SteveStreeting.com

Looks like a bug has been discovered in Rock Band 2 that can randomly reset your band’s progress under a certain set of curcumstances. So far it appears that it only happens if you play the career mode with a certain combination of accounts - notably a player with a Live-enabled account, and a player with a non-Live-enabled account.

Here’s hoping they fix it before the UK release, although I actually don’t think I’d suffer from it anyway, since Marie & I both have Live accounts, and when other people play they don’t use their own accounts, they just jump in as ‘Player 3′ or whatever; so far those combinations sound like they’re immune to this bug.

The moral of the story would seem to be not to use non-Live accounts with Rock Band 2. I’m not sure why you would anyway, if your machine is connected to the internet, since a ’silver’ Live account is free anyway (and it’s still a ‘Live-enabled account’ - you get leaderboards & gamerscore tracking but not multiplayer). Still, a nasty bug if you happened to get caught by it.

Looks like the new Rock Band site is going live as we speak, they have a placeholder page up right now. The new site will allegedly let you take photos of your band to share online, get (real) T-shirts branded with your bands logo and other fun (yet entirely pointless) things. Obviously I’m looking forward to seeing that.

One of the things I like about Rock Band is that the DLC is regular, reasonably priced and à la carte - you can pick just the tracks you want and it doesn’t break the bank. Guitar Hero conversely has so far not released very much DLC, generally charges more for it (500 points for a 3-song pack compared to 80-120 points per track in Rock Band), and doesn’t give you the option of just purchasing the tracks you want - it’s the whole pack or nothing, making it much less convenient.

Worse are the ‘band branded’ retail supplements like GH: Aerosmith which are the ultimate in forced bulk purchasing, and something I’ve always looked on with derision. They’re chronically expensive, they’re all-or-nothing, you’re no doubt paying for stuff you don’t really want or need (like the modelling of Steve Tyler’s frankly shocking visage, which I imagine took every ounce of normal mapping skill on the part of the artist to capture its craggy terrain) - they’re the antethesis of the self-service, customer-pleasing DLC that Rock Band offers. You could say that Rock Band 2 is the same, but there’s 2 differences: 1) you’re getting a refined play experience, and 2) you get 106 varied tracks for your money, a massive saving over regular DLC. Together those are enough to justify it, so long as it’s a rare occurrence.

All was well until this week, when MTV announced that they would be releasing Rock Band : AC/DC (exclusively through Wal-Mart in the US) - a band-branded physical media add-on precisely in the vein of GH: Aerosmith, and that it wouldn’t be made available as DLC. Worse, it’s even more of a rip off than GH:A, costing a whopping £30 for a paltry 18 tracks. What the hell are they thinking?

If there’s a tissue-thin silver lining to this story, it’s that at least you can transfer all the songs from the disc into Rock Band 2 as pseudo-DLC, just like you can with the Rock Band 1 tracks; so at least you’re not condemned to disc-swapping. But still, you can’t buy it any other way than all in one shrink-wrapped package, and the price is daylight robbery - who forgot to tell them that when you bulk-buy, you should get goods at a lower price? Beyond the price, I fundamentally disagree with the forced packaging, and the exclusive arrangement they’re taking with this one, it’s an entirely retrograde step and entirely at odds with everything Harmonix have been doing so far.

Harmonix have stated that they don’t like exclusive content, that they dislike restricting music choice, and I completely agree with that. One of the reasons I like Rock Band is that you really do get the sense it’s made by people who know and love music more than anything else. My guess (hope?) is that it’s not them who made this call - maybe the business guys at MTV overruled them, seeing the dollar signs lighting up. Or, maybe it was AC/DC’s management who refused to allow the piecemeal DLC route; they’re one of the few remaining bands who don’t allow track downloads via iTunes (either because of greed, snobbery, luddite tendencies, who knows). Or maybe Wal-Mart dangled a fat juicy bribe in front of the MTV biz guys and led them down the dark path. I don’t know - but I’d really rather not believe that Harmonix have lost their way here, given how in touch with the customer they’ve been so far. I hope it’s a one-off special case; if MTV start doing this for other bands the way Activision has openly said it plans to, it will seriously erode my respect for the Rock Band franchise. Given the goodwill Harmonix have built up so far doing things the ‘right’ customer-friendly way with DLC, contrasting markedly with the way Activision have been doing things, the very last thing they should be doing is tossing all that down the crapper switching to an overtly corporate approach.

I don’t much care for AC / DC anyway so I can happily ignore this; had they released it via the normal DLC channels I might have purchased a couple of signature tracks, such as Back in Black, but there’s no way I’m going to buy an entire disc full; so they’ve lost a sale or two there, and I would expect that applies to others who have merely a passing acquaintance with the band. In essence, which band it is doesn’t matter; it’s the precedent that it sets which is very concerning.

Note to Baz: I wrote the majority of this post before you accused me of ignoring the story because of my raging Rock Band bias

Looks like I could be getting my wish and Rock band 2 will be out in the UK before the end of the year:

Yep, that’s a UK official Microsoft ad saying it, so I think that’s pretty certain (for 360 at least). So it’s November - unsurprisingly the very time that GH:WT comes out - makes sense.

Woohoo - looks like we can look forward to having 500 tracks to choose from this side of the pond too, instead of a just the measly 400 (!) we’d have with RB1 + DLC. All the refinements to the little niggles should be great too (like drum fills that use the samples from the song, better quickplay etc) We still don’t know what the 20 free DLC tracks are in RB2 yet, my guess is they’ll wait until the GH:WT marketing machine starts up in the USA (which I think is next month), and use that as an extra card.

I’m actually getting better at Won’t Get Fooled Again on Hard on the drums. Every time I play it I can’t help but admire Keith Moon; his drum parts are just so far out there in comparison to almost any other. He might have been a nutter, but he was a genius with a pair of drumsticks.

Oh, Love Spreads is as good as I hoped too, huge fun on guitar and drums and definitely one of my new favourites. And we have a full album of Chili Peppers next week - in a way it’s a shame they chose Blood Sugar Sex Magick, By The Way or Californication would have been my personal choice, but still, it should be good.

Finally! I’d already had She Bangs the Drums in GH3, but it’s not one of the Roses’ best tracks and the GH3 implementation was, typically, not that much fun.

There’s a small handful of tracks on Guitar Hero : World Tour that I would like to see in Rock Band, and one was Love Spreads by The Stone Roses. Luckily next week’s Rock Band DLC includes this track, so that’s one crossed off my list. It’s still not one of my favourite tracks, but it’s still quintessentially Stone Roses and more interesting than She Bangs the Drums - I’m certainly looking forward to the Harmonix take on John Squire’s riffs and Reni’s drums.

The Stone Roses did a massive amount to shake up the tired 80’s music scene and were in the vanguard of early Indie in the early 90’s, but are still ignored by a lot of people today. A combination of poor management, dodgy legal problems and their own incredible stupidity meant they didn’t realise their potential, but I remember the first time I heard Fool’s Gold - in 1989/1990 it was just so different. For anyone interested, the BBC did a documentary about the Roses which is fairly informative although I think they dismiss their second, admittedly 6-year late, album (Second Coming) a little too quickly; despite them being out of fashion by then and no longer fresh (since the sound had already been copied & furthered by others by then) I think it’s still good.

Now, Harminix/MTV please can we have Fool’s Gold, Waterfall, What the World is Waiting For, Mersey Paradise, Daybreak, Breaking Into Heaven.. hell, almost anything. Tell you what, I’ll just give you my wallet now, ok?

I like iTunes - like many Apple products it does exactly what I want in a pretty and easy to use package. Sure, I may have to customise a bunch of options to make it rip CDs the way I want but on the whole it works swimmingly.

I updated to iTunes 8 today, because I wanted to try out the new ‘Genius’ feature - the ability to generate playlists from both within your collection and also to suggest more that you don’t own yet. I’ve tried several products that have purported to do this kind of thing before, such as TheFilter and of course the Last.fm plugin, and generally I’ve come away underwhelmed. Pandora was the only service I really liked and used regularly, but they shut the UK out recently and sound like they’re going out of business pretty soon, out of my earshot.

Using Genius is simple, just select a song and hit the Genius button in the bottom right, and you’ve got a playlist built from similar songs in your collection. I did it for a few songs in my collection, edited out the duplicate artists and picked the top 10 from the playlist, here’s the results:

Song: You’re All I Have (Snow Patrol)
Genius Playlist: In The Morning (Razorlight), Other Side Of The World (KT Tunstall), Wisemen (James Blunt), Dirty Harry (Gorillaz), Have a Nice Day (Stereophonics), Why Does It Always Rain on Me? (Travis), The Zephyr Song  (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Zombie (The Cranberries), Sit Down (James), Bat Out Of Hell (Meat Loaf)

Pretty good, it seems to have mostly picked out the ‘Alternative Rock’ (’Indie’ to us Brits) elements, although unfortunately it discovered the presence of James Blunt in my collection. How embarrassing.

Song: Spybreak! (Propellerheads)
Genius Playlist: Eple (Röyksopp), Feels Just Like It Should (Jamiroquai), Stayin’ Alive (Bee Gees), The Trick (The Prodigy), Purple Haze (Groove Armada), Glory Box (Portishead), Groovejet (Spiller), Fool’s Gold (Stone Roses), Don’t Falter[Mint mix] (Mint Royale), Leave Home (The Chemical Brothers)

Damn good choices - if I’m feeling like a bit of upbeat Propellerheads, chances are I’m probably also in the mood for the others in that list, a mixture of funk/dance/electronic. Groove Armada and Portishead tend to be a little slower but they’re definitely in the same vibe.

Song: Diamond Hoo Ha Man (Supergrass)
Genius Playlist: Horse To Water (R.E.M.), Shot Down (Nine Black Alps), Love Is The Law (Seahorses), Animal Nitrate (Suede), Charmless Man (Blur), Waterfall (Stone Roses), This Is Music (The Verve), Girl From Mars (Ash), Good Souls (Starsailor), Slight Return (The Bluetones)

Again, a really appropriate selection. A good selection with the same mix of Indie and Post-punk influences that I tend to like at pretty much any time of day, with a sprinkle of BritPop.

Song: Jumpin’ Jack Flash (The Rolling Stones)
Genius Playlist: My Generation (The Who), All Right Now (Free), I’m a Believer (The Monkees), Sweet Emotion (Aerosmith), Black Dog (Led Zeppelin), Suffragette City (David Bowie), After Midnight (Eric Clapton), Monkey Wrench (Foo Fighters), Orange Crush (R.E.M.), For What It’s Worth (Buffalo Springfield)

It clearly picked up the ‘Classic Rock’ pointers here, which is good - although the inclusion of The Monkees is really only period-accurate and not genre-accurate:)

Song: Wonderwall (Oasis)
Genius Playlist: One Week (Barenaked Ladies), I Believe In A Thing Called Love (The Darkness), Everybody Hurts    (R.E.M.), Smooth Criminal (Alien Ant Farm), Lady (Lenny Kravitz), Otherside (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Mysterious Ways (U2), A Little Less Conversation (Elvis Presley), Single (Natasha Bedingfield), Talk (Coldplay)

Mmkay, a little more random variation here - I would love to know the thinking behind associating Elvis with Oasis, apart from silly accents I also would have associated The Darkness with more glam rock, but there we go.

I had noticed that big names like Radiohead and Queen were going strangely unacknowledged by Genius so far, so I decided to see what it did think went with those:

Song: High and Dry (Radiohead)
Genius Playlist: Lucky Man (The Verve), Supernatural Superserious (R.E.M.), Everyday Is Like Sunday (Morrissey), Hands Open (Snow Patrol),  Babe I’m Gonna Leave You (Led Zeppelin), Stay (Faraway, So Close) (U2), Supersonic (Oasis), Have a Nice Day (Stereophonics), Sam’s Town (The Killers), Low (Cracker)

Hmm, yeah I can buy that list - definitely on the pensive end of the rock spectrum

Song: Fat Bottomed Girls (Queen)
Genius Playlist: The Hand That Feeds (Nine Inch Nails), Oye Como Va (Santana), Personal Jesus (Depeche Mode), After Midnight (Eric Clapton), Won’t Get Fooled Again (The Who), Kashmir (Led Zeppelin), Dude Looks Like a Lady (Aerosmith), Can’t Stop (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Fly Away (Lenny Kravitz), DOA (Foo Fighters)

A bit of a mixed bag that one, but then Queen are a fairly hard band to pigeon-hole, and at least Santana finally made it in to the list.

So, overall Genius seems to do a pretty good job. I’m way too lazy and disorganised to make manual playlists for groups of songs that I like at particular times - I’ve tried but I just can’t be arsed, I think I was born without the ‘filing gene’. I have so far relied entirely on the ‘Recently Added’ and ‘Party Shuffle’ lists, so I can envisage Genius being useful - I recommend checking it out.

I just read that EA has decided to drop the RRP of Rock Band in Europe ahead of the PS3 / PS2 / Wii release this Friday, to £109 instead of £129 for the instruments edition (game is still extra).

This is good, but I’m not sure whether it will be reflected in the practical price you pay; Play.com were already selling the instruments bundle for less than this lower RRP (£99) right from release in May (on 360), and Amazon matched it fairly quickly. Whether they will also reflect this RRP price drop I’m not sure, I guess it depends if anyone goes first.

There was such a massive backlash against the Rock Band pricing in Europe, which is somewhat understandable but lessened somewhat when you take into account that a) the shockingly high £189.99 RRP isn’t actually what you end up paying (I paid £133), b) we always pay more in Europe anyway, thanks to languages and regulations, it’s why $59.99 games are £49.99 here when they should be more like £35 c) the US exchange rate has come off its highs now, denting the conversion calculations to some degree; but as yet I’ve heard pretty much no consternation about the GH:WT price, which - shock - is pretty much comparable. Play & Amazon have it listed at £159.99, which is £20 more expensive than they’re selling Rock Band for (before any potential reduction from today’s announcement) once you add in the game. They are however bundling a bass guitar which would normally cost an extra £30-60 (depending on which one you buy) so that does make it cheaper if you had needed to buy all 4 instruments. But, if you already own a guitar from GH3 I’m sure you’d rather have the £30-60 off rather than the bundled bass - but of course the reduction in price wouldn’t be anywhere near that large without the bundling, since they’re no doubt doing it at cost. My guess is that eBay will be awash with unwanted GH:WT wireless bass guitars come the November release date.

Whichever way you slice it, there’s not that much difference in the prices. These games are expensive, which sucks, but if you want this unique experience, you have to pay the ante; bitching about it and crying ‘boycott’ will in practice do very little except deny yourself that experience while all the people who do choose to save up for it have a great time. Supply & demand rules apply - despite the vocal boycott brigade, most people will make their own decisions on whether they think it’s worth it. I’m glad I had a load of PS2 Guitar Hero stuff to sell on eBay to help fund my Rock Band experience, but even if I didn’t I would still have bought it, and I haven’t regretted the outlay one iota. The disc hasn’t left my 360 since May and we’ve had hours and hours of collective fun with it. The way I look at it, it cost me the equivalent of about 3.5 normal full-price games, and I strongly believe it’s given me at least that multiple in enjoyment compared to any other single game I own - more so when you add in the collective enjoyment on social occasions. And I don’t see us stopping playing it any time soon - GH2 lasted us a year, and that was without the weekly DLC that makes Rock Band so rich with variety. It may just be a silly game with expensive plastic instruments, but my goodness it delivers a damn fine dollop of fun

One of the latest items of news in the music game scene is that Sting is now confimed to be lending his likeness to Guitar Hero : World Tour, along with the already announced / leaked likes of Ted Nugent, Billy Corgan, Jimi Hendrix, and Ozzy Osbourne.

Now, I can imagine marketing men getting excited about being able to include famous characters in a game, in a wonderful brand marketing / halo effect / leveraging synergy moment, but I look at these announcements and really can’t give a rat’s arse. I wondered if it was just me that thought this feature was completely pointless, but it appears I’m not alone.

See, I play music games because ‘playing’ along to tracks you love, particularly with a bunch of friends, is a huge amount of fun. I don’t play them because I want to ‘be’ Slash, or Sting, or Ozzy, or anyone else. I don’t want to be them, I just like to play some of their tracks. If anything, embodying some of these rockers in a game would put me off; let’s face it, some musicians, despite being very talented, are total wankers. There are plenty of bands I can think of that I like, but would never want to socialise with even if I had the opportunity. Personally I don’t hold being a bit of a twat against them if they make great music, but would I want to pretend to be them? No thanks.

Of course the ability to compete against & then play as rock stars arrived in GH3, and not only was I not interested in playing the characters in that game, the way they were introduced was one of the worst mechanics in the entire game - the boss battles. These were so irretrievably awful and painful to play that I can only conclude that either the entire QA team was completely retarded, or that they raised the fact that the boss battles were a rubbish idea but were overruled by those higher up because it was a great bullet-point on the box, even if in practice it was crap. I’m betting it’s the latter, and I’m also betting that these same people are responsible for using precious resources on getting more rock stars faces into the game, resources that presumably could have been spent elsewhere on the core game experience. It makes sense from a marketing point of view, but makes absolutely bugger all difference to the actual game.

Suits: 1 Game players: 0

I’m still reserving judgement on GH:WT until I get to play it, but focussing on stuff like this when they haven’t even confirmed the setlist yet seems like an odd set of priorities, and after GH3’s many rough edges they still have everything to prove to me. A lot of people concentrate on Red Octane’s hardware (which is looking good) as GH:WT’s advantage, but since instruments will now be interchangeable I don’t buy this so much; the experience delivered by the software is paramount. We’ll see.

Oo, EW.com has just revealed (picked up via RockBandContent.com) that there are more full albums on the way for Rock Band after the release of Rock Band 2:

Foo Fighters (The Colour and the Shape)
Red Hot Chili Peppers (Blood Sugar Sex Magik)
Jane’s Addiction (Nothing’s Shocking)
Megadeth (Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying)
Stevie Ray Vaughn (Texas Flood)
No Doubt (’Best Of’ Collection)

I don’t know about anyone else, but the top 2 are instant purchases for me, since both are regulars on my iTunes playlists. These are advertised for Rock band 2, but since DLC is interchangeable between the 2 games I’m betting I can still use them even if RB2 hasn’t made it to our shores by then.

Ho boy, time to prime the wallet again methinks. Until then I’ll have to just exhaust myself playing a Duran Duran drum medley. RB is definitely educational, I never realised that ‘Rio’ was so relentlessly fast & long on the drums, I have newfound respect for the New Romantics era musicians - that is, if it wasn’t all pre-programmed on drum machines…

At the Leipzig Games Convention Sony announced several updates to its venerable SingStar franchise, and whilst the inclusion of Barry Manilow is wince-inducing, the inclusion of several Queen tracks on their compilation issues, and the announcement of a dedicated Queen disc for SingStar can only be a good thing. Not because I particularly like SingStar - we had it on the PS2 and to be honest the novelty wore off pretty fast - somehow picking up the microphone and crooning on your own or in a duet just feels like you should be in a seedy bar, full of beer with your arm around your best mate, desperately hoping the next morning that nobody had a video recording mode on their mobile. In contrast, singing in Rock Band feels a lot less awkward, especially when you have 3 other people shredding / drumming away. Maybe it’s just me.

The reason it’s interesting even though I won’t be buying SingStar is that it means that those who control Queen’s music are loosening their grip a little, and letting master tracks into video games, which hasn’t happened so far - this in turn might mean we’ll see them in Rock Band eventually. Covers of Queen tracks have appeared in several games, such as “Don’t Stop Me Now” in Donkey Konga, “Killer Queen” in Guitar Hero, and “I Was Born To Love You” in Elite Beat Agents, but no master tracks have ever appeared before now, as far as I’m aware.

Here’s hoping anyway, Queen are one of the major classic British rock bands and I’d love to see them in Rock Band, to go with other British favourites such as The Who, David Bowie, The Police and Oasis (I also hope they stop ignoring Supergrass some day, because I’m dying to play Diamond Hoo Ha Man). That is, unless Activision decide to try to sign them to an exclusive deal like they’ve done with Aerosmith and Metallica, although I’d hope the Brits will have more integrity than that. Harmonix of course have stated their opposition to exclusive deals with bands, sticking to their line that music should be able to be enjoyed freely everywhere (this principle also underpinned their support for instrument compatibility, something grubby old Activision opposed for ages until the console manufacturers slapped them). Whether this laudable approach will come back to bite them later as Activision continues to pursue the “business first, music second” angle I don’t know, but they have my respect for it anyway.

Oho, I haven’t been rocking out that long to the original yet, but Harmonix unleashed the worst kept secret in music gaming today by confirming Rock Band 2.

What they’ve announced isn’t that surprising, but it’s good to have official confirmation that:

1. The instruments from RB1 will work
2. DLC from both titles will be interchangeable

Now, really Harmonix would be off their rocker if they didn’t hit these 2 feature points, but it’s worth noting that in particular the cross-title DLC is actually a first, and Harmonix had to liaise with Microsoft and Sony to make sure it happened. It seems odd but the Guitar Hero franchise has never supported this - you can’t use GH2 DLC with GH3, and you can’t even use GH3 DLC with the recently released GH:Aerosmith - even though they’re from the same developer. So something that would seem so obvious is in fact an advancement here.

Harmonix have also said they’re improving the instruments - since RB1 instruments will work that suggests some incremental changes, perhaps softer drums and a stronger bass pedal, and I would guess some changes to the guitar, although on balance I actually prefer the Stratocaster now to the GH3 Les Paul (which I bought so we could play 4-player) - I know that’s fairly unusual but I like the non-clicky, firmer strum bar for fast up & down strumming, and I like the terminator ridges at the top/bottom of the fret buttons for fast orientation. My drums are great now they’re modded but better out-of-the-box drums would be very welcome I’m sure. Wireless will be a given too, certainly for the guitar, not sure about the drums but I really don’t see the benefit of wireless drums anyway, since they’re sat in one place all the time - a pointless way to burn batteries if you ask me. They’re also allowing 3rd parties to create instruments, like Mad Catz. Overall their attitude to openness and player freedom seems a lot better than Activision’s.

No word on songs yet but unofficial reports suggest that AC/DC is in, something fans have clamoured for for a while (I’m not a big AC/DC fan but I can see the appeal of playing Back in Black and Highway to Hell), and the total set list is rumoured to be a massive 120 songs, which is just ridiculous if it’s true. I currently have about 90 songs to play including DLC, and we won’t play some tracks for days - talk about being spoiled. It sounds like the list will be revealed at E3.

Obviously I’m rather keen on Rock Band and really can’t wait to see what the sequel contains. September is the release date (pipping GHWT to the post I see), although this may just be a US release - I do hope that they at least release the Solus version in Europe even if they can’t get the hardware logistics sorted out [Edit: yay, Europe will get it in September too][Edit2: ugh maybe not]. It’ll be a timed 360 exclusive again; once again I thank my stars I picked the right horse for Rock Band!

Edit: And we’re finally getting 12 more tracks from The Who in 2 weeks! So missing master tracks really were the reason for the delay on Whos Next. Good times - fingers crossed that Baba O’Riley made it in.