Music
Some of the Rock Band full-album DLC I’ve been really looking forward to is finally getting released next week; The Colour and the Shape by Foo Fighters. Finally I can play Monkey Wrench again (it was in Guitar Hero 2 - although only in cover form), plus the bonus of classics like My Hero, Hey! Johnny Park and - well, there really aren’t any bad tracks on this album. The only shame is that I have the remastered & extended version of the album, which includes an extra 6 tracks, but none of those have made it in, it’s strictly the original version of the album.
I’m still of the opinion that Harmonix make the most fun music software, and a lot of veteran players agree with me (except Eurogamer, who said GH3 was ‘better in every way’ than GH2, which IMO is total nonsense). However, Red Octane tend to make good hardware - personally although I own both I much prefer the Rock Band Strat to the GH3 Les Paul, but I know I’m in a minority there even among RB fans.
Finally - after a lot of speculation about whether it was a mistake that a 360 advert announced that RB2 was out in the UK in November, it’s been confirmed for 21st November (on 360 anyway). Definite purchase! The hardware apparently won’t be out until early December, but I’ll be buying the solus anyway. Also we finally know who ‘won’ when it comes to securing the rights for the first Beatles tracks in a music game, and it’s MTV / Harmonix.
It appears that despite many people having their hands on the game, the ever-present review embargo appears to be stopping most from commenting so far, but IGN appears to have been the first of the game enthusiast sites to get a review of Guitar Hero World Tour posted. I don’t go by scores personally, I advise you to read the full review. It’s only one opinion so far, but to me, there are a couple of elements that make it sound like Neversoft may have missed some fairly important points again.
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I plan to get an electric guitar in the next month or two to complement the accoustic that I’ve been learning on. I’ve done a bit of research, assisted greatly by the responses given to my previous post (thanks chaps), and I’m pretty certain that I’ve found the right combination for the immediate future. I’m still very much a beginner so there’s no point spending a ton of cash, but nevertheless it doesn’t hurt to try to get the best I feel I can afford/justify.
Well, Harmonix confirmed the list of 20 ‘free’ DLC tracks included in the Rock Band 2 retail bundle, and here it is: The 88 - “Sons and Daughters” Authority Zero - “No Regrets” Between the Buried and Me - “Prequel To The Sequel” The Cab - “Bounce” The Chevelles - “Get It On” The Cocktail Slippers - “Give It To Me” Dealership - “Database Corrupted” Endeverafter - “I Wanna Be Your Man”
Ok, so my suspicions about the reasons behind Rock Band: AC/DC breaking the usual customer-friendly mould of Rock Band appear to have been confirmed: The reason “AC/DC Live” can’t be purchased at your local EB Games or Best Buy is because of the deal that AC/DC had already struck with Wal-Mart as an exclusive distributor of their upcoming album, “Black Ice.” The negotiations with AC/DC over the track pack required that Harmonix become part of the existing Wal-Mart agreement.
I’ve been learning to play accoustic guitar for a little over a year now, and although I still dispair at overall quality of my playing sometimes, I can still acknowledge that I’ve made a lot of progress, considering I started from zero. My renditions of Stairway to Heaven, Ziggy Stardust and Wonderwall are at least recognisable, if not hugely flattering. During particularly busy periods it’s hard to find the time to practice, which has sometimes led to a frustrating cycle of starting to lose callouses, finger strength and muscle memory, and then having to spend time building them back up again, which makes you feel like you’re not making any progress.
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.
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.