So I’ve been playing around with Rock Band 3 for awhile now. (I reviewed it on Monday of last week.) For whatever reason, this has been the most that I’ve played with one of the Rock Band games by myself in a long time. (They still get a lot of exercise at parties or anytime you have a few people over. As soon as the party really gets going, somebody spots the drum kit shoved over in the corner and wants to play, and sooner or later, everybody gets sucked in.)
Posts Tagged ‘Rock Band’
More RB3
Friday, April 29th, 2011Review: Rock Band 3
Monday, April 18th, 2011I just got a copy of Rock Band 3 a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to play it for awhile before I reviewed it though, which is why I haven’t posted this before now.
Bladder of Steel – I did it!
Monday, November 8th, 2010So, I decided to try for a couple of Achievements in Rock Band 2 yesterday–the ‘Vinyl Artist’, for getting through the entire Endless Setlist on Medium, and the ‘Bladder of Steel Award’, for not pausing the game while playing the Endless Setlist.
Bon Jovi Greatest Hits for Rock Band 3
Friday, October 8th, 2010Harmonix confirmed that there’s going to be a Bon Jovi Greatest Hits track pack for Rock Band.
Rock Band 3 Songs Announced
Monday, August 30th, 2010…and there’s no Bon Jovi. The complete official list is available from rockband.com.
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Rock Band: Bon Jovi?
Friday, June 11th, 2010It’s been confirmed that Rock Band 3 will include keyboards. Cnet’s article on the game has a picture of what the new controller will look like. (Honestly, while I might get the game, I don’t see myself shelling out more money for this particular controller. It’s not like anyone that I know is ever lining up to play with the drums when we get the game out.)
But, here’s my question: does this open the way for a Bon Jovi edition of Rock Band?
Think about it. Dave’s keys are a defining part of the Bon Jovi sound. This development would open the way for a true Bon Jovi experience in the gameplay–and would open the way for including ‘Dry County as a playable song. (My arm hurts just thinking about it.)
Up till now, the number of Bon Jovi songs available for Rock Band/2/Lego has been very limited. So far, all we’ve got are the songs that come with the discs, leaving us gamers with nothing more than the Big Three from Slippery When Wet. We’ve been arguing for a Bon Jovi DLC pack since the release of the first Rock Band, but haven’t got it so far.
At this point, with Harmonix and Activision cranking out Guitar Hero and Rock Band games for every band in the world, there’s got to be room for a Bon Jovi one. They’ve got the back catalog–and enough backstory–to fill up a game on their own.
Skill Atrophy
Friday, April 16th, 2010I haven’t really been playing any of the rhythm games, like Guitar Hero or Rock Band for quite some time. Been too busy playing stuff like the Ghostbusters game, Brutal Legend, and Bioshock lately.
But the other night, I just wanted a quick game to kill some time, and I didn’t feel like playing a battle against the AI in Brutal Legend. (That had been one of my go-to time wasters for awhile, but that lost appeal pretty fast.) So I put the first Rock Band in the Xbox for the first time in probably four or five months.
I, of course, assumed that I could pick up right where I left off and tried to play ‘Number of the Beast’ on Hard right away, and promptly failed out. Ultimately I came to the realization that I really do need to work my way back up to Hard, especially since hand-to-eye coordination isn’t really a natural skill of mine. And at the rate I’ve been going with getting distracted by other games, I probably won’t ever make it through all of the songs on Hard.
What’s really funny about the whole thing is that I can still do ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’ perfectly on Expert without a problem, but then again, practice does count for something.
A Whole New Respect for Alec
Friday, October 9th, 2009(Or Hugh, depending on what year we’re talking about.)
You can play bass in the single-player mode of Rock Band 2, but I usually stick with guitar instead. I think it’s force of habit from playing the older editions of Rock Band and Guitar Hero, where there was no option to play bass in the single-player mode. (Well, that and the character that I’m using in Rock Band 2 right now is one that I created specifically to look like Richie, right down to the cowboy hat and the double-neck guitar.)
Well, yesterday I decided to play some songs on the bass for something different. I haven’t really played much Rock Band or Guitar Hero lately–I had been spending a lot of time playing Fable or finishing up the Shivering Isles expansion pack for Oblivion. The problem is that if I don’t play for awhile, I lose the ability to play on Hard and have to work my way back up to it. I figured that switching to bass for awhile would change things up a bit without changing the difficulty level.
I figured that “Livin’ On a Prayer” would be a good track to start with. The guitar part isn’t particularly tough on that song. That turned out to be a very bad assumption to make. I based my assumption on the guitar part–which is actually mostly fingering along with the talkbox–and not on the bass in the song. To be perfectly honest, I never really paid much attention at all to the bass line in Prayer at all. That was a mistake.
The bass line to Prayer is the key to the whole song–something that I didn’t realize until I’d started. I usually gauge difficulty in Rock Band by how bad a particular song makes my arm hurt by the time it’s done. The bass part of Prayer definitely ranks up there on the list of tracks that can accomplish that.
In short, I would up with a whole new appreciation for what both Alec did and Hugh does when Bon Jovi plays this song by the time that I was done.
Tom Petty Tracks for Rock Band
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009According to the Examiner.com, two tracks from Tom Petty were added to the Rock Band store yesterday. (My Xbox still isn’t talking to Xbox Live though, so I won’t be getting them today at least. I’m pretty sure it’s the router that’s the problem.)
In terms of the challenge of playing these songs, they probably made solid choices. Both “I Won’t Back Down” and “Runnin’ Down a Dream” have decent guitar parts. “Runnin’ Down a Dream” has a drum track that I know I won’t be able to follow, and the guitar work in the solo is pretty impressive. “I Won’t Back Down” will probably be more of a fun party track.
Unfortunately, I would have preferred different tracks–personally, I think singing “Free Fallin’” and “Refugee: would rule. Unfortunately neither is actually a very complicated song, so no matter how much I would enjoy singing them, I don’t think they’re going to make either available as a download.
I’ll post again with my review of the tracks–when I can get them to download.
LEGO Rock Band: Where does it end?
Monday, July 27th, 2009I’ve already griped about how Harmonix and Activision are milking their respective Rock Band and Guitar Hero franchises by adding silly gimmick or band-centered games. (You can read about them in the posts on E3 and the one specifically about band games. Lately it seems that Harmonix is even worse than Activision about this kind of thing.
Evidently Harmonix went to the trouble of at least adding something that passes for meat to the Beatles edition of Rock Band. (You can read about the harmony vocals feature at the official site.) Unfortunately, I don’t see the three-part harmony vocals feature getting much use. I don’t know about other people, but I have a hard enough time getting anybody to take vocals on Rock Band when I organize a multiplayer game. That’s even with using the No Fail mode from Rock Band 2. (If I’m not the one doing lead vocals, that’s pretty much a necessity.) Getting three people to do vocals, two of which won’t be the melody? In my group of friends, fat chance of that happening. It’s a cool feature, but not a selling point any more than the drum trainer in Rock Band 2 was a selling point or the ability to create your own tracks was in Rock Band World Tour.
GameFocus has an article with a list of the released track titles for LEGO Rock Band. These include You Give Love A Bad Name. Effectively, this means that Bad Name will never be made available as DLC for Rock Band 2. If people really want any of the songs on this game, they’re going to have to buy the game. The problem is that buying games to get a few tracks gets really expensive. The only track in the whole list over at GameFocus that I really want is Bad Name. If they were available as DLC for Rock Band, I might buy Final Countdown too.
Ultimately what will sell any of these games will be how badly people want the songs in the game. For those of us who have already bought plenty of these games, we would rather have these songs as downloadable content for the games we already own. Pretty pictures of the Beatles or LEGO bricks don’t add much to the gameplay as far as I’m concerned. I’d rather have Bad Name and the Beatles tracks as downloads for Rock Band 2. I certainly won’t be buying either of these games, and I won’t be asking for them as gifts.