--- Now Playing 2008 Archive---

Below are our weekly updates from 2008:

12/28/08  Band Music Games Revisited

Just a little touch up on Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero: World Tour, and Rock Revolution. I've been trying to stomach a little more Rock Revolution, and in the process I found a song that's also in the other two games. It's called Our Truth from Lacuna Coil. I won't get too long winded on the 3 games again. All you need to know is that Rock Revolution is a horrendous pile of crap in the face of the other two. Actually it's crap all on it's own. While we do favor Rock Band 2 a little more than Guitar Hero: World Tour, both of them are pretty damn good.

Instead of another huge wall of text, here are some huge video files instead, to illustrate the differences in the 3 games.  I separately captured the guitar and bass part for Our Truth from each game. I really wanted to splice together all 3 parts simultaneously into one video for comparison, but don't currently have the tools to do so. So below we have 6 videos, one each for guitar and bass for each game, that are between 40 - 46MB each. Keep in mind that the song in Rock Revolution is a cover, while the other two games use master recordings.

12/21/08  There's a bit of history behind Rock Revolution from Konami.  Konami is the company most responsible for the music game explosion.  They're the creators of Dance Dance Revolution, for example, as well as a whole series of music games such as Beatmania and Guitar Freaks, the latter of which pre-dated Guitar Hero by years--but never was released outside of Japan.

So now, many years later, after Guitar Hero and Rock Band have become such huge successes, Konami finally gets the picture and releases a music game of their own in the rest of the world.  That game is Rock Revolution.  How is it?  Well...

Rock Revolution sucks a big one. It completely bombed at retail, so it’s down to $20 now, and I’d say it may be worth getting for $5 just for the laughs. This game fails on so many levels that I think if it were released in it’s current state alongside Guitar Hero ONE back then, it would probably have bombed hard then too.

The note chart is extremely difficult to read. I might have better luck if I tried playing it on a small 15" TV. Aside from the flat, straight top to bottom presentation, the note chart itself doesn’t even scroll smoothly. It’s jittery. My eyes struggle when I look at it, and it feels like it’s running at less than 30fps. The load times for going into a song aren’t bad; they may even be a tad faster than RB2 or GH:WT. But there’s loading screens to get back to the song selection menu and to get back to the main menu that are just as long. Career mode isn’t just the same simple "beat these songs to unlock the next group of songs" kind of deal. Instead, it is interspersed with these stupid ‘challenges’ that you have to do in the songs. Some of the challenges will actually be "complete the song." Everything else that’s beyond this is just incredibly stupid and unnecessary. One of the challenges requires you to maintain a minimum note streak, and another might be to hit a certain score; those are the tamer ones. Then there’s one that starts you on easy tard mode and gradually increases the difficulty of the song as you play it. And the worse challenge I’ve seen yet is one that doesn’t want you to play any of the ‘bad’ notes. It will throw these specially marked notes throughout the note chart, and you’re not supposed to hit any of those. I haven’t tried that one yet to see if it adds additional bad notes, replaces real notes with bad notes, or both. I’m not really eager to, either. Also, like RB1 and the previous GH games, there is no option to play Bass in Career mode.

I’ve only tried about 4 songs now, and the covers sound great so far. The only other good thing that I can say about this game is that in addition to the online leaderboards, it has a local high score table for the songs and YOU CAN VIEW THEM WHENEVER YOU WANT. Wow, what a feature! That local high score table that you can actually get to from the menu is probably the only revolutionary thing about Rock Revolution. Konami should be utterly embarrassed and ashamed for releasing such a pathetically flimsy effort. For creating such a complete failure, the lead designers of the game should be throwing themselves upon their own swords.

12/14/08 Soldner-X is a side scrolling shooter recently released on Playstation Network. The game is fairly unique for a shmup, not that there have really been any to compare to this generation. In this side scroller, you have a health bar, so you don't die until you run out of health. The fact that you can't die with a single hit is a blessing since your hitbox is pretty large. When you do die, you respawn just a little ahead of where you died, rather than restarting the entire stage or starting from a preset checkpoint.

You initially start with only 2 weapons, but can get up to 3 additional weapons in your arsenal. The default 2 weapons recharge their energy when you're not firing them. 2 of the other weapons have a fixed amount of energy, and can only be replenished by picking up another weapon powerup for that weapon. The fifth weapon is rockets, and you pick these up one at a time and can only hold a maximum of 5 of them, so they're best reserved for bosses. There's also a bomb weapon you can use to kill or severely damage everything around you, but you can only hold one of these at any time.

There are plenty of powerups to be had in the game. Aside from the 3 additional weapons and bombs, there are powerups to temporarily boost your shot speed, increase the number of shots you fire at once, score boosters, health recovery, and more. Powerups can be randomly dropped when you kill enemies, and are also released when you fulfill the game's weird weapon chaining system. Here's how the chaining thing works. You start with a chain meter that says 0/2 next to it. As you kill enemies, the meter fills. When it's about 80% full, it will make an audible noise and visually tell you to change weapons. When you switch to another weapon, the meter will drop back to nothing and say 1/2 next to it, indicating you've completed 1 chain, and the powerup (called a Chain Extra) will be released at 2 chains. Kill more stuff to fill the meter to about 80% again, and you will again be instructed to change weapons. When you change at this point, your meter will be flashing and tell you that the chain extra is ready. You must change weapons AGAIN to release the powerup, and the meter will start back over with a new powerup. As you successfully chain more weapon switches together, the chain requirements will increase to have theoretically better powerups released. If you fill the meter to 80% and DON'T switch weapons when instructed, your meter will continue to fill as you kill enemies. If it hits 100%, you'll get a message that the chain energy was lost, and you'll restart that chain. It's an interesting way to get powerups, but at the same time, it can be really hectic to keep track of.

There are some problems with the game. The most irritating one is that it can be EXTREMELY difficult to judge what parts of the level you can collide with. While the game is very appealing to the eye, it also gets carried away with foreground and background layer visuals. World 2 in particular is absolutely horrible in this regard. You'll fly through things that you think you should collide with, and you'll take massive damage trying to get past what looks like part of the background. Even worse than that is the fact that when you respawn, while you are invincible for a few seconds, you are NOT intangible. What this means is that after you die, while the screen is still scrolling, you can be respawned behind a wall that you can't get past, and since you can't go through it, you'll just get shoved against the wall until your invincibility wears off, and then die again. This really only applies on World 2 again, but it's a really shitty scenario that happens and needs to be mentioned.

Overall Soldner-X is a decent shooter, and worth the $10 price tag. Like many other shooters, you start with only a couple credits, but earn more as you play more. It's a very tough game to start out, and requires a lot of memorization and replays, but that's par for the course with shooters. Below is a sample video of the second half of World 1.

T

12/07/08  The new Prince of Persia, the last big game of the year, arrived this week.  It's quite a departure from last gen's Prince games in several ways, though it has very similar platforming--wall running, jumping between pillars, and so on.  But it has new characters, a new control system, a new setting, a new open world map, a new combat system, new art direction, and some other additions.

If you look around the internet, you'll find people complaining about each of these.  Ironically, I don't find any of them to be large shortcomings.  But here's a run-down of the complaints, and my take of each of them:

The characters: people say the Prince is unlikable, or that he's a jerk.   Well, he isn't.  He's a smartass, but he's likable enough, and the dialog between him and the Princess Elika is pretty decent and entertaining.  And if you don't like it, you don't have to hear most of it, because most of the dialog comes only when you press the "talk" button.  Another complaint is that the Prince isn't Persian, he's American, and that's valid.  He also doesn't seem to be a prince--there's some vague hints in that direction, but he's a wandering tomb robber by trade.  Whatever.

The control system: there are more complaints about this than anything, especially how the game handles 'death'.  The controls are easy, yes, with very few button presses to accomplish the platforming, and wide timing on those few presses.  Princess Elika, who has magical powers, will fly over and give you a throw (i.e.. a double jump) anytime you ask, which is necessary to make some of the jumps.  And the Prince can inexplicably run an extra body length or so up any wall he hits.  Indeed, gravity isn't much to worry about.  But although I would prefer tighter timing, I don't think it would make the platforming any better.  The platforming has a much worse problem, which I'll get to later.  What is there is fun.

Now, about "death".  When you do mess up, you don't get a "game over" screen--instead, magical Elika flies down, grabs your hand, and deposits you back on the last solid ground.  You can clearly see you failed, and you end up right where you'd be if you did have to sit through a loading screen.  I fail to see the problem with what amounts to really fast loading, but some people will bitch about anything.  I found this to be much better--seamless but still measurable (there's even an Achievement/Trophy for not being saved too many times).

The setting: yes, it's very Final Fantasy reminiscent in parts, with big machinery and canvas windmills and strange hot air balloons.  But trust me, it's gorgeous.  

The open world: ironically, I never got lost or wondered where to go next in this open world.  Compare that to last gen's buggy, convoluted, yet linear Prince games that couldn't even hold my interest through to the end (the 2nd and 3rd, that is: Sands of Time was perfect), and I don't see how anyone can argue for linearity, but some still do.

The combat: it's not perfect, but it's fine.  You only fight one enemy at a time, and as you progress, it becomes extremely dependent on blocking at just the right time in order to deflect an attack, which leaves the enemy open to counter-attack and subsequent combos.  By the end, it's impossible to hit the enemy any other way.  I do find this to be at odds with the simplified "hit the button anytime you like" platforming, because the timing to deflect an attack is very tight, and you can't progress without beating the boss characters at key points.  The combos look great, especially because you can chain Elika's magical attacks into them to make them longer and quite impressive.

Combat also employs Quick Time Events--mostly if you're losing--and another version of Elika's "death" sequence--she'll save you from enemies just like she saves you from falling, but when she does, the enemy regains health, and not just a little.  The fights can be extremely difficult if you don't work out the timing to counter-attack.

The art direction: this overlaps with the setting, but also worth noting is the subtle cell-shading and character design.  It's odd, but very likable.  Again, I don't see how anyone could prefer, for example, Warrior Within's art to this.  But to each his own.  I do have to admit it isn't very Persian.

Now, after all that, I do have one major complaint with the game.  I haven't seen anyone else complaining about this, despite all the moaning about each point above.  My issue with the game is with devices the game refers to as "plates".  A plate is a magical circle on the wall.  Mostly, they allow Elika to fly, dragging the Prince along with her.  I hate them.  Plates suck in every way possible.  Let me make a list:

1. You, the player, have no control over where you go when you use a plate, and only sometimes do you have slight movement

    control.

2. Most plates fly you to other plates, so you'll go through long series of them, often in order to go a matter of feet from where 

    you started--just out of double-jump distance.

3. The yellow plates tend to fly you around long, circling, twisting paths that collide with geometry, which is where your limited 

    control comes in: you get to press a direction to dodge.

4. After using a plate, Elika occasionally drops you short of your destination (i.e.. the next plate), so you need to press the 

    double-jump button to have Elika throw you the last few feet.

5. Worst of all, plates remove any advanced platforming from the game.  If you see something that looks hard to reach and 

    think you'll be climbing to it somehow, you're wrong.  There's probably a plate to fly you there.

There are entire sections late in the game that consist of little but extended plate usage.  And they're awful.  They lowered my opinion of the game a great deal.  

So, what is my verdict on the game?  Overall, it's good.  But it could've been great.  Almost every aspect of the game could've used minor tweaking, but the only glaring flaw is the dumb plate system.  The game leaves us with the impression that there will be a sequel, and I'll say right now that I'm on board.  But if I see plates in it, I may look for it in the bargain bin rather than buying on launch day like I did this one.

Here are a few videos from the game.  You'll see some of the points above in them:

The first one shows some basic platforming, including the Elika throw 'double jump' and the sequence it plays if you 'die' (which is pictured).

This one is an example of combat early in the game, before counter-attacking is the only way to fight.  You can see the cool Prince/Elika combos that make the fights look great.

And here's a very mild example of a hated plate sequence--these plates go straight to each other.  That's often not the case.  Note the double-jump after plate 2, though. 

11/30/08  So, this week we have the latest entry into the old, tired, unoriginal and boring World War II genre of first-person shooters: Call of Duty: World at War.  So, if it's so bad, why did Leon buy it?  Well, because it's on the Wii, where FPS controls are fresh and fun, and yet FPS games are so frustratingly scarce.  Beggars can't be choosers.  It's a competent game made fairly fun by the controls, but compared to Medal of Honor Heroes 2 from last year, the Wii control scheme and its customization both fall pretty short.  The game is  worth playing, but we're dying for an alterative with some originality, like next year's The Conduit, which looks promising.  Here are a couple videos:

This first one shows off the interesting presentation the game uses, which is (sadly) probably the most original part of the whole game:

And here's a video of gameplay, which, without experiencing the controls, probably looks pretty bland:

We also have a video this week of an old Super Nintendo game that's somewhat unknown.  It's a shooter called Axelay, from one of our favorite developers, Treasure.  Unlike most shooters, Axelay doesn't use a single perspective, but switches from a top-scroller to a side-scroller between levels.  In the top-scrolling sections, it uses the SNES's Mode 7 graphics to produce pseudo-3D visuals that were very cool at the time. And it has an unusual 3-weapon system and damage system as well.  It's a very challenging game.  We were very surprised when this game showed up on the Wii Virtual Console.  Check it out.

11/23/08  First up this week is Pac-Man Championship Edition, an Xbox Live Arcade game that we downloaded recently.  It's an interesting and fun version of Pac-Man that changes the way you progress.  The level never ends like in a normal Pac-Man game.  Instead, eating all the dots on either the left or right half of the stage causes a fruit (or whatever) to appear on the other side, and eating the fruit causes more dots to appear.  Also, the game is timed, so the objective is to get the highest possible score.  Honestly, that's the game's only flaw: it should've had a normal "play as long as you can" mode in addition to the several timed modes it offers.

Anyway, here's an example video of the 5-minute Championship mode:

The other game for our update this week is the brand new Resistance 2.  This is the sequel to the PS3's launch shooter, Resistance: Fall of Man.  It's a very functional, capable shooter that tries very hard to be Halo, while also trying differentiate itself from other shooters, contradictory though that may seem.  And it mostly succeeds.  It does feel very much like Halo, with a 2-weapon system and a nice variety of human and alien weapons, a "superman" main character, and a good lineup of alien enemies.  It stands out due to its unique "alternate history" setting that details an alien "virus" invasion of Earth in the 1950s, that turns people into aliens called Chimera.  Honestly, this was much better done in Resistance 1.  In this sequel, there's a lot of futuristic content--such as the entire 'alien' fleet of flying ships--and it makes the 1950s setting seem like quite a stretch.  It also has boss fights, which many FPS games don't have.  

Resistance 2 is perhaps the most visually impressive console game so far this gen.  That's certainly debatable with titles like Gears of War 2, Dead Space, Call of Duty 4, Uncharted, and so on all looking great, but I was honestly very impressed with Resistance 2 beyond what any of these did for me.

Here are a few videos of various parts of the game:

I'm a sucker for a good water effect, and this game has some excellent water.  Not perfect, but still some of the best we've seen: good-looking but, more importantly, believably interactive.  It's just one nice graphical highlight in a beautiful game.

Another little something I stumbled across is this simple little radio.  There are radios like this all through the game, playing 50s-style music and radio broadcasts, and I guess the developers thought that the player might take a good look at them.  I did, and noticed the extra detail they put into it.  Nice touch, guys.

This is an example of one of the weapons, called the Splicer.  I just call it the Saw Gun.  It's a rip-off (ha ha) of past shooters' saw guns, like Unreal's Ripper, I suppose, but a good saw gun is always great fun.  Weapons in Resistance 2 tend to be placed 'as needed', meaning if you find a sniper rifle, there's probably about to be a good place to use it coming.  The Saw Gun tends to show up just as you run into these hordes of unarmed Chimera.  

I think my favorite gun in the game is the Magnum.  It's powerful, of course, but it also shoots explosive bullets that you control with the secondary fire, which is great fun.  Even if an enemy dies in one shot, you can still kill his friends by exploding the bullet later on.  You can also see the Hedgehog grenade in action quite a bit in this video.

Another trademark Resistance weapon is the Bullseye.  Its secondary fire marks an enemy, and for a short time, all your primary shots will go to that mark.  They ripped this off from the movie The Fifth Element, which showcased a gun with a "Replay" option that did the same thing.  It can be very useful, and again, quite fun.

This is a video of the game's first boss.  It also shows the not-quite-as-good-as-the-other-type ocean water (it's a bit slow-mo-ish compared to the swamp or stream water in the game), and the ridiculously large alien fleet of airship things.

And this is a later Godzilla-esque boss fight, set in Chicago.

11/09/08  This time of the year, there's a lot to play.  New games come fast and furious in the shopping season leading up to Christmas.  This week, we've still been playing Rock Band 2 and Valkyria Chronicles and Gears of War 2, but we've still found enough time to play (and beat) Mirror's Edge.

Mirror's Edge is an unusual game for just one reason: the perspective it uses isn't normal for its genre.  It's a platforming game that uses a 1st-person perspective.  Running and jumping can feel very odd in 1st person view (although any veterans of Metroid Prime should have some experience in this).  The viewpoint makes for a very immersive experience.  Check out this example video:

By default, Mirror's Edge has a feature called "Runner Vision" turned on.  Runner Vision simply means that some things will be red, showing that you should use them to grab or jump from in order to progress.  It turns out the game is a short one, and we played it with this feature off, preferring to find our own way.  If we'd had it on, it would've been even shorter.  We really recommend turning this off.  The game has a hint system anyway: at any time, you can press a button and the game will point you toward where you should be going.  The only time we were forced to turn Runner Vision on briefly was in a couple of dark areas where we couldn't see the geometry to grab until it was turned red for us (flashlight, please!).

Here's a short video of what Runner Vision does:

The game also has frequent combat sequences, which are good, but could be much better.  The physics are the weak point here.  For example, if you execute a flying kick and it hits your target, your mass and velocity guarantee certain effects.  Well, in the game, it's impossible to knock someone down unless you knock them unconscious.  That's poor design.  At one point (off video, unfortunately), I ran and jumped from one building over to the next, and a man on the destination building was standing at my landing point.  So I kicked him.  My character was doing 20 miles an hour or so, and he was standing still, but when he blocked my kick, I bounced backwards several feet and fell to my death, while he flinched backward slightly, maybe one step.  The main character, Faith, is a slight woman, but not so slight that she can be slapped away like a tennis ball.

Anyway, here's a small example of combat in the game.  The game's creators encourage us to attempt to go through the game without shooting anyone (you can take guns from enemies, and use up the remaining ammo in them, so by taking the gun from each successive kill, you can do quite a bit of shooting).  If the combat physics were up to par, I think I'd try it.  As they are...I don't know.

Overall, Mirror's Edge is a good game.  The biggest complaint is that it's short.  Games aren't cheap, so at $60 we can hardly recommend this without mentioning that.  It does have time trials and online Speed Run rankings for those who are into that kind of competition.  We found it on sale for $50 at Fry's Electronics, but even $50 is hardly an impulse buy.  To anyone who wants to support nice original games, I recommend it.  To anyone else: try it if you have the means to do so.  It certainly deserves exposure.

Also this week, as promised, we've uploaded several new Gears of War 2 videos.  They contain major spoilers, so be warned.  They're on the new dedicated Gears of War page.

11/09/08  This week, aside from more Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2, Bruce has picked up Valkyria Chronicles (based on a very impressive demo on PSN), and Leon picked up Gear of War 2.  We have a few movies of each, along with our impressions.  

Valkyria Chronicles is a turn-based strategy game, but a very unusual one, potentially a real genre-changer.  There's a vast lineup of SRPG's floating around out there, with more of them showing up on handhelds rather than consoles. It's easy to get burned out on them, and right now there are quite a few good console games to choose from that aren't SRPG's. With that in mind, Valkyria Chronicles comes as a very unexpected and pleasant surprise.

While the game is an SRPG, it has such a unique approach that it doesn't feel like another SRPG. The main defining characteristic of this game is the semi-real-time combat system. You choose the unit you want to move on the map in a turn-based fashion like many other SRPG's. But when you choose your unit, the camera drops down behind your unit, and you control that unit in real time in a fully 3D rendered environment. The unit has an action meter that depletes as the unit moves, and the unit can do one attack. While moving around in real time, you will get shot at by other units if you cross their vision and come within their firing range. When you are ready to attack, time does stop while you're in aiming mode. When you attack, the target will then counter attack if it's capable. Then it's back to real time until you end that unit's turn. While in aiming mode, it is possible to fine tune your aim to deal critical damage to a target, i.e. an enemy's head.

There are only 5 classes of units in the game, and each has it's own unique role to fill. Scouts have the highest movement and vision range, but aren't great for taking out enemies. Shock Troopers have limited range, but are your main assault units. Lancers are resistant to explosives and effective against tanks. Snipers have their obvious role. And Engineers have great movement range, and can resupply any of your units that they come into contact with, disarm land mines, and repair your tank. Oh yeah, you get a tank, which is good against everything. The level-up system is also interesting, as you level up a class as a whole rather than an individual. ALL Scouts will level up at the same time and will all be the same level, whether you've used them or not. What sets individuals of the same class apart is what are called Potentials. Potentials are abilities that will occasionally kick in depending on the circumstances, and not all of them are good.

To make all of that clear, just watch the video:

The game uses a very colorful art style, and the story and dialogue is coherent and generally well done. It's not exactly a realistic game (but what SRPG is?), and can seem weird at times, but it's a fresh take on an SRPG, and a genuinely fun experience.

Here are a few examples of the story cutscenes.

Gears of War 2 is, of course, the sequel to the very popular Gears 1 from a couple years back.  We had a lot of fun with Gears because of its 2-player system link co-op mode, and it was a nice touch of originality in the shooter genre, thanks to its cover system and interesting variety of gameplay, and a few other nice touches.

Gears 2 had us excited because we were under the impression that it would have 4-player system link co-op.  It doesn't, or at least, not as a mode of the main game.  So that was a very big let down.

After getting past that, though, it's been extremely impressive.  It's a far more ambitious game than Gears 1, with more of everything on a larger scale: bigger environments and more of them, bigger enemies and more of them, bigger "alternate gameplay" sequences and more of them (i.e. driving, flying, even boating), bigger weapons and more of them...and so on.  Some of the scenarios and bits of the story are really over-the-top ridiculous, but it's all in good fun, so you'll love it even as you may mock it.  If the game had, say, a mine cart level (dumb as that sounds), it would fit right in--as long as it was a mine cart level with explosions, body parts flying everywhere, and cursing.

The bosses are cool, and also bigger and badder, like everything else.  The bosses from Gears 1--the giant spider-like Corpsers and the you-never-get-to-fight-it Brumak aren't unique encounters now, they're just routine foes (although so far, I've only seen them in the vehicular sections, when they're fairly easy to deal with).  

Gears 1 was a little buggy, and Gears 2 follows suit.  We found a couple of minor bugs already, and put videos of them on the bugs page.

But here are a few videos of the game.  We've left the best parts unseen; the game is brand new and, for once, we'll be a little sensitive about spoilers...but we'll also add new videos very soon.  So trust us and play this now!

These first two made us laugh.  Playing through Gears 1, we joked about how the only guy wearing a helmet got shot in the head.  Well, someone at Epic Games must've heard the same joke, because they put some dialog on the subject into Gears 2.  The first video is the scene from Gears 1.  The other is the scene from Gears 2.

This is the intro cutscene for a new character, named Tai...and a good (mild, actually) example of the over-the-top, absurd type of situation I referred to above.

This has probably happened to a lot of people, but it's always fun to see a bad guy get double-chainsawed.

11/02/08  For the last week, we've been playing Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero: World Tour.  These two very similar games are, of course, direct competitors, and people want to know which one is better.  That can be a very tough question to answer, but we do have one.  Here's the write-up:

Rock Band 2 could actually be considered Rock Band 1.2, as it really is more of the same game with a few fixes and improvements. It's like a glorified Track Pack and patch. The core game is the same. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Aside from the new, rather large set of songs, they've added many things that people have wanted in the first game. The most notable addition that people have requested is to be able to play the World Tour mode online. You can also play World Tour mode by yourself, and in the beginning, it appears that you'd have to play World Tour in order to unlock the rest of the songs. Fortunately that's not quite the case, as if it were, that would mean replaying many of the earlier songs A LOT as you slowly unlocked the remaining songs. The alternative is Challenge mode, and it contains some instrument specific challenges that increase in difficulty for that instrument as you work your way through them. This is the quicker way to unlock songs, and is the closest thing to the previous game's Career Mode that is now absent from this game. Challenge mode is in the Tour section, so officially you're playing as a band, even if you have only one band member, so of course you can also play it with up to 4 people.

Also new is the online Battle of the Bands mode. This is not a real-time contest, merely a ranking of challenges that show up periodically.

The next most requested improvement is the addition of more sorting options. You can now not only sort songs in several ways, you can skip to the next section of the current sorting method (usually the next letter of the alphabet) with a button press. So finding a song or band that starts with Z is much faster.

On guitar, gameplay-wise, there are only two notable changes. First, the timing of hammer-on and pull-off notes is changed. You now have a much smaller "window" of time to hit them. It's considerably shorter than the window to hit notes that you must strum to get, and it also feels corrected vs. Rock Band 1, which seemed to want you to play the hammer-on notes a bit early. Now, you need to be dead-on.  The other change is that the game now has hammer-on chord notes. The timing on them is also very tight, maybe even tighter than the regular hammer-on notes.

On vocals, the tone and voice recognition seems much better. Leon had a lot of trouble with the "talkie sections" and a little trouble with the timing of vocals in the first game. Not so in Rock Band 2. Other than these invisible improvements, vocals are the same as before.

On drums, there is the addition of drum solos (which only adds points), and the new velocity-sensitive drumming, if you use a Rock Band 2 drum set (more on instrument quality later). This is not a gameplay change; it only affects volume during a drum fill or when you're allowed to free play (at the beginning or end of a song).

And you can now use your characters to play any instrument, rather than just the one you created them on.

Aside from these changes, there's little to distinguish this as a sequel. The characters, outfits, instruments, and even the loading screen messages are mostly the same, with a few additions. There were several improvements we'd hoped for that didn't show up:

1. The ability to delete a song (or remove it from play).
2. A better method of using Overdrive (star power) on drums.
3. The ability to play vocals and an instrument simultaneously with one character.
4. An improved menu, especially access to the options from the pause menu.
5. A stats screen at the end of the song, such as Guitar Hero has had since #2 (which was made by this developer).
6. Different scroll speeds for different difficulties in multiplayer (now it defaults to the slowest speed: if anyone is on Easy, it makes playing on Expert awful.)


Guitar Hero World Tour, of course, has the addition of the 4-player game, adding drums and vocals. It adds the character creation and customization modes as well, but retains the old Guitar Hero cast to choose from. 

And it adds several new options and gameplay modes. In fact, on paper, this wins hands-down for all its options. It has options to turn off tilt, adjust volume for each instrument as well as sound effects and background music, put a countdown timer for when you exit the pause menu (which is very cool), and even calibrate your lag settings right from the pause menu.

New gameplay additions on guitar include the ability to get more star notes while star power is on (already present in Rock Band), touch strip (i.e. solo) notes that don't require strumming to play, and sustain notes that you must hold while still playing other notes. On bass, they've added a no-button-press strum, which is represented by a bar like the bass bar on drums. These are all excellent additions.

Drums is a new mode, but it immediately has a leg up on Rock Band because you have a way to activate star power whenever you like, rather than cluttering up the song with the distracting "fill sections".

Vocals is pretty much the same as Rock Band.


On the hardware side, we'll be as plain as we can: the Rock Band 2 instruments are barely improved over the Rock Band 1 instruments, and you'll be going through the same lottery as before, hoping the one you get isn't broken, then sending it in to EA because it is broken, and waiting to receive another broken one in the mail. If you can get a working one, they're fine, but nothing special. Good luck.

The Guitar Hero World Tour guitar is the best one we've ever used. It's the first Guitar Hero guitar to use a strum bar that you can actually get a grip on, like the Rock Band one (which is what we liked most about RB's guitar). It strums and rebounds perfectly. The buttons are just right. The touch strip is very responsive (but doesn't work in Rock Band). Everything about it is excellent. And it has a huge select button to help avoid pausing if you activate your star power that way.

Neither drum set is perfect, but overall the Rock Band 2 drum set is better suited for playing the games (note: as of now, the RB2 set works in GH:WT, but not the other way around). The World Tour drum set is geared towards being more realistic, and while we imagine it does more accurately simulate sitting at a real drum set, in the end it's actually far more cumbersome to accurately hit the appropriate pads. The elevated cymbal things are a nice touch, though quite loud to hit. The drum pads are velocity sensitive, affecting how loud your fills are. The bass pedal leaves much to be desired. It doesn't spring back quickly enough for fast kicks, and tends to register extra hits if you make any slight movements with your foot while holding it down.

The Rock Band 2 drum set is a revised version of the drum set from the original game. It also features velocity sensitive pads affecting how loud your fills are. It has much quieter drum surfaces than it's predecessor, and offers better rebound with your sticks. The pedal is the same as the original, but now has a thin metal plate bolted to the top of it. Pedals were easier to break with the last set, and this new pedal may slow down that process, but doesn't seem likely to completely prevent your pedal from breaking if you were prone to breaking the previous ones. This drum set apparently suffers from random disconnections resulting from the batteries getting knocked loose from the vibration of, you know, drumming. This new set doesn't offer much of an improvement over the first set, so if you have a working Rock Band 1 drum set, ultimately that works best with it's wired connection.

While the GH:WT guitar has surprised us with how solid, reliable, and functional it is, we can't say the same for the drums. Both the drum sets for GH:WT and RB2 are a crap shoot. The World Tour drums have major sensitivity issues on the cymbal things, and the ones we tried, you really had to beat the hell out of them to get them to register properly, especially on the new accent notes in GH:WT. And with the RB2 set we tried, the right side of the red pad died with about 8 hours of use. And we're not the only ones with issues. Both new drum sets overall are junk, and you have to get really lucky to get one that works.

Or, you can come and chat with us on the Message Board!