Be Excellent To Each Other

Well it's quite easy, Zio. Guitar Hero is fucking shite and Rock Band is fantakka bostin.

The drums on Guitar Hero Metallica are awesome though, I have to say. Lars Ulrich the man is easy to despise, but doing his drum bits in GH:M is acefun.

In all other respects...

...is absolutely true.

It's not, though. I wish people would stop reading it as gospel, as they both do different things very well.

I suppose people who play on lower difficulty levels don't get to see those nuances, though.

It's nowt to do with the Simon Says part of it, it's all to do with atmosphere and style.

Yes. GH sucks much better than RB does.

I have all the stuff now to put my e-drum kit on both games (which, if I create two mappings in the drum brain, means I get the correct 4-drum or 5-drum layout in both cases, which is nice).

Sigh, spout your anti-GH mantra if you like.

Still waiting for Recorder Hero.

I agree. GH is my first love... but RB is also excellent

Agreed. Without one, the other wouldn't strive to make better games.

Then why haven't Neversoft made a good game yet?

GHWT is good. Not amazing, but good. GHM is excellent, though. GH Aerosmith is good, despite me not really liking the band that much.

I haven't played GH5 yet, but it's getting good reviews.

GHWT got excellent reivews, yet it is a soulless husk of a game. Want to play the career in co-op? Tough, it's only for local play. Why? Because they hate you. Is there any technical reason why? No, they hate you.

Agreed, and online play is one of the areas the GH games fall down in.

You're starting to sound like Cavey with the soul bollocks, though. It's a fucking game, you mong.

Games aren't supposed to provoke emotional responses?

If games strive to be recognised as art then they should expect to be judged on the same merits. Guitar Hero is like Tracy Whatserface's unmade bed. Rock Band moves my soul and makes me weep at its brilliance.

I am hampered by a serious lack of USB mics for the multiplayer vocallings in Battles Rock band.

I am going to experiment and see if the EyeToy works as a USB mic

Every promo shot of B:RB I've seen has had mong and mongier with their mouths open trying to catch flies. It should be called Kermit: Rock Band.

Yeah, but they aren't art. Stop me if we've had this discussion before. The emotional response I get from playing RB/GH games is 'my arms hurt' and 'this is really fun'.

Poof.

Rock Band 2 is a much better game than RB1, but the pros and cons list for that and GHWT end up being reasonably balanced (even though they are in completely different areas). For example, having to play the same songs a billion times in the career mode is quite soul-destroying. I quite like the GH:M method of playing them in gigs and unlocking other gigs the more stars you have. It's just overwhelming in RB.

Obviously RB is streets ahead in the online and DLC stakes, I've always said that. Playing the bass and drums is much, much better in the GH games, though. The RB drumkit is like a toy and you feel like you're bashing your mum's pots and pans. The GH bass open notes are a stroke of genius.

I really am music game agnostic, but it annoys me when people keep spewing the 'Rock Band good, Guitar Hero bad' mantra, as it's complete nonsense.

It's not nonsense at all. It's the way I feel and you can't dismiss that.

Back it up rather than giving me wishy-washy bollocks about soul and it tasting all woody, then.

I just don't see why we can't enjoy two sets of games that at the end of the day are fundamentally quite similar. If Neversoft stopped making Guitar Hero games tomorrow, where would the incentive be for Harmonix to attempt to raise the bar every game?

It's just the blatant fanboyism that rankles more than anything.

Fanboyism? Not here. Guitar Hero 2 was shite too, and Harmonix made that. Rock Band one was on a par with GH:WT, i.e. not great. RB2 is nigh on perfect. Yes the GH bass open string yes drums, no vocals NO vocals. Trying to explain exactly why RB2 is better is difficult because its mostly feeling a style. Pah! The Haywain! It's just a cart in a river. It's not as good as somebody standing on a plinth for an hour.

Ah, I see, you're just suffering from a case of the wrongoloids. Your doctor should have some topical cream for that.

So you've just said that at least half of the instruments are better on GHWT, but it's still shite. Hmmmmm.

The Beatles drum kit with the add-on cymbals is awesome and underlines EA's utter bastardry for not releasing the RB2 drum kit over here.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. I am somewhat surprised that you two seem incapable of forming an emotional attachment to a game that goes beyond the simple mechanics of how to play it.

That isn't the point I'm making. Why can't you say 'I love Rock Band like it was my own child' instead of 'Guitar Hero is shit' all the time, then?

Guitar Hero is patently not shit, you just don't love it like Rock Band. That's fair enough.

Add on cymbals you say? Explain please...?

Let's put things into perspective, Rock Revolution is shit.

Never ask Dimrill to explain anything. He's incapable of doing it, and it just makes him twaddle and flounder like a crab on its back.

Oops sorry, I appear to have quoted the wrong person.

It looks like you have, yes.

Hah! Didn't you buy those last year? Finally getting some use, eh?

Not really, my liking of Rock Band in indefinable as it touches on something deep. I found the same with Assassin's Creed and Bully. Guitar Hero is a completely empty unfulfilling experience.

Liking two mechanics of play in one over the other only scratches the physical surface.

which console? because the singstar mics work for the ps3 and the lips mics work for the xbox version.

Bought 'em a couple of weeks ago when the RB:B pre-order dropped in price by £25.

Gill: Official add-on thingamy from MadCatz. You can get one, two or three as the mood takes you. They bolt on to the main kit and duplicate the yellow, green and / or blue pads. Unfortunately, I can't see anywhere in the UK that's got them in-stock at a sensible price - we got the 3-pack for about £25 from Amazon, but they only seem to have them on Marketplace for £40 (!) now.

Does it make it much different when you are playing the drums? I might have a wee look.

The one thing that's going to bother me about my e-drum kit in Rock Band is the cymbals won't work. I'll map them to be duplicates of the pads (so closed hi-hat will be yellow, open hi-hat blue -- yes, I can do that, and that's how the notes are mostly charted apparently -- ride to blue pad, crash to green). So I can play the game and (as long as my memory is working) play the cymbals or the toms, depending on what the note in the song is.

But during drum fills, they'll all map as toms, I won't be able to play cymbals like you can. This is because I am connecthing through a GH:WT drum brain, which doesn't have the seven-input capability than the RB2 drumkit has. Which makes me want to buy the RB2 kit anyway, damn you all.

What are these drum fills you are mentioning, am I missing something?

edit-sorry for all my mistakes in posts right now, I'm permanently wooly headed right now.

Did someone say B:RB doesn't have them? They are bits where all four drum lanes fill up with solid colour and you can improvise any pattern you like. At the end, there's a flashing green note; hit that and you active star power.

Overdrive. Star Power is from *spits* Guitar Hero.

Same difference. I call it star power everywhere; ingrained habit from GH1.

Nah, star power is a soulless marketing tool whereas overdrive is warm and cuddly and makes you cups of tea.

Nope, there aren't any fills in RB:B. Another reason why it should be rubbish but isn't.

As to the difference having the cymbals makes - to me, they're a fun little add-on but don't change the game greatly. My son, who as I might have mentioned several thousand times before is an actual drummer-type-person, is very impressed with them, though.

I can't wait to get RB2.

We're all waiting to dust it off and laugh at you rock out with you

I am rubbish.

You can't be worse than itsallwater and Cpt_Droman - they suck donkey balls.

I want MadCatz to hurry up and bring their replica Fender Precision Bass out for the PS3, so that I can hurredly place money in the hands of whichever retailer chooses to stock it. I had a closer look at the existing Xbox version recently and it's more than just a bog-standard placky guitar, it's got a thumb rest and dual strum bar so you can pluck the strum just like you would a proper bass. And as someone that actually plays a real proper bass, I think this may increase my enjoyment of Harmonix Music Systems excellent Rock Band products.

Fuck, I might even give it a blast on Guitar Hero.

Steady on.

Why bother?

MR SARCASTIC FACE