Supposedly, the PS2 bundles shipped yesterday. We are told that you should start being able to see them today in places like Walmart and Target. Best Buy seems a bit clueless about it, and GameStop/EB Games claims they only have enough to fill the pre-orders they received, although you can supposedly order the bundle from them online.
My suggestion is that you try hitting Target and Walmart (maybe Toys-R-Us, too?) around midday today, as they’re supposed to be arriving with today’s FedEx shipments.
My understanding is that your old Guitar Hero guitars will work with the PS2 bundle. So long as you don’t have the GHIII guitar. The microphone really doesn’t matter, so long as it’s a USB microphone. You should be able to pick that up from everywhere.
Also, bear in mind that if you’re trying to get this done before Christmas and you don’t have any luck finding a PS2 bundle for some reason, you can buy a PS3 bundle and the PS2 stand-alone game. The peripherals (drums, mic and guitar) are identical for the PS3 and PS2. Many folks who grew impatient waiting for the PS2 bundle to come out have gone this route and had success. The stand-alone game has been out for about a week and a half, so you should be able to find that several places.
I just wanted to share some pics of my drummer, Tobias Funke, from Arrested Development. He finally found a use for all that blue paint from his Blue Man Group auditions. I’m having a lot of fun with the character design and tatoo shop.
Well my wife came thru and got me this game for 360 for Xmas. Got it today and have been playing most of the day. Random thoughts:
The drums are loud as hell. If they were even a smidge louder I would not want to play them anymore. I have a nice stereo and home theater system so thankfully I can crank it up to drown out some of the banging, but once the kids are in bed the volume comes down and then all I can hear is the drum pads. My wife can hear me beating these things from up stairs and I’m not using arms, only wrists as soft as I can.
The travel on the pedal is WAY long. The action is SO high. I know it’s just a video game but it sure takes getting used to. I play guitar and have only beat around on real drums a tad over the years and it still seems so high.
I haven’t even used the guitar since I have 2 from GH but it feels way flimsier and the lack of a click on the strummer is disorienting after playing GH.
The singing is way more fun than expected. Even my wife and neighbors have tried the singing. It’s done quite well and is fun for all. It’s almost impossible to pass a song that has a female vocalist if you are male unless you sing in falsetto the whole time though. All in all very fun and the mic is pretty nice for a video game.
The guitar parts are very easy if you grew up on GH. It’s very forgiving though I haven’t played alot of guitar. What I played was in expert though.
The drums don’t have enough “give” in them and after a while my fingers hurt because it feels like I’ve been beating drumsticks on a counter top for a few hours.
These are all pretty minor though as the game is really fun and my wife and friends have enjoyed it today. Very impressive.
You can quiet the drums by cutting foam circles and putting them on the drum pads. You can also put a thin layer of felt on top of that to deaden the ‘snap’ sound. I don’t have the drums yet, but there are all kinds of threads on the Rock Band forums explaining how to do this. There are even some commercial pad mufflers already available relatively cheaply.
From what I’ve been reading, the ‘pro’ technique is to depress the pedal most of the way and keep it there, and then only use the last little bit of travel when using the pedal. That allows for much faster pedalling and won’t wear your leg out as fast.
Lots of people don’t like the guitar - I think the strum bar was really designed for alt-strumming, so if you don’t do that, you probably don’t like it.
My daughter’s just loving the singing part. I had to buy the standalone game and use my current GH guitar and a USB mic from Karaoke Revolution. It works fine.
I think it’s less forgiving than GHIII in terms of note timing, but the parts aren’t as complex. So far, I think I like the GHIII system a little better, but I can deal with either one.
If you get or make the mufflers, I’ll bet they’d make the drums more comfortable, too.
I have a question for the people who have guitar hero too since it’s been out longer: this game has been out a month and 4 days, and a lot of people have already broke their instruments - have people experienced similar life expectancies for the guitar hero controller?
My Guitar Hero controllers are still going strong. I’m actually using the GH3 controller to play Rock Band. The Rock Band guitar sits unused in the closet for the most part.
Yeah, at least you lucky XBox bastards have that option.
elfkin477, there is a known defect with the Rock Band guitars that (apparently) was discovered after they had been distributed. Those who had defective guitars started experiencing problems almost immediately (our household is in that group). Our Guitar Hero guitars have never had a problem, nor have I heard of anyone who has had any issues with them.
On the plus side, Harmonix has been very responsive to those who have had defective equipment. We got our replacement guitar within a few days of requesting it, and the new one was clearly better out of the box.
We tried tying the magnet from our original/now-broken pedal to my foot in various ways, but at best, we only got moderate results. I don’t think I ever got it to register bass hits in rapid succession.
Fortunately, our new pedal is slated to arrive today. You can’t stop the rock!
I got the game for Christmas, and have played non stop since then. Guitar Hero 3 is long forgotten.
Adding my two cents to a couple points above:
I haven’t noticed that it’s any different singing male and/or female parts. Maybe I’m just a gifted vocalist (note: I am not).
The drums are indeed obxiously loud. I ended up cutting out circles from old mouse pads and taping them to the drum kit with masking tape. It dampens the sound somewhat (still aint quiet, but better), and adds a little bounce when striking the pads. I’ve completely covered up the colors of the pads, but that’s not an issue as you can tell which one to hit by their placement on the screen anyway (a friend played it for the first time last night and didn’t have a problem playing without the colors at all).
I actually like the guitar. Although I will say that I feel like I’ve missed notes in the game that I hit on the guitar, so the accuracy may need some closer examination. I love the feel of the fret buttons and the solo buttons though.
I really like the guitar parts in the game. I enjoyed Guitar Hero 3, but there were times when I’d end up playing songs I liked on hard mode rather than expert because expert mode was a pain in the ass, seemingly adding random notes to up the difficulty (I beat the first two GHs on expert mode). In Rock Band the parts are a little easier, but much more fun in my opinion.
The best drumming tip I’ve read: Make sure you keep the bass pedal depressed at all times, and pop up and back down when you need to hit it. If you keep your foot raised up in between notes, you’ll kill your ankles/shins with a quickness. If you keep your foot all the way down on the pedal between notes, you should last a little longer.
I thought the visuals in Guitar Hero 3 sucked when I saw them for the first time. Seeing Rock Band makes that point all the more clear. The GH3 characters look like Chuck-E-Cheese robots next to Rock Band.
Overall I’m just blown away by how much fun this game is. I took it to a bachelor party I hosted on Friday night and it was a huge hit. Everyone was crowding around taking turns on everything, even the singing.
What songs have you all grabbed of XBL/PSN? I’ve picked up My Iron Lung, Buddy Holly, I Fought The Law and the Queens of the Stone Age pack (for the drum parts more than anything else) so far. I’ll be getting Hard To Handle tomorrow, although I really wish it was the original version, as the singing on the cover is pretty weak. If anyone is wondering what songs are available, there’s a list here:
So far, we’ve just purchased the Police Pack. We will likely be getting “Hard to Handle” and “The Kill” this week. I also wouldn’t mind having “Buddy Holly” and “Joker & The Thief” at some point, and quite possibly the Black Sabbath Pack just so I can play “War Pigs.”
I wish I had the time to get good at this game. I still play the drums on easy, but I think if you added up collectively all of the times I’ve played it would maybe total 3 or 4 hours, and that is with big gaps between where I lost ground again. My boyfriend can play stuff on hard and expert, but he will play for 4 or 5 hours just at one sitting, and he has done all of the tutorials and stuff. I just can’t get myself to devote that much time to a video game. I feel guilty for the other stuff that doesn’t get done.
Still, even on easy, I LOVE THE DRUMS! I’ve played guitar twice (total of two songs, on different days) and sung one song one time. Still haven’t played GH 2 or 3, even though we have both. Who needs it when you have the drums?!
Still no official word on a Wii version? I’m tempted to buy a 360 just for this game, but I’d hate to do that when I already have two GH3 controllers for my Wii.
I’m guessing they’re trying to work out how the downloadable content (DLC) would work on the Wii, as they’ll be making a load of money from addon songs on the other two current consoles. To pull it off Nintendo would have to let them save data to an SD card, as the 512MB on board won’t cut it for long (the songs are around 40MB each if I recall).
Of course, the PS2 version doesn’t support downloadable content and they released that anyway so who knows.
Also, don’t count on the Wii GH guitars working with Rock Band, as it’s inconsistent across the other consoles thus far. Apparently the 360 GH guitars work fine in Xboxland, but on PS3 GH controllers don’t. Supposedly Harmonix whipped up a patch to correct this on the PS3 but are being blocked by Activision from releasing it.
There are no official plans for a Wii version. Harmonix has neither confirmed nor denied that there ever will be a Wii version. There is much debate among Rock Band users and wanna-be users about the logistics of putting out a version for the Wii (see, for example, this thread from the Rock Band message boards).
OpalCat, you really should be looking at Rock Band more like a serious hobby rather than a game.
My family has been playing probably four hours a day since we got the game Dec. 27th. My 10 year old daughter is already playing the drums on hard level on the easier songs, and having an absolute blast. It’s really fun to just watch her play, to see what a gas she’s having. Our band, “Giant Rats”, has 537,000 fans, a jet, a manager, a PR firm, and life is good.
And since we’re at it, how are people continuing to enjoy the game? Do you feel like you’ve improved at your instrument(s) of choice over time? Has anyone gone from relying on Easy all the way to playing comfortably on Expert?
