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Rock Band, PAX, Bioshock, Metroid, video games...


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Hello VC! I'm back from Seattle where I spent the weekend at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX). For those of you that are unaware of what this is, it's currently the largest video game convention in the world. It's pretty much taken the place of E3, especially since this year's E3 was horrendous. The best part about PAX is that it's mainly for the fans, not the media.

Ok, so since we're all pretty much into music I figured you may be interested in hearing about Rock Band. I got my little hands on the game a handful of times at PAX and I can say with full confidence that it is the greatest music game ever developed and potentially the best party game of all time.

The first thing I did once entering the main hall was run straight towards Harmonix's booth where I was surprised to see a stage setup with people playing Rock Band as if it were a real concert. I got in the line, which was always insanely long throughout the weekend. I didn't get to play on the main stage the first time, but I just wanted to play! I was paired up with three of the Omeganauts and I chose Weezer's "Say it Ain't So." I'm an obsessive Weezer fan so finally playing one of their songs in a rhythm game was one hell of an experience. I played guitar on medium and it was kind of insanely easy, but tons of fun.

The game play for the guitar is very similar to Guitar Hero. There are some differences though. Instead of Star notes they are gray notes, but act the same. There is a bar below the notes that fills up just like the old Star-power bar. You deploy it in the same way as well, but tilting the guitar up. Hammer-Ons and Pull-Offs are no longer designated by the color inside the note, instead they are smaller sized notes -- this makes it soooo much easier for me to tell, because I'm colorblind and the white center was hard for me to pick up on right away. One of the main talks about the new Rock Band guitar was the solo buttons on the guitar. You use these during a designated solo in the song without having to strum the guitar. You'll know when to use them because a notification pops up on the screen letting you know you're performing the solo.

As for the guitar itself, it's 100x better than the XBOX 360 GH2 controller and 95x better than the PS2 guitars. It's bigger and the lack of cheesy colored buttons makes it feel legit. There's also a little switch that will let you change the sounds of the notes, I don't think it was working on the build we were playing, but it'll make it interesting. We were playing the XBOX360 version of the game, but the guitars were still wired. I asked one of the developers about wireless guitars and they are pushing hard for them, but they probably won't be packaged in the main bundle, instead you'll have to purchase them on your own. This is a bummer, but they are pushing hard for the bundle to be $200. Also, if you intended on getting all of the instruments you'll need to buy a USB hub, because the 360 only has 3 USB ports -- that kind of pisses me off. You can find a cheap hub for $15-25 but still...

I didn't sing at all, but two of my friends did and they had no complaints about it. It played very similar to the Karaoke games currently available, but the ability to tap the microphone for cowbell and tambourine parts looked neat. Deploying your 'star-power' on the mic is odd, when it's available a green block flows across the screen and you just yell whatever you want into the microphone, I thought it was kind of lame. I had one very important question I wanted to ask the developers. I was curious from day one if one could use a mic stand and sing whilst playing guitar. I know most of the songs in the game pretty well and that would add another level of difficulty. I was worried because it would be hard to hit the tambourine style notes whilst playing guitar. The one developer I talked to said he thought of that same scenario while in a band practice and says it'll be doable in the game.

Now for what everyone cares about...THE DRUMS! I only got to play the drums once and that was on a Faith No More track. I cannot play drums in real life and I have terrible coordination, but I was able to play the song quite well for my first try. I chose medium, because I didn't want to look like a fool if I failed. I had some trouble in the beginning, but I caught on pretty quickly. The drums are sooooo much fun. One kid in front of me was a drummer and he played on expert, he didn't do too well, so there's some difficulty curve there, which is good. There was one big problem with the drums though, the XBOX guide button was very easily hit and once pressed it would stop the players from playing, but the song kept going on. Harmonix new it was an issue and they will have it solved once the game is released.

My only complaint about the game was that it seemed very easy. I can play GH2 on hard with some proficiency, but I played mainly on medium to get a feel for things. The songs on medium were waaaaay to easy. It felt like I was playing on easy! I played one song on hard, the Hives "Main Offender" and it gave me a little bit of trouble, but nothing a good player couldn't ace right off the bat. I think most people will be able to fly through the game on hard their first time through it.

There is still no set release date, but they are shooting for a holiday release. Harmonix left immediately after PAX ended so they could continue to work on the game.

That was one hell of a rant...

What other games are you folks playing? I bought Metroid Prime 3 for the Wii yesterday and dented about 2-hours in it. FANTASTIC GAME! It's the best game on the Wii, visually and playing-wise.

Bioshock came out last week, I bought it, everyone's talking about it, but I can't play it because my 360 died.

UGH.

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Guest scriptedrain

I can't wait to see what Rock Band is like, thanks for the info! It sucks about E3, I think it was a huge mistake to take the fun and fan-friendly atmosphere / admission away. Gamers used to get so excited over E3, and not necessarily being there but hearing about it. Now, there's still excitement, but it's much more reserved and there's more press junkets than blogging exclusives and such.

- Jeff

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