More like Yawn Band 2!

Nov 07, 2008 15:52

Gabe and I might disagree on many issues, but one point where I feel we concur is that, after playing Guitar Hero World Tour, Rock Band 2 was extremely disappointing and un-fun.

I think the problem stems from each game's adjustments with respect to their predecessors. Everyone complained that Guitar Hero was too hard. The timing window was too unforgiving; the jump from Medium to Hard was too steep. Expert was for gods only. And everyone complained Rock Band 1 was too easy. Not enough challenge and variety. Rock Band 1 on Hard was like Guitar Hero 3 on Medium. But no worries, both companies take people's complaints into account this time around.

The Guitar Hero crew tones down the difficulty and amplifies the timing window so that it's much less unforgiving, more fair. The game is still very challenging, though. The note highway speed is quite high. It looks like the notes are raining down on you. And the focus is, as always, on having interesting combinations of notes that match the music and make your fingers feel like they're totally playing a kick-ass guitar melody. In this department, the game excels.

The Rock Band crew, on the other hand, in an attempt to increase the difficulty, narrows down the timing window WAY too much. The number of notes is still very low on Medium, you can see way far ahead into the future, and the note highway speed looks like it's in slow-mo. The result is that I'd be like "okay... red note coming... coming... coming... now! Shit, I missed that? Really?! WTF" It's hard to get into a song when you feel you're hitting all the notes, but are actually just barely missing them.

As a result, the bottom line is that when I play World Tour I feel like I'm jamming like a rock star. When I played Rock Band 2 I felt like I was being given a test on the precision of my internal metronome. Guess which I find more fun. Oh, another thing! My longest note streak when I played RB2 must've been about 20 notes... 30 tops. My longest streak on World Tour? 567. Five hundred sixty-seven notes! Big disparity. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that the actual guitar (the peripheral, that is) from GHWT is so much better. Much more natural to play.

Now, don't get me wrong. RB2 does have its advantages. The career mode in GHWT is not nearly as engaging as Rock Band's Band World Tour, I mean, not even close. And in terms of presentation, RB2 is much more slick. GHWT is kind of a mess in this department.

Regarding the other aspects of the game, I prefer the GHWT drum kit, but honestly I suck so much at drums in both games that it doesn't matter. And vocals on both are fun as hell. Which is great, because although I know I'm in the minority, the part I love most about these games is the singing! For now I'm focusing on 5-starring every song on Hard. I do think the GHWT engine tracks the louder or raspier vocals better than RB's, but that's a minor difference. The song selection in both games is pretty sweet, much better than both RB1 and GH3. I prefer GHWT's, but this is highly subjective, and they're both very good.

But yeah, when it comes to the satisfaction of unleashing my inner rock star, which is really what matters the most to me, World Tour wins by a country mile.
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