If you don't want to read more, here's a one sentence wrap up: Rock Band blows Guitar Hero away
I grabbed the hacked version and at first didn't think I'd be able to play. It kept saying it couldn't detect a mic and I couldn't switch to another instrument. I finally went and looked for my original 360 headset w/mic and plugged it into my controller. That was enough to get the game going.
So far, all I can so is the vocal part. I guess all the instruments have unique identifiers the game can recognize but they let people slide with either a USB Mic or your 360 controller headset.
I scored a 92% on Nirvanna's In Bloom. hehe. believe me, I sounded horrible!
The game handles the vocals great though! basically, there's a streaming bar of lyrics and a vertical line where you are to begin singing the word. the line has a range from low to high so it takes into account your pitch. I was on easy so there wasn't much in highs and lows....but! it's still rocks. It looks like you could hum your way through the song if you want as long as you start/stop the words at the right points and change your pitch to match the line.
Surprisingly, it works great and is fun. The original lyrics are playing in the background so I think that's their way of making it sound good even if you suck...but you definitely hear your own voice and man I was bad.
As with guitar hero, if you hit a string of lyrics perfectly, you get a "freestyle" section where you basically scream away or sing whatever you want for bonus points (huge room for people to make fools of themselves here...but fun!)
The tutorial was short and sweet but gets the job done. All I can see is the vocals so can't comment on drums/bass/lead.
The whole presentation of Rock Band is much better than Guitar Hero (I haven't seen GH3 so that might be better than the first two). The menus, etc are all better, along with the animated band people on screen. And there's several multiplayer game modes to keep you entertained.
Creating a character is pretty basic but better than Guitar Hero. Pick Hometown, Attitude (Rock, Metal, Punk, Goth) which impacts their animations, Weight, height, Face (Artsy, Diva, Sprite, Runaway, Belladonna, Amazon are he female selections) (the biggest change seems to be their noses), eye color, skin color, hair style (bunch of selections for hair, easiest to see from a distance) I went with the Dread Falls (pigtails of course, pink/purple). Also glasses, earrings, wrist, rings, gloves.
I checked out the clothes and there's quite a bit in various categories, top/bottom/feet with mltiple items in the rock.punk, etc etc, some with very high price tags. The clothes are all colorable to make them more unique with primary and secondary colors.
It's enough to give your character a little personality. You can further, change clothes, instruments, etc with money you earn from gigs. Also tatts, make-up, face paint, hair salon, you can even add art to your Microphone in game. Made my Mic Red with white skull and crossbones.
If you like GH3, you're going to love this game. The song sets are great.(IMO) Check them out here:
http://www.gamepro.com/microsoft/xbox36 ... 8748.shtml
looks like a lot of downloadable content, (can buy single songs) listed there as well with release dates.
I might have to buy the guitar or drums for this one. Fun times. I suppose solo, you can sing and play one instrument at the same time.
Off to go sing Paranoid from Black Sabbath.
Don't know what to say about the 159.00 price tag. I think you can buy the base game for 59.00 and then add instruments. If you're into Guitar Hero with friends, you'll be getting this for sure. Don't worry about the vocals. They'll work out whether you can sing or not. My 92% confirms that!
Radiohead Creep is after that! BOC Don't Fear the Reaper...wow. Some of my favorite songs.
Edit: man, this game is fun just playing the vocals. I've got my headphones on blasting Nirvana. Whatever they do to tweak your voice, it sounds pretty good when you're just talking during the intro, etc.
For the freestyle parts I just go, "wee ooo wee ooo" and get the bonus points. I like that the humming parts are judged by tone level so you could actually hum the entire song. The long held notes but be fun at higher levels as i'm sure the tone range is higher.
This has Wii level of local multiplayer fun written all over it.
Edit 2:
lol, spoke too soon on the vocals being easy. My balls shriveled up trying to hang on to some of the long notes with varied tone. Fucking great! Doesn't matter if you can sing the words or not, you still need some pipes to keep those long notes going. I made it through a rapid fire lyrics of a song I didn't know by going, "bah bah baaah bah baaaaah" Works as long as you have the tone right! weeeoooweeoooo works well when tying to move up and down the scales keeping the little indicator on the line. After each little section it rates you , "weak, ok, good, awesome" string the awesome's together for the bonus freestyle parts.
One things for sure, you get into the songs a lot more when singing them than when hitting buttons. Also, as part of the vocals, there's some tambourine, or other "keeping beat" parts where you either tap your microphone to hit the dots as they scroll by or tap the A button on your controller so the singer does have a little more to do.
edit 3: just finished Black Sabbath - Paranoid with a 94%.
One thing that is just plain cool is the animated drummer keeps perfect pace to the song. It looks awesome on the screen watching "her in this case" bang away on the drums. This was the first song I had time to look up and notice the animated characters. Drumming is going to rock in this game. Makes it so much better to see the characters on screen actually playing to the song correctly. Looked cool. (not a waste like it is on the first two guitar heroes)
Although I sounded like a dog howling at the moon, Radiohead Creep is an bad ass song to sing to in this game! Those long notes aren't happening unless you've prepped with a lungful of air, which I didn't! Got a 94% though. It there's one song I want a 100% on , it's that one. I don't care if I damage my vocal chords in the process! (and Don't Fear the Reaper as well!)
I notice on Creep that the singer lip syncs pretty well to the song and their moves coordinate with the song. Well done!
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Here's a good overview of the World Tour Mode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHfsbbRSgVA
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