Be Excellent To Each Other

There's no need to do that, though. Just slide up a fret.

Which I'll generally do now for green-yellow to red-blue unless I need to go straight back to green, but red-blue to yellow-orange still pretty much forces me to just change fingers. My brain's not ready to try and cope with three possible hand positions.

Rodafowa failing the audition for new touring guitarist for Status Quo, there.

I don't know, do I? If it's in this thread I can catch up with it later.

This I have. I don't feel overly confident with it though, as I'm stuck on the last song on expert (on guitar). But then I've only tried twice.

OK, here goes. There is definitive information on all plastic instrument compability here but the drums are more complex than that lets on.

You have three choices: the Rock Band drums, the Rock Band v2 drums, or the GH:WT drums. (I'm excluding the very expensive ION Rocker drums, the Rock Revolution ones, and some forthcoming Madcatz premium drums).

Both RB drums work with RB1 and 2, as you would expect. Compared to the RB1 drums, the RB2 ones are wireless, have more bounce in the drumheads, are quieter, have a more sturdy footpedal, and have ports for optional add-on cymbals sold separately. If you add the cymbals on the game is unchanged, you don't have to hit the cymbals at any point; each of the (up to three) cymbals duplicates a pad. However during improvised drum solos and the in-game drum simulator (which basically just lets you bang on them at random) the game can tell the difference, so, the green drumpad will always be a floor tom-tom and the green cymbal always a crash cymbal noise. (More info on cymbals).

On the other side of the coin, playing GH:WT with the GH:WT drumset, you get a five-note track (compared to the four notes in RB). All is well.

It's the cross-compatability that complicates matters. All the below I have culled from the offical game forums, and a few games blogs and sites.

Playing RB or RB2 with the GH:WT kit is slightly awkward. It remaps one of the four drumpads up onto a cymbal, leaving the other cymbal inactive. This makes some of the drumming feel wrong, for example, four-drum drumrolls in Run To The Hills where you move from pad-to-pad left to right; when playing on the GH:WT kit, you have to play left, up-to-cymbal, down-to-middle, right. There is a discussion/playtest here.

Playing GH:WT with either RB kit, the five note track is compressed and you just get four notes to play. I think this is done by simply combining two tracks into one. I understand this works pretty well. Similar to the last one, there is a discussion here. Note that this compression happens even if you have the optional cymbals fitted. I am crossing my fingers and hoping for a GH:WT patch that will enable five-track playback on the RB2 kit when the cymbals are fitted; that would be the best of both worlds.

In my opinion, the bottom line is to buy the Rock Band 2 drumset and that's what I am doing. And then I'm getting the cymbals because I am a huge nerd and I like the look of them:

Ive passed the last song about 2 or 3 times ever, its purely luck if I do it because it took me about 20 times just to complete it the first time. Im not sure if you use it but using the solo buttons on the rock band guitar is essential to pass the daft solos.
You sound like your a similar ability to me though so it mgiht be a decent battle.

Jasmine, a word to the wise. When the Doc says something is complicated and asks if you want the full story, the correct answer is always "No, I'm good ta."

Almost all my real life friends have remarked to me, at one point or another, to fear the moment when they ask me a seemingly simple question and I respond with a puzzled frown, a deep breath, and I begin "Well....".

*smacks head with fork* I'm real.

Guitar Hero... on the drums. Click clicky.

yeah, completed GH2 on medium...!

I'm so close to completing GHII and III on Hard that I really should go back to them at some point. Having too much fun drummy drumming at the mo, though.

I told you all drumming was acebest. If/when I get GH:WT I'll give you a drum-off.

Saucy.

having unlocked all the songs i have to say this is the shittiest track list from any GH hero and rock band ever, by a long margin. It should have been called Guitar Hero: American Dad and Son version. Lots of newer shitty bands with shitty songs like Paramore and Lost Prophets (this are just 2 examples), and the old songs are mostly country stuff or completely irrelevant "artists" like Ted Nugent that i suppose no one in Europe cares. I consider myself to have an above average musical knowledge, i don't know the majority of the songs in this game. Instead of going for the big classics like in the previous games, they went for these bands that in a few years no one cares.

BTW, i downloaded an hacked version of GH3 with rock band songs, and the bass is just too high in the mix. It makes Blackened (i song that has an almost inaudible bass) and Ride the lighning unplayable. Is this normal or is it only in the version.

I don't remember this happening on Rock Band, and I'm familiar with the Metallica songs from the album. It's possible they bring the bass up in the mix a bit when someone is playing bass I suppose. It wouldn't be much fun to play and not hear yourself.

World Tour definitely has a broader mix of songs than previously, but this is a good thing. There's plenty that both me and Ange enjoy.

i disagree. GH3 has a broad and wonderful (if you ignore the disturbed song) mix of songs. GH4 has too much emo and faceless rock fm songs (and not the acceptable kind of emo like My Chemical Romance or Fallout Boy).

On the upper side there's Hotel California, Beat It, and Livin on a Prayer and that's the variety they should aim for. But i suppose we'll get bored of playing those soon. There's also Santeria and Dammit that recall my high school years. Probably the only good recent song they have there is from Rise Against, even though this band has much better songs.

The Mars Volta song is wonderful, but who wants to sing in spanish?

The Spanish, for one.

ricky martin, enrique inglesias (?)

edit: i have a nasty habit of ending up at the top of new pages. I'm getting paranoid, and vertigo-y

My house is now enitrely full. Loving my new drums though - soon to connect them to midi.

/edit where do I download Nine Inch Nails songs to do? Should I be getting rock band 'solus' (wtf?) for those?

Thanks to Rich and Mypymoo, I shall be spending the money I get from Wii fit on this. Can't wait for Xmas day now.

Yep. RB1 comes with The Hand That Feeds and there are currently two NIN DLC packs: March of the Pigs / The Collector / The Perfect Drug, and Burn / Capital G / Last. It's 440 points per pack or 160 each for individual songs.

All I'll need is Burn, TPD and Pigs and Last.

I hope to fuck I never get 'Wish' as DLC or in a game, I'll stick my fist through my Samsung HDTV then rape the neighbours.

Best value is achieved by buying Rock Band 2 solus, then borrowing a Rock Band 1 disc and importing the tracks off it. I have a RB1 disc I can lend to people for that purpose.

Is it available yet? I can't find it anywhere.

RB2 solus? Yeah, in fact, that's the only way to get RB2 right now. The instruments aren't out yet. I couldn't find it in any supermarkets though -- I tried to buy it late one Friday night and tried Blockbuster, Tesco, and Asda with no games to be seen. I've seen it in Gamestation, Game, and HMV though.

Ah, sorry, I've seen the game, but need drunning goodness. Any idea of a release date?

No-one seems to know. As recently as 30th Nov an EA rep on the official forum said they had no UK release date. Amazon have the cymbal add-on listed for early January but no drums. EA previously claimed "early December" for the instruments, but clearly that's not happening now.

In hindsight, picking 'Hot for Teacher' for Myps, GJ and me to play was perhaps not the best idea, especially as we'd all had a drink.

Odd that GH:WT doesn't tell you your percentages of notes hit at the end when you play online - or is that just in certain modes?

Had a drink? You might want to count how many wine bottles went in your recyle bin! Also, you didn't hear Ange.

I've seen that Gamestation have the instrument packs in for RB for sub £70, I suppose I could pick one of those up for now, I really want it for Christmas day!

If I didn't already have the game, I'd probably buy this one

GAME were doing this on saturday for about 160 or something but with the free 'bass' (ie the GH2 guitar). So I totally ended up buying it.

Hmm. Bending over towards the TV with one eye closed so I could see the words should have given me the impression that I shouldn't be playing. Apologies for Ange induced deafening!

Ditto.

I'll definitely be having some of that lendage in the new year. It should give me enough time to finish everything I can on World Tour.

I love the way the RB and GH threads blend together so sometimes you can tell which one you're reading. Just like the games I suspect

The games are quite different to look at, actually. The GH notes are round and the RB ones square for one thing -- sounds like a minor issue but I found it surprisingly jarring when I played some GH3 for the first time in ages. And the graphical style of the characters in the background is very different, although most people aren't looking at that of course.

Monday = Sarcasm. I have a quick blast on Rock Band in HMV but since I hated the guitar so much, I didn't really take in the interface. Sum total of my RB experience... 30 seconds

besides, RB tracklists are way better.

how RB as a pure guitar game? enough there?

Definetly, if you buy rock band 2, you get a world tour mode which is longer than any other single player mode in similar games, you'll also get the rock band 1 songs to play with if you get a lend of a copy. Then you've got download content, challenges, online modes, and also playing the bass if you fancy it.

i don't have any RB game, just an hacked G3 with rock band songs. But it also seems to be that RB is way more fun in hard mode. The songs don't assume that you're an octopus

There are about three tiers of songs in Rock Band that are below the bottom difficulty tier on Guitar Hero (More Than A Feeling, f'rinstance, is a Tier 2 song in GH but its guitar part is in RB's 5th difficulty tier). It also never gets as tough as any GH game even with its most difficult songs - I five-starred every Medium song on GH2 and 3 after considerable struggle (if I never hear Institutionalised or Raining COCKING Blood again I'll die happy), but if I'm totally honest I found RB's solo guitar tour a bit of a snooze on Medium.

The net result of this is that you pretty much have to go up a difficulty level for the same amount of challenge and fun, which can either be a good thing or a bad thing. On the upside, the easier-than-anything-in-GH bottom end of RB's song list make the transition from Medium to Hard much, much easier to make. On the downside, if you're already playing GH on Expert, RB's probably going to leave you a bit unsatisfied.

I've not made much headway into RB2's tracklist, so I can't comment much on how that's changed in the sequel but just listening to the songs makes me think the difficulty level's jumped up a bit. Equally, my gut feeling is that RB has more fun "band" songs than RB2, but your mileage of course may vary.

Ange actually struggles with the guitar/bass in Guitar Hero, so actually Rock Band might have a difficulty level more suited to her.

As mentioned earlier (here or in the other thread, don't bloody remember), once I've installed RB onto the new 360 my youngest is getting for Chrimble the disk will be of no immediate use to me, so if you'd like a lendsie for evaluation purposes it's available.

You'll still need the disk, as it checks for it everytime you load.

Unless you mean you're transferring the songs across to use with RB2 for 400 points, in which case you don't.

That's exactly what I mean. It's already done for the main (broken) XBox, obv.