The details about the Rock Band remastering are, in part, at Wikipedia.
And to bring the DLC info together in one place to answer Quasi’s question, the announced stuff is:
All You Need is Love (single) - September 9 Abbey Road - October 20 Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band - November Rubber Soul - December
All DLC will cost 160 MS Points/200 Wii Points for a single. Abbey Road will cost 1360 MS Points/1700 Wii Points. How much this equates to (or how much it costs for PS3) will depend upon your location and whether you can get cheap points cards rather than paying full price.
All other Rock Band DLC is compatible with the basic games (Rock Band/RB2), as will be Lego Rock Band content (no confirmation yet that you’ll be able to play all DLC in Lego RB), but the Beatles RB DLC has not been comfirmed to work on the base platform. When the question has been posed there’s typically been hemming and hawing meaning that people are still hoping. Base-platform RB DLC *has been confirmed *not to work on the Beatles RB platform.
I got the stuff about the “announced stuff”, BigNik, but I think I better wait on the “tutorial” on the rest of it, 'cause you’re scarin’ me, a little with that points stuff!
Leaving aside the Wii, the XBox 360 has two types of points. One of them measure the size of your XBox’ penis and you get them by reaching “Achievements” within the games. That could be anything from finishing a section of the game to killing 50 German snipers with a golf club to playing with someone who played against the game’s developer. These points cannot be redeemed for cash or valuable prizes. All they really count is how little life you have outside gaming.
The other set of points (usually called Microsoft Points) lets you buy things through the 360’s online shop. They sell for the cost of AUD16.50 per thousand (USD12.50 per thousand) in order to make it hard for you to work out how much you’re spending on things.
So a single would cost you (you’re in the US, right?) USD(160*.0125=)2.00. You might be able to find an online store or auction site that would sell you points cards for less than the Microsoft-approved rate. Whether you trust these places is up to you.
Unfortunately, you only tend to be able to buy the points in certain configurations - 500, 1000, 2000 or 5000 - so you tend to have points left over, which Microsoft would like you to spend on stuff you don’t particularly want like a lightsaber for your XBox avatar. You can leave them sitting indefinitely on your account without issue, though.
The Wii does something similar. Sony charges real cash prices through its shop, but it typically requires you to put money into an online wallet before you buy anything, and it’ll only let you do that in $10 lots.
Also confirmed: The medley on the second side of Abbey Road is going to be able to be played as one long track in the game so you can play it exactly as heard on the album. That’s very cool.
Those who’ve followed the tread might remember that I was disappointed that Paul’s bass isn’t left-handed. Well, I dropped by the Best Buy today to play the demo, and although the jokers didn’t have the guitar controller hooked up (WTF?), I did get to handle one of them. It felt fine for me lefty – it’s almost symmetrical, and the whammy bar is right in line with the strum bar, so it’s easy to play in either orientation. (On my GHIIII guitar, the whammy bar is down at the bottom, so when you play left-handed, it’s in a completely awkward position. Not so on this one.)
In general I’ve found that the Rock Band equipment to be better designed that the Guitar Hero stuff. It’s like Harmonix learned from their problems with Guitar Hero and made improved versions with Rock Band (better buttons, a more fluid strum bar, a second set of buttons that make some playing easier, a more balanced design, scaled to fit adult hands better) while Activation thought that the stuff they had was good enough.
As a rule, Activision has gone more game-centric, while Harmonix has gone more music-centric. As a result, you get things like the horrid abuse they did to Kurt Cobain.
It’s also been a truism that if you want a hard rhythm game that’ll challenge your dexterity and after a lot of practice it’ll make you feel like you’ve achieved something you go with Guitar Hero.
If you want to have some friends around, drink heavily and have a really good time pretending to be Bon Jovi, you go with Rock Band.
I’m concerned that the Beatles RB game seems to have scaled back the fun factor of RB in favour of a reverent treatment of the source material. I’m hoping that this is insulated from the main franchise - at least until November, when I’ll be able to play “Kung Fu Fighting”, “the Final Countdown” and “Ghostbusters”.
Fear the awesomeness of the Bumgrapes of David Lee Roth.
[QUOTE=Quasimodem;11518612So where in the Mommy-Fuck do I find this game’s PENIS???[/QUOTE]
It associates with your profile, which you’ll set up if you buy an XBox.
Wherever your profile is posted people will be able to see how many achievement points you have, and this equates to the size of your e-penis.
A translated conversation:
Gamer 1:“I’ve got about 10,000 points” “Video games are a pretty serious hobby of mine”
Gamer 2:“Yeah? Well I’ve got 20,000 points” “Video games are pretty much all I do”
Gamer 1:“I’ve got a cousin who has over 100,000 points” “My cousin plays videogames incessantly, to the point of a compulsion, looking for achievements long after the game itself has ceased being enjoyable. He downloads FAQs telling him how to wring the last points out of games and has been known to buy (and even import) games that he doesn’t like just to get easy points from them”
Gamer 3:“I’ve only got 800 points” “I have seen, and may even have touched, a real boobie”
BigNik (18,145 penis points according to xbox.com.au)
For those wondering, the achievement list (although without the points associated with each because it’s a PS3 list and they have trophies instead) is here.
Not to go off-topic but it’s important to remember that Harmonix (Rock Band) created Guitar Hero. And most players agree that post-Harmonix Guitar Hero is unnecessarily hard i.e. the charts don’t really make in sense in comparison to the song. True, it’s a harder game, but that’s like comparing Mario 64 to those near-impossible Super Mario Brother level hack.
It’s more mellow, but there is no way they’ve scaled back the fun factor. I’ve played it already (You can too, if you hit a Best Buy.) and Here Comes The Sun, while not as difficult as say, Visions (which I insist is a practical joke), is at least as much fun as any other song in the game.
It’s not difficulty - you can’t create your own characters, you don’t ‘build a band’ in the career mode, you can’t get booed off stage (you can fail out, but the fans don’t turn on you)…
The gameplay itself isn’t really changed, but they’ve taken a lot of the fun little bits out of the experience.
… I could have one of y’all come over and give me a “live tutorial”!
My grandson Julian would in a heartbeat, but we live so far apart, that the next time I see him will be at Christmas, and I sure don’t wanna “bog” him down and keep him from celebrating “Santa Claus” just because his “Opa” (German for “Grandfather”) doesn’t know whether to shit or wind his watch!
Remember what I said about buying a used guitar, Quasi. Rock Band 2, 360 Stratocaster, (it will be either Black or Sunburst, probably Black.) and do it now before the game comes out and everyone buys it. And get them to test it at the gamestop, if you can.
Why would anyone wind a watch? Wouldn’t that cause problems with the battery?
For those of you in America who need instruments, keep an eye out for cheap versions of the Rock Band 2 edition that has all the instruments. One of the gaming blogs noted that you can pick it up for USD 80 and Amazon says that one of its partners is offering it for USD 70. This will come with a microphone, a drum kit and a guitar - which are both new and better than the RB1 versions.
Also, for those who need extra microphones for the three-part harmonies, the headset microphone plugged into the 360 controller works fine.
