Rock Band

[zero]

On Guitar or Drums?

[Fitzy]

Drums.

[Mountainous Cleavage]

I hate that song on drums, its such a bitch.

[King Ellis]

zOMG EUROPEAN ROCK BAND NEWS (But not the kind you want):

Our friends in Europe have been going through a thumb-twiddling hell for a long time now, having to somehow accept the fact that they have no access to Rock Band while North American gamers have been jamming for the past few months. But know it is coming friends and know that Harmonix cares. They care so much that they'll be including a set of exclusive tracks in the PAL release.

During this weekend's UK Play.com festival, the crew over at button bandits had a chance to play the PAL version of Rock Band (yes, it exists) and obtained a complete track list. The list is nearly identical to its NTSC cousin, except for ten new exclusive additions which we posted after the break. Of course, we can't be sure how exclusive these ten tracks are to the PAL version or if North American Rock Band players will ever have a chance to purchase them. Knowing that, we're fine if we never see these tracks on North American XBLM soil. We'll let our fellow Europeans have this one ... they've suffered enough.

European Rock Band Exclusive Tracks:

# Blur -- Beattlebum (English)

# Oasis -- Rock 'n' Roll Star (Englsih)

# Tokio Hotel -- Through the Monsoon (English)

# Muse -- Hysteria (English)

# Les Wamaps -- Manu Chao (French)

# Indochine -- L'Aventurier (French)

# Playmo -- New Wave (French)

# Die Toten Hosen -- Hier Kommt Alex (German)

# Juli -- Perfekte Welle (German)

# H-Block X -- Countdown to Insanity (German)

CAUS TONIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT, I'M A ROCK AND ROLL STAAAAAAAAR!

And Muse too. Wonderful! Though the French and German can fuck off. More English please.

Edited March 17, 2008 by Ellis Misses Benji

[Kaney]

Nice, I'd have preferred something from OOS, but any Muse can only be a good thing. Still wish there was a concrete release date though, bastards.

[tenaciousg]

I hope that at least the English tracks are brought over to North America. I want me some Hysteria, dammit!

[ragbag]

My throat hates me after downloading the thrash pack.

Oh and fuck 'Thrasher' on guitar. Too much alt. struming.

And thank god I'm not high up on drums as the vids for those look inhuman to complete.

[stokeriño]

I'd have preferred a different Blur song (Coffee & TV/Country House/etc.) to Beatlebum, but hell - any Blur is a good Blur.

Signs that it exists are a good thing...I still need to keep bracing myself for the eventual announcement of the price, though.

[Marsh]

I'm starting to get bored waiting for this game to get a European release.

[Mattman]

Whats the price likely to be? I'm thinking about £100 for PS3. Am I just being optimistic?

[Marsh]

It should be £85 at the current conversion rate (US: $169.99), but by the same logic Guitar Hero should cost £45 (US: $89.99) and yet the retail price is £70.

[MalaCloudy Black]

I hope that at least the English tracks are brought over to North America. I want me some Hysteria, dammit!

Hell, I want some Die Toten Hosen. That'd be awesome.

[stokeriño]

Whats the price likely to be? I'm thinking about £100 for PS3. Am I just being optimistic?

Astoundingly optimistic. I'm leaning towards the belief that it'll be somewhere in the region of £150 - possibly even more.

Dollar/pound conversion rates mean nothing to any of these people of course, so it's better to discount thoughts along those lines entirely. If one were to apply the same 'proportional rate' to Rock Band as Guitar Hero III in terms of pricing (i.e. £45 in the US, £70 in the UK = 55% mark up), that'd put it at over £130.

Edited March 19, 2008 by stokeriño

[ragbag]

Fuck, tried 'Blinded By Fear' on expert in practice mode and that's a workout. I seemed to be going good at first by just flailing at my drum pad, but then my leg gave out on me and it all went downhill from there. Still 69 (or so)% is alot better than I expected.

[ragbag]

Big update out for Rock Band today.

In this latest software update, you’ll find:

• (New!) Music Store: Rock Band now has a new feature that lets you preview and purchase songs from within the game! Accessible from the main menu, the Music Store lets you view, purchase and sort all available music based on various categories, view album art, listen to song previews, and check out extended information about the song like difficulty for each instrument.

• Revised Fan Caps: To allow Easy, Medium, and Hard players to progress further in the Band World Tour, we’ve increased the number of fans that you can earn before hitting the cap. Easy players can now travel across the Atlantic, Medium players have a wider range of venues they can play at, and Hard players on the Xbox 360 are now able to unlock the “One Million Fans” achievement.

• More diverse songs in Band World Tour: If you’ve ever cursed about having to play “Say it Ain’t So” or a Metallica track multiple times in the same hour, then you’ll be glad to know that we’ve tracked down and fixed the issues that triggered these very repetitive moments in Band World Tour.

• Improved phoneme recognition: We’ve improved the detection and scoring for phoneme recognition. If you had trouble on songs like “Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld” or “Blitzkrieg Bop”, you should have an easier time beating these songs now.

• Microphone Latency on PlayStation 3 improved: Our awesome team of audio programmers has found some optimizations that reduce microphone latency on the PlayStation 3 in certain situations.

• Xbox 360 Band Logos are now visible through Xbox LIVE: An issue with parental controls stopped band logos from being visible over Xbox LIVE. With this update, you can now view all of the awesome band logos that people around the world have created!

• Faster loading of downloadable content: Not only is the loading speed faster, but this information is now cached so that this loading time is a “once only” wait rather than something that happens every time you turn on the game.

[Fanku Kaibutsu]

Awesome. All of those issues effect me except the 5th and 6th one. The song previews are a great idea, the increased fan caps are great because my Band World Tour partner can't play well on hard yet, the repetitiveness of 'random' songs has made me loathe random songs in BWT, AND Blitzkrieg Bop kicks my ass every time I try to play it.

[Gabriel]

I still don't get how the vocals work really... on some songs, I need to really try to sing like the artist to get a good score, or even get through the song. Whereas on other songs, I'll fail if I don't just sing like I'm playing random acoustic sets for no one, with no emotion.

Can anyone explain to me how the vocals actually work?

[thuganomic]

It's based on pitch. So you have to sing the same note that the artist hits in the song.

[Gabriel]

It's based on pitch. So you have to sing the same note that the artist hits in the song.

[Captain Eo]

The update isn't out today.