rock band
I just happened to see some PSN DLC track prices for both Rock Band and GHWT on a Kotaku article, and they left me rather puzzled. You would have thought that these prices would be fairly homogenised by now, but bizarrely enough I found no fewer than 3 different prices, depending on what system and game you were looking at. Here we go: “Police Truck” by the Dead Kennedys (Rock Band)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 (!