

akathatoneguy - That's not how it's supposed to be. My 4th set lets me hit it anywhere relatively gently and it registers MOST of the time. The RB2 set I have registers on the slightest tap and there is no cross talk between pads. However, like I said, the first RB2 set I got had the blue pad go out in like 10 minutes of play so they aren't perfect either.

Yeah, I've heard a lot of complaints about defective peripherals. But my brother got the full band bundle at the midnight release, and he hasn't had any problems. *shrugs*

For all it's flaws, it's still Guitar Hero, and I still have fun with it.

I know they don't sell the drum separately yet and I am very tempted to just get the guitar and game pack. I wonder how much the drums will cost separately. I hope they can fix this situation quickly. Also, does the guitar pack only come with a guitar and game? Does that mean you have to buy drums and mic? =\

its not even as good as RB1

The GH III Guitar was crap too so I'm not shocked.

I'm getting the game only and using my rock band shit with it.

solidgoomba - Yeah that's kind of rediculous. I had 4 of them, and two of my friends got them as well. Every unit I've used plays differently. Some unites it's one pad that you have to hit hard to register, sometimes it's two. Some unites you have to hit it light. Some (like my current one, and 2 of the three I had before) don't register full drum rolls properly.

Jim, you might want to update your story with this:

Apparently Activision is making us pay shipping if we want to RMA the drum sets. I think they said it's $15. So basically, you get a faulty piece of equipment right out of the box, then you have to pay to get it repaired, and hope that the replacement isn't messed up as well. Otherwise, it's another $15 to RMA once again...

Just once can we have a new music game launch without its fake drumkit breaking?

Meh, Gitaroo Man is better than Rock Band and Guitar Hero anyway.

MoonglumX:

Where did you hear that? That's awful if true. I need to check it out.

Rockband had its problems with the drums at first too. But then again it also had problems with the guitars being awkward to play one.

Slack where slack is due. There should be no more harshness on Guitar Hero than there was on Rock Band.

BTW, I own both, so I'm not a fanboy. I just know knew peripherals are always bound to have a few problems.

I was tempted to get the full set but now I feel almost lucky I just got the guitar and game. Haven't had any problems there. My friend go the full bundle though.

Since it was our first time playing with the drums, my friends and I thought something was just up with us since some notes didn't seem to register. We played on Easy so the green and blue pads weren't used much. When we tried out the music creator the drums' failings became clearly apparent. The green drum pad wouldn't register unless you hit it incredibly hard directly in its center. The blue wouldn't work unless you also hit it hard but not as hard as the green pad. We went back, returned it this morning, and since Best Buy was sold out we went to Target to buy a new set.

Second set isn't any better. Green still had to be hit hard to register and sometimes when the blue is hit the cymbals go off. We fiddled around with the cymbals for a bit trying different things but it still sometimes registers a hit when the blue pad is struck. Needless to say my friend isn't too happy right about now. I'm starting to think Rock Band 2 may be the way to go.

Honestly, this is far worse than the RB1 release. This is dreaded. There are a TON of issues with the peripherals and the game itself was done pretty poorly. I mean, it looks like they rushed it to the extreme (which they did). In no way does the game look polished, it's pretty embarrassing.

Don't even get me started on the "song creator", my god. I had no idea this whole time the songs you would "create" would be 100% midi quality. It's pretty bad, especially since the music creator was supposed to be their huge success in World Tour.

Anyone know what the cross-brand compatibility is? Can I use RB 1 drums on GH? Because if that's the case I'd rather just grab a copy of the game.

More accurately, when you go through the support site and fill out what your problem is, they tell you to contact live support. Live support is also telling people that if they can't solve the problem through troubleshooting that they can't help them until the site is updated. Hoping the update includes info on free shipping, as the old one asked you to front for it.

fozzyozzy: The RB set works with GH4. It takes the 5th note (the orange cymbal) and merges it with the blue. You won't be able to get a bonus for the notes that are velocity sensitive, but it works just fine. :)

More shit in one box means more shit that's gonna eventually break if its not broken when it already gets to you.

Whatever happened to quality control.

Man, sorry about your shitty luck Moonglum. Sounds like my plan to get the Rock Band 2 bundle and just pick up the disc for GHWT is the safest bet. Btw, shoot me a PM, we need to hang out some time.

I suppose this isn't horrible news for me, I'm not much of a drummer. And we've got guitars that I can use. So I just get to look forward to the track list and song creator...which is all I was after anyway. Sucks that the drums suck though, we still haven't fixed our kick pedal from RB1.

It's funny seeing the Rock Band fannies come in here just to take pot shots and not actually contribute anything though.

I pray to God that they fix this before the European launch. I also heard that the drums don't work with Rock Band 2 on the PS3 which is bullshit since they emphasized that the instruments would be cross compatible.

I was really looking forward to picking the drum kit up but now I'm really worried...

wow wtf is up with people getting fucked up shit

i've never had hardware issues except for a 360 whose disc drive died. My December of 2007 Rock Band bundle works perfectly and so do all my consoles (including my non-slim PS2 which i think was bought in 2002)

makes me wonder if people really don't take care of their stuff or if they're just too stupid to understand how shit works (some, not all).