The Glade 4.0

Okay, no threads on the topic, but I've spotted Moo and Darkroland with posted scores.

Thoughts? I haven't had time to really dig into it, but I think I like the new career structure so far. I can't be sure, but I *think* I caught the game swapping stand-ins around in order to place the proper gender at the mic song for song, too, which is a nifty addition.

I'm personally a bit disappointed they axed the "punk/rock/metal/whatever" attitudes, though. I thought that was a nice addition in RB2.

So far, way to pull me back in, Harmonix. The string of band-specific titles had turned me off, but this looks pretty solid. I suspect my step-brother will be chomping at the bit to show off with pro-mode keyboards, and possibly guitar if he feels like coughing up the dough for one of the controllers. I'm really impressed with the concept, it really shows how into the notion of games-as-gateway to real instruments Harmonix is, and kudos to Fender for the partnership.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Band games are... well... played out. I go back sometimes for the songs I want to play, go for a week or so and then stash the stuff again. No interest here in the 3rd one.

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The Dude abides.

RB3 has a lot of cool new features, but it also has some stuff missing that I've taken for granted, along with a couple of WTF design decisions.

The Good: Improved song sorting, keys, pro modes, drop-in/drop-out any time, including mid-song, rewinding the track when unpausing, being able to complete a song even if the band fails out (no score is saved or tallied), corrected lefty-flip cymbals.

The Bad: only one band per profile, no band world tour, no score duel, can't adjust mic sensitivity, don't like the way they display solos and bass groove.

The WTF: All-Instruments-Mode. Due to restrictions of the 360 hardware, it's not possible to have 5 controllers signed in at once. So if you have 2 guitars, 1 keys, 1 drum, and 1-3 vocals, it puts you in AIM mode. In this mode, the vocals get shafted. The game defaults vocal difficulty to easy, but that doesn't matter, because vocals aren't scored at all. Vocals can't fail out, they get no overdrive (so can't save teammates), don't contribute to the band score or stars, and don't get a performance summary after the song ends. What's worse is that today, people discovered that you can't have a 4 man band with guitar, bass, keys, and vocals, without dropping into AIM. I think it's a terrible design, and I hope they patch it (not likely) or redesign it for RB4.

So far, I've concentrated on vocals and pro drums. I've done a bit with pro keys, and I think taking piano lessons when I was child help with that, but it's going to take some getting used to the UI it presents. Pro drums aren't a problem, because I've been using the cymbals on my kit for a while anyways. I also did a little bit of guitar, which is same old same old.

I want to try out pro mode guitar, but I don't know if I want to shell out $150 for the mustang controller. Ordered! Ugh I'm so impulsive...

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Pro mode is something completely different. Can't wait for the real Fender guitar that you can plug into an amp while you are playing. I wonder how much that thing is gonna cost. I like the fact that it can actually teach you how to play guitar.

So far, I'm liking it. The keyboard is pretty fun. I like the fact that you can have up to 7 instruments playing at one time. We're having a Rock Band party Friday night, so that should be a pretty good time to try that option out. Another thing I noticed today, as the phone rang when I was playing, is that when you pause the game in the middle of a song, when you resume, it rewinds a few seconds so you don't miss any notes or anything. Nice touch.

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"I Live, I Love, I Slay, and I Am Content."
- Conan the Barbarian

DO I want it? Yes, very much so. Can I afford it? Not right now.

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Raell Kromwell

Okay, that's pretty yucky on all instruments mode. Especially if it does so with only 4 instruments playing if one of them isn't drums...

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Thank goodness for the new song sorting options. My library is growing pretty huge, and the old sort method just wasn't doing it anymore.

I haven't gotten to spend a ton of time with it yet, but I love that you seem much more connected with the band this time around. Pro drums are great.

I should receive my keyboard today, can't wait to check out pro-keys.

What's more annoying is that because of the 360's 4 player max limitation the PS3 got gimped down to that setup to match the 360 despite being able to support the full 7 controllers signed in, I was not happy to see that.

Aside from that though i'm liking it, all the added stuff like better sorting, being easier to drop in/out, etc are nice and of course the big thing, the keyboard is really nice too, i've been having fun playing with that and even doing a bit on the pro mode easy, I am annoyed though by the number of songs that came with Rock Band 3 that have no keyboard track, 1 or 2 songs would be one thing, but there's quite a few, at least you can use the keyboard to play the guitar/bass parts too in those cases, but if you already have someone playing bass and guitar you're SOL.

Yeah, there are around 20 songs that have no keyboard part. I also think it's kind of silly, for the disc they really should've picked 100% songs that supported keyboard to show off their new instrument.

There are 83 songs on the RB3 disc, (rock band 1 had 58, RB2 had 84, not counting the 20 free downloadable ones), and 83 in RB3. Harmonix has said that they will be releasing a free download pack in the future including the harmonix band tracks that could not be exported from RB2. Personally, now that I have the tracks exported from RB1, RB2, Lego RB, AC/DC live, and all the tracks I've downloaded, my 120GB hard drive is starting to feel a little cramped (I think I have about 430 songs at this point).

Also, I second the THANK GOODNESS that you can change profiles, drop players out, change difficulty on the fly in game now. When having a rock band party, having to go back to the character screen to change players or characters was a PITA.

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Ah, *that's* what the yellow rails are.. I noticed them, and that they only occurred during overdrive earning phases, but thought they were just an additional overdrive earning indication. Good to know, that was always a bit of an annoyance to me -- solo, there's no indication (until now) whether you're going to earn double, which means that unless you know the song, it's easy to let it overflow and lose potential overdrive time.

Also, nifty site, Moo.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

One of my guildmates actually worked on this game. He was a bit upset at the review IGN gave it.

I haven't tried it myself, but I have yet to play RB2 either. I like Rock Band, but I prefer the technical difficulty and "feel" of GH more. I play most songs on GH Hard or Expert, and it really pulls away from RB at that point.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Behold! Free Bird on Expert Pro Mode Guitar!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmqhBR6QJCQ

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This is how I am. However, I'm in a bit of a mood to dick around with them, so I've been bugging Kaffis about it.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I intend to pick up RB3. Not sure when or which Pro mode guitar controller I'll pick up. I understand that the charting is different depending on whether you're using the MadCatz controller or the Fender.

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I don't have much of an interest in playing the games on single player, but I enjoy the multiplayer. Over the past year, I've probably logged more time playing drums at someone else's house than I have playing random games on my own Xbox.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

It's really weird that the Harmonix bands couldn't just be exported since it's their bands and all. Actually after the issue with getting licenses from the 1st game to export I don't get why they didn't get the export licences at the beginning say for the reasoning of faster access time having it in the HDD over the disk and not have all these issues with after the fact exporting.

Heh, my PS3 got cramped last year from downloading Glee episodes (40GB model) so I already spent the $90ish (at the time) to buy a 500GB drive from newegg and upgraded it, plenty of room now

The Mustang controller has 15 17 frets. The Fender controller has 22. That should be the only charting difference.



I've seen speculation that the reason the Harmonix band songs didn't export is so they can redo those song with pro mode and/or harmonies.

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Wikipedia has the MadCatz listed at 17 frets. Since you've ordered it, did the spec sheet you were working from say 15 frets? I just looked at Newegg, and it's listed at 17 frets. Still, that's a pretty big difference in some genres. Hard rock and Metal should make extensive use of fingerings in the upper frets.

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You are correct, it's 17. I misremembered.

Also, quick question, since my peremptory research hasn't shed any light:

If you're playing online, do the vocals go unscored when playing more than 4 instruments like in all instruments mode?

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

No, because AIM isn't available online. You have to have GBK/GBK/Drum/Vocal for any online band. Note that means you can't have Guitar/Bass/Keyboard/Vocals online.

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Bizarre.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

The keyboard can play the guitar or bass chart instead of the keyboard chart. The RB engine doesn't allow duplicated roles in a band. Therefore you can't have G+B+K at the same time. This is pure speculation. I don't know how turning AIM on solves this problem; I can experiment when I get home. I do know that there are multiple reports of this behavior occuring.

edit: Started the game with the keyboard as player 1. Added bass controller, then added guitar controller. When I turned on the guitar controller (not join, just turn on), it prompted me to activate AIM. I declined. At this point I tried to join the band with first the bass, then the guitar. The bass joined fine, but the guitar refused to join. I manually turned on AIM, and I was able to join the guitar into the band. I then went into quick play. I chose a song that did not have a keyboard part. I was able to select guitar and bass parts, but the keyboard controller wasn't able to select any part. The guitar and bass were greyed out once their respective controllers chose their parts. The keys part complained that it was No Part. I then backed out and tried a song with a keyboard part. At time point I was able to choose parts for all the connected instruments.

IMO, the implementation of AIM is very shoddy. Assuming that the game is working as intended, I can't imagine the design process that came up with this. I really like RB, but this is just.. stupid.