GH3 - Through the Fire and Flames - Expert

[Fash]

The Rock Band guitar sucks, imho, especially when it breaks... I'm picking up a second GH3 guitar, they are fucking solid.

[Truant]

We haven't managed to break Xou's yet, but that's a completely viable argument.

My preference is based solely on the feel of the frets. I don't like the frets on the GH3 controller at all, while the RB controller's frets feel much more natural to me.

[Funkmasterr]

I didn't like the Rock Band guitar at first, but now I prefer it much more over the GH controllers. The only thing is that the quality and life of them fucking blows, I got my replacement guitar back two days ago and there was already something rattling inside of it.. I mean I can see the road this is headed down already, the fucking guitar is going to keep breaking, and I'm going to end up having to buy a new one cause they won't replace it under the warranty.. At which point I'll just use my guitar hero controller instead since they don't break constantly.

[Leonaerd]

The Rock Band guitar is good for slow songs. Unfortunately, for those of us that play on expert, it's impossible for the stupid strum bar to keep up with the fast notes. It forces you to strum when you'd rather just tap really fast, and even then it's often simply not able to keep up. The lack of a clicking noise is also a bad idea. C+

[Funkmasterr]

The Rock Band guitar is good for slow songs. Unfortunately, for those of us that play on expert, it's impossible for the stupid strum bar to keep up with the fast notes. It forces you to strum when you'd rather just tap really fast, and even then it's often simply not able to keep up. The lack of a clicking noise is also a bad idea. C+

To a degree I agree with you (definitely on the clicking noise thing), however I play on expert most of the time and keep up pretty well, but the solos are often a problem. This would be fixed by me learning how to use the upper fret keys but I just can't seem to get those down.

[Truant]

The Rock Band guitar is good for slow songs. Unfortunately, for those of us that play on expert, it's impossible for the stupid strum bar to keep up with the fast notes. It forces you to strum when you'd rather just tap really fast, and even then it's often simply not able to keep up. The lack of a clicking noise is also a bad idea. C+

Do you alternate pick on fast passages at all? Most people I have observed playing don't, and it makes fast passages a hell of a lot easier.

[Funkmasterr]

The Rock Band guitar is good for slow songs. Unfortunately, for those of us that play on expert, it's impossible for the stupid strum bar to keep up with the fast notes. It forces you to strum when you'd rather just tap really fast, and even then it's often simply not able to keep up. The lack of a clicking noise is also a bad idea. C+

Do you alternate pick on fast passages at all? Most people I have observed playing don't, and it makes fast passages a hell of a lot easier.

Explain what that is to me if you don't mind. I usually only strum up, when there is a long string of the same note in a row really fast I will go up/down but that's about it, any other time it screws me up.

[Leonaerd]

I alternate pick all the time in Rock Band because the guitar's typically too shoddy to handle not doing so for even a slightly fast song. A song in GH3 that I could 95% on expert I might be able to get a 90% on in RB, simply because the guitar is inadequately crafted. It's very frustrating to know your note streak should be 400 instead of 4.

[Truant]

The Rock Band guitar is good for slow songs. Unfortunately, for those of us that play on expert, it's impossible for the stupid strum bar to keep up with the fast notes. It forces you to strum when you'd rather just tap really fast, and even then it's often simply not able to keep up. The lack of a clicking noise is also a bad idea. C+

Do you alternate pick on fast passages at all? Most people I have observed playing don't, and it makes fast passages a hell of a lot easier.

Explain what that is to me if you don't mind. I usually only strum up, when there is a long string of the same note in a row really fast I will go up/down but that's about it, any other time it screws me up.

Most people only downpick (press the strumbar down) when they play. This is fine for most riffs and slower passages, but it becomes harder to strum accurately during fast passages. Alternate picking involves gripping the strumbar between your thumb and forefinger and alternately pressing it down and up. It might feel a little awkward at first if you've been doing it only one way all this time, but stick with it a little bit and it'll become unconcious.

[Leonaerd]

The Rock Band guitar is good for slow songs. Unfortunately, for those of us that play on expert, it's impossible for the stupid strum bar to keep up with the fast notes. It forces you to strum when you'd rather just tap really fast, and even then it's often simply not able to keep up. The lack of a clicking noise is also a bad idea. C+

Do you alternate pick on fast passages at all? Most people I have observed playing don't, and it makes fast passages a hell of a lot easier.

Explain what that is to me if you don't mind. I usually only strum up, when there is a long string of the same note in a row really fast I will go up/down but that's about it, any other time it screws me up.

Most people only downpick (press the strumbar down) when they play. This is fine for most riffs and slower passages, but it becomes harder to strum accurately during fast passages. Alternate picking involves gripping the strumbar between your thumb and forefinger and alternately pressing it down and up. It might feel a little awkward at first if you've been doing it only one way all this time, but stick with it a little bit and it'll become unconcious.

My issue is that even while alternate strumming, some of the faster passages require such an unneccessary level of precision that there's no way to keep a streak going, despite having played the notes correctly.

[Funkmasterr]

The Rock Band guitar is good for slow songs. Unfortunately, for those of us that play on expert, it's impossible for the stupid strum bar to keep up with the fast notes. It forces you to strum when you'd rather just tap really fast, and even then it's often simply not able to keep up. The lack of a clicking noise is also a bad idea. C+

Do you alternate pick on fast passages at all? Most people I have observed playing don't, and it makes fast passages a hell of a lot easier.

Explain what that is to me if you don't mind. I usually only strum up, when there is a long string of the same note in a row really fast I will go up/down but that's about it, any other time it screws me up.

Most people only downpick (press the strumbar down) when they play. This is fine for most riffs and slower passages, but it becomes harder to strum accurately during fast passages. Alternate picking involves gripping the strumbar between your thumb and forefinger and alternately pressing it down and up. It might feel a little awkward at first if you've been doing it only one way all this time, but stick with it a little bit and it'll become unconcious.

My issue is that even while alternate strumming, some of the faster passages require such an unneccessary level of precision that there's no way to keep a streak going, despite having played the notes correctly.

I actually have two songs I am stuck on.. the obvious, and highway star. I can literally hit nearly 100% of the notes in the song up until the end of the solo, then when you get that 20 second section or so of scattered double notes i can't do it for shit.. I fail there every single time.. And it's like you said, the speed and precision required for that part is a bit ridiculous and it annoys me.

[Fash]

It was a Guitar Hero weekend! The event they had gave me an excuse to play something other than Rock Band drums... I played a shitload of online battles, and later on got back into the career. I'm up to expert now and half way through.

Funk pwned me tho.

[Funkmasterr]

It was a Guitar Hero weekend! The event they had gave me an excuse to play something other than Rock Band drums... I played a shitload of online battles, and later on got back into the career. I'm up to expert now and half way through.

Funk pwned me tho.

Haha, it was fun! I haven't played GH battles in a while. Are you playing expert on GH? If so, did you beat the Lou battle on hard? I can't beat that fucking thing on hard for the life of me. I started to play the career on expert and got stuck on the Slash battle.

[Fash]

I didn't finish hard either... I have easy and medium complete, hard I'm at 34/42 and expert 19/42. I was relieved to get past the Tom Morello battle so easily on expert. Yesterday before the SB party was very productive, I knocked out 15 on expert.

[Leonaerd]

It was a Guitar Hero weekend! The event they had gave me an excuse to play something other than Rock Band drums... I played a shitload of online battles, and later on got back into the career. I'm up to expert now and half way through.

Funk pwned me tho.

Haha, it was fun! I haven't played GH battles in a while. Are you playing expert on GH? If so, did you beat the Lou battle on hard? I can't beat that fucking thing on hard for the life of me. I started to play the career on expert and got stuck on the Slash battle.

Lou's easy enough on hard. A few things to keep in mind:
- look to see what power up he's going to use immediately before he uses it so that you know what's coming and won't be surprised. For instance, having your hand already on the whammy bar when he uses the whammy attack saves precious seconds and tons of meter.
- save your power ups until right before he's about to gain a power up himself. This is the most surefire way to get Lou to miss his opportunities.
- Don't strum more than you need to. The toughest parts of the song have tons of hammers (like the intro riff), which are made much easier if you know when to pick and when not to. Too much picking with your right hand and you'll confuse your left.

Slash on expert is a hell of a fun time. Probably my favorite battle in the game.

[Funkmasterr]

It was a Guitar Hero weekend! The event they had gave me an excuse to play something other than Rock Band drums... I played a shitload of online battles, and later on got back into the career. I'm up to expert now and half way through.

Funk pwned me tho.

Haha, it was fun! I haven't played GH battles in a while. Are you playing expert on GH? If so, did you beat the Lou battle on hard? I can't beat that fucking thing on hard for the life of me. I started to play the career on expert and got stuck on the Slash battle.

Lou's easy enough on hard. A few things to keep in mind:
- look to see what power up he's going to use immediately before he uses it so that you know what's coming and won't be surprised. For instance, having your hand already on the whammy bar when he uses the whammy attack saves precious seconds and tons of meter.
- save your power ups until right before he's about to gain a power up himself. This is the most surefire way to get Lou to miss his opportunities.
- Don't strum more than you need to. The toughest parts of the song have tons of hammers (like the intro riff), which are made much easier if you know when to pick and when not to. Too much picking with your right hand and you'll confuse your left.

Slash on expert is a hell of a fun time. Probably my favorite battle in the game.

Yeah I haven't had the patience to practice it, I never play more than 2 or 3 times before I am too frustrated and give up for a month. To be honest I think the boss battles were a bad addition to these games. The difficulty was high enough already and the battles made it worse, the game would be much more enjoyable for me without them.

[Janx]

I alternate pick all the time in Rock Band because the guitar's typically too shoddy to handle not doing so for even a slightly fast song. A song in GH3 that I could 95% on expert I might be able to get a 90% on in RB, simply because the guitar is inadequately crafted. It's very frustrating to know your note streak should be 400 instead of 4.

Problem I see here is GH3 has such lose timings a limbless monkey could do well on expert. RB is closer to GH2 in timing notes then GH3.

I've beat RB on expert with the guitar it came with and had no issues. I like the clickless strum bar as you can barely tap (at least in my case) it and register a strum. The upper frets helped out a TON on the last part of Green Hills. My only complaint on the RB guitar (and the GH guitars too) is double strumming. Will have to open/mod the guitars at some point I guess to stop it.