• 2Feb 08

  Guitar hero, Rock Band and how to fail at the future

  This might work better as a comment under a news article, but apparently I don't have enough member biscuits to do that, so I figure I'll post here for nobody to read it.

  I'm british and a big guitar hero fan. I bought guitar hero 1, then 2 then 80s for the PS3. They were all awesome. Guitar hero the first had a ridiculously good song selection marred only by poor charting and button press recognition. Guitar Hero II improved the formula with better hammer ons and better charts as well as good songs (not as good as the first game, but more fun to play because they had all the notes and you could actually play those notes). Guitar Hero 80s gave us the unbridled joy of the power chord and the whammy. People decried it as a full priced expansion, but the fact is that some of the songs on it were practically built for guitar hero, they may be no fun to listen to but they're pure joy to play.

  Then guitar hero II came along. I purchased it for the wii because I figured it made sense, being that wireless peripherals for the PS2 and even for the gamecube mostly just pissed me off. It too was awesome. That said, it took guitar hero in a new direction, that of the hardcore gamer. At the top levels you're no longer simulating guitar, you're hitting notes as they come. this is fun for some, but not for me. The songs are still great, but I feel they missed the boat that was so close to being in reach with 80s edition. The feeling that you really were playing the songs.

  Then i heard about Rock band I'm embellishing here for the sake of keeping the post flowing, I'd actually heard of rock band long before GHIII came out along with everybody else). Specifically i heard about the guitar not being a challenge for GHIII players, I was overjoyed. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a bad player by any means, on GHIII on hard I can get through everything except raining blood and on expert I'm stuck trying to beat before I forget. I do believe that's just about the definition of a decent guitar hero player. The thing about rock band being easier is it makes me think that harmonix might have hit that sweet spot, where it actually feels like playing guitar. I can't wait to play it.

  The problem is, I have to wait to play it. Why? Because I'm European. Apparently EA thinks Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa plain don't matter. We recently heard that the European release will be in the 2009 year. this means our hopes of Q1 rock band are dashed, at the very least we have Q2 which leaves us looking at a potential 6 month wait. This was acceptable for the original guitarero, made by two companies which, in the grand scheme of things, were start ups. It is not acceptable for the powerhouse that is EA and MTV working in tandem.

  Now, I have options. I can buy a US version, which involves shipping the box and all its contents to Britain. This I don't like because it won't have the regionalised content and, frankly, some of my favourite songs on GHIII would count as regionalised content. So I don't want to do that.

  there is another issue in that the wii version was also announced for the fiscal year of 2009. This means that a euro release might happen concurrently with a wii release. this would mean I wouldn't have to buy a PS3 for rock band (yes i'm a 360 hater, i've only ever played it while jonesing for GH in game stores and on one of those occasions it Red Rung on me, so I'm happy to hate), which means more money for buying DLC, assuming the wii gets DLC.

  Either way, back to the outrage. The problem here is that both EA and Activision are being extremely progresive and equally retrograde.

  On the one hand we have EA failing to realise that you cannot hide releases from the world at large and people will get extremely pissed if you arbitrarily keep them from spending their hard earned cash for the better part of a year. That said, they've also realised that expansion packs are not the wave of the future, in fact they are very much the old way. Once you've got a game perfected you are much better off just releasing content for it, well done them.

  On the other hand we have Activision doing quite the opposite. They know full well that global release means global money in their global pockets and a worldwide community singing your praises. they don't seem to have grasped this whole internet lark, however. Their DLC is slow (not that i'd know since GHIII doesn't have DLC, though it doesn't seem to need it from what I've seen) and expensive and they're already planning another yearly installment of the game. It's a shame to watch guitar hero degenerate to the level of tony hawks or all the various licensed sports games (whoah, EA, you're joining this party too?) and they should really try and get a handle on that.

  In the end though, my primary beef at the moment is with EA. The problem is, we deserve rock band.Why? The rest of the world has given EA and Harmonix Jet, Sweet, Radiohead, the rolling Stones, Deep purple, Garbage, The hives, The Police, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, The Clash, David Bowie and the Who. 13 songs on a 45 song set list. That's over a quarter of the game and that's not including Canadian bands (Canada also having had itself a bit of a wait for rock band, though they had it in time for Christmas) or bands that would be nothing without the support of global sales.

  Unfortunately, I can't think of an alternative. I still hold to the hope that rock band will be the ultimate rhythm game, so boycotting's out of the question. So here I am, beingpissed on by EA and hoping one of us develops some dignity and does the right thing soon.

  • Posted Feb 2, 2008 4:51 am PT
  • Category: Games
  • 0 Comments
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