So...we bought Rock Band last night. Sadly, we have but one guitar and no drums, as we didn't want the RB guitar, and thus will have to take turns and wait till we recover from Christmas to be a Band of Rock, but we has it.

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Well, now you'll have no reason to come over.

Boo.

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I AM PISSED, ACTUALLY.

On the PS2 it is a fundamentally different game: no avatars, not even a choice of rocker or guitar as in GHII, no animations, no choices--you play the band they assign you. It's incredibly stripped down--play the songs and shut up, ye who cannot afford a latest-generation console. I feel ripped off.

And the whammy bar on the guitar we got doesn't work.

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Harmonix created the original "Guitar Hero" with publisher Red Octane. Then Activision bought Red Octane and MTV bought Harmonix. Then vivendi acquired activision. Now, if MTV buys vivendi they will be re-glomerated.

all you have to do is wait for the amoeba called international corporatism to eat everything, and your wish will be granted.

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Ah, but corporate mergers do not guarantee the best of both worlds.

I want a game that incorporates the coolness of both, which shan't happen even if the big money-Gods align.

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but megacorporation gives us everything that is good in life

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ps boss battles in guitar hero ruined the game for me.

Boss Battles I feel is the greatest feature in GH3. It adds a much needed element to the game that really makes you feel like a total rock star.

Ted Lange, idiot

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Me, too.

Especially since the bosses are fairly lame. I mean, I like Rage Against the Machine, but I wouldn't - and, in fact, didn't - know the guitarist if you showed me him in a crowd.

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Yes, the boss battles are freakin awful.
On the plus side, I sat down with legion_i_am last night and beat GH3 Career Co-op on easy and then half way through on medium because co-op has no stupid ass boss battles.

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I've had a few people say that Guitar Hero III is where Guitar Hero stopped being fun.

I'm waiting on buying rock band until I get a new job with better pay . . .but man do I want it.

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My impression is that Green Grass and High Tides at top difficulty can give the same sort of challenge. One of my friends who is quite good at GH games said he had to learn and practice the Rock Band guitar solo buttons just to be able to pass it on Expert, and I know we had quite the ordeal passing it as a band on medium with our range of skill levels.

As someone who didn't own GH3 until I bought it along with Rock Band, I find Rock Band to be a lot more fun. This might be because it seems easier on a given difficulty, as I can pass a bunch of songs on Hard and some on Expert on Rock Band while last time I tried I had difficulty on the first tier of Guitar Hero. However, it also seems like Guitar Hero wants to punish you more for being bad. When I miss a note on Rock Band, I hear a 'plink' noise and fail to hear my note from the song. When I miss one on Guitar Hero, I hear a giant KLONK noise and the fretboard shakes, which in turn makes it harder for me to hear and hit the subsequent notes.

Your statement that "Guitar Hero III is for the GH addicts who have really mastered the game" rings very true. Guitar Hero 3 is almost certainly a better (and harsher) training tool for learning game-guitar, and mastering GH3 is almost certainly more impressive than mastering RB. However, since I mostly play these games as a social event and almost never on my own, I like that my only practice comes while I'm playing in a band, and if there's one particular solo that kills me....well, that's what my bandmates' star power is for :).

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They want you to buy a new Guitar Hero game annually (their exact word was "exploit our franchises annually", and yes they really did say "exploit"), so somehow, I doubt we'll be seeing the same amount of downloadable content from Activision that Harmonix is cranking out. Extending the value of the game isn't worth it to them.

I'll also be less than shocked to discover that you might need a new controller every other game or something like that.

"Rock Band" and "GHIII" are both successes, by the way. "Rock Band" hasn't sold as many copies, but there are fewer on the market and it costs a lot. I'll be curious to see what happens once the software and controllers can be purchased separately, and once the third-party controller manufacturers get involved.

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I haven't played GH, but a friend of mine got Rock Band last week and I spent the whole day at her house playing it. As someone who has yet to invest in a 3rd Gen console, it actually had me seriously considering buying either an XBox 360 or PS3 just for that one game. Of course, I called my older brother (veteran of every console Nintendo has ever put out as well as many others) for his opinion, and he called me back yesterday and told me that Rock Band is coming out for PS2, so that conundrum has been solved for me. I guess I like it because it reminds me of DDR but not as hard, and playing as a singer (since I am a singer IRL) is very attractive to me.

When I eventually buckle under the 3rd Gen pressure and buy a Wii, I might try Guitar Hero, but only if I can get it cheap.

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Just so you know, the PS2 version is going to be gimped. The World Tour mode is more linear and has less features (no earning fans and cash). Also no downloadable content.

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I know, he told me that too. I don't really care, because I just like playing it for fun. And I've never played anything that had downloadable content before anyway, so it's not like I'll even notice it's missing. I'm very much a casual gamer.

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Boy I wish I'd known that before I bought it...

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Guitar Hero III is for the GH addicts who have really mastered the game, and I literally gave up at "Raining Blood." Raining Blood - the hardest song at the top difficulty - is the kind of ludicrously hard where you have to buckle down and do your homework to get through it. It's the kind of song that requires so much training to learn that you actually need go through it at slow moron-speed and pick through it note by note.

Oh sort of like what it would be like to actually learn the song in real life.... I get your point. But still its a really good choice.

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Not really, at least not for most songs. Generally, with most songs there's a rhythm you can pick up and get, say, the gist of the chorus or the verse, and thus your learning isn't really note-by-note. It's section-by-section, with some note-by-note stuff thrown in for the solo. And during the solo, you can always improv if you wish.

However, with "Raining Blood," it's one huge solo from start to finish, with very little repetition, that you must play precisely as written or FAILZZOR. Which isn't like most rock songs you learn in real life.

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That is weird especially as i don't recall Raining Blood as having a solo : )

But I have tried to learn it and well....my hands don't move that fast. hell if the guys who wrote the song don't pick up a guitar for a few weeks even they have to get back up to speed ; )

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Raining Blood is one large DEEDLYDEEDLYDEEDLYDEEDLY after the slow intro. And you have to get it perfectly right.

I gave it up.

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Ya know I felt the same way when I tried to play the song in real life. LOL.

But it was the part after the reverse gallups that got me. Of course sixteenth notes at around 212 bpm is no joke for most. But i can see that GHIII is sorta like doing the real thing. Yes I watched it on youtube : (

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Reading this comparison is a huge help to me. I'm getting a Wii for Christmas, and was thinking about buying Guitar Hero III. Since I've never even watched someone play GH that would probably have been a huge waste of money, as it sounds like III is not the GH for newbies.

Even if Rock Band does come out for the Wii (and I'm 86% sure I've heard rumblings of such on the internet) I probably won't get it because I don't play games with other people. RB seems like it requires being a multiplayer experience to be worthwhile.

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Since I've never even watched someone play GH that would probably have been a huge waste of money, as it sounds like III is not the GH for newbies.

I don't know. I have to admit, my first experience with Guitar Hero was II, but only for about forty five minutes of play at a party. A friend of mine then lent me GH III for a week or so, and I found it much more fun, especially at my skill level (medium). I agree with you that I wouldn't purchase Rock Band if I was going to play a game on my own. GH III becomes a punishing experience at the mid/last Hard tier songs (based on second hand experience, I'm nowhere near good enough to attempt them), but at medium? So much fun.

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I've played Guitar Hero once. I believe it was the original. I loved it! I really need a new system so I can get my own copy of one of the games. My nephew has a 360 and I thought about getting him RB for Xmas, but decieded against it because he would probably not like me a) basically living at his house so I could play Rock Band and b) never letting him play any of his shoot-em-up games.

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Getting through "Woman" on GH II seems to be kind of a rite of passage - something so difficult that people bond over that fucker.

Holy fuck yes. I remember the fury that was born of that one song on Hard. Oh there was fury. When I finally beat it, I honestly felt like I had accomplished something. My ability to regularly beat it on Hard mode now gives me warm feelings.

Although I admit to not having touched it on Expert yet. I'm picking my way through.

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You want challenge, but the song challenges in Guitar Hero feel less like a fun game and more like you're trying to escape a POW camp.

is it bad that when i saw this quote my first thought was:

coming up next on hogan's heros, hogan has to beat Woman on expert before Klink realizes the prisoners have a futuristic video game. in a side plotline, some random german dude tells klink he may be going to the russian front. all this and schultz tonight, on hogan's heros!

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I don't even own Rock Band and I downloaded Queen Bitch while at my friend's last night because I had to rock out to it.

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