f13.net

Got to the final tier of Expert on the PS2 version tonight with some friends. The boss matches, which you can skip - and totally suck ass - are the only upset. Here's a list of things improved:

1. Bigger frame window for hammer-ons/pull-offs. You can rip some shit up now and it feels perfect.
2. Animations - drummer drums with the tune perfectly, singers lips are synched, guitarists play the right shit. Crowd looks like it's out of Tony Hawk, fucking rad.
3. The tablature is so hot that it makes Harmonix look like amateurs.
4. What few covers there are, are of higher quality than Harmonix ever even REMOTELY achieved.
5. The quality of the recording is about twice as awesome sounding. Wish I was kidding. And this was the PS2 version. I can't wait to hear the uncompressed shit on blu-ray.
6. Characters are modeled at a quality Harmonix could never have achieved.
7. Stages are far more inventive.
8. The fretboard/gamescreen is cleaner, and far more accurate - that is, you're not going to misread this shit, particularly on a next-gen version.
9. Intangibles. I don't know how to say this. This game feels like it's crafted by a god. They've so vastly improved on the experience, that I don't even know how Rock Band will turn out anymore.

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(http://www.shacknews.com/images/image-o-matic.x?/images/sshots/Art/8624/8624_47223e56ba5ff.jpg)

If you wanted to know which to get.

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I'm getting the PS3 version for the following reasons:

1. I stopped caring about achievement points when I realized none of my friends were ever going to catchup or compete.
2. Hard Drive installation - this game has some pretty shitty load times on the 360 and PS2.
3. Uncompressed Audio. God bless them for wasting that blu-ray space with that shit.
4. Two of my friends are getting the 360 edition, while only one is getting the PS3 edition. None are getting the Wii edition. Extra guitars not available until February for 360/PS3 (the old 360 guitar is un-fucking-acceptable).
5. I'm going to play this enough that I could break any 360. I just don't trust that shit.
6. I won't be playing online that much. In person, this game owns face. I'd rather be playing Orange box and shit if I'm playing online.
and finally,
7. The 360 is hooked up to a smaller TV and isn't run through my JBL Studios.

You're so fucking wrong, it HURTS.

Fiancee suggested I get this title when the pc version comes out. Win!

Best Buy sent me a coupon if I buy the game so I might get the guitarless PS2 version since I already have the GH1 guitar.
And itll be nice for Tuesday when we have HAUNTED HOUSE AND GUITAR HERO DAY.

PS3? Don't say that, man, you're breaking my heart.

I want to play it day 1 with a friend, and I want to get the 360 version, which I already have a guitar for.

There won't be any additional PS3 guitars on day 1.

Mmm? If you're gonna say that, elaborate, or you're just a dick on the internet.

Like I said, I'll have access to two copies of the 360 edition, and really, I hated the original 360 guitar so much that it would be just like starting over for me anyway.

Every loading screen lasts for about 5 seconds or less on the 360 one. It's never taken long enough for me to say "Fuck, this is taking forever." I wouldn't know about the PS2 version, so I can't argue there.

Wow, got to the Gamestop at 12. Waited in line, got to the front. Tried to give us a 360 version. Don't own a 360, ordered a Wii. All the Wii versions are sold out, thus I am not rocking out to KoC right now. Said they were gonna call around tomorrow to other stores and see if they can get us one, but not hopeful.

Coop has different songs than Single player.

Coop is AMAZING.

Finished every song except for One. Finished Number of the Beast on our first try.

We were simply too tired to muscle through the end of One. We'd just played through the entire game. :oh_i_see:

Seriously though, the track list on Rock Band doesn't even compare.

Public Service Announcement:

It would seem that the Xbox 360 Les Paul Defective Rate is fucking Huge-Mongous. As in, tons and tons of broken 360 controllers out of the box. In fact, we had one. On the other hand, I can't find a single person saying the same thing about the PS3 one. Both of the PS3 versions we have were perfect.

Microsoft is so bad at making hardware, that it's rubbing off on the third party manufacturers.

That is all.

The track list on Rock Band destroys GH3.  Two words:  Who's Next.

Okay, so it isn't technically on the set list, but the mere fact that I can buy the whole album has already sold me.  Plus, I'm frankly tired of soloing shit in guitar hero.  Sure, the multiplayer is fun, but I'm looking for the cohesive whole that Rock Band has going.  Shit, I already bought a drum stool and mic stand in anticipation.

A game that only lets you play guitar?  Somehow that seems quaint to me now.

I just played bass and drums in Boston on the Rockband tour. The guitars are frickin sweet. Heftier, but thinner than GH guitars, the frets are awesome for sliding your hands (a little too good, I only played 3-4 times, and still didn't have the spacing down). The drums, on easy, are still fun (I liked Dani California on the drums). I will make Rockband mine, yes I will.

Which isn't to say GH3 isn't mine (I'm picking up my preorder, hopefully, this afternoon), but rockband is just fun, without being occassionally masochistic.

What can I say about F13?  It's really my favorite website in the entire universe!  I love the irreverent banter and sly wit these keyboard jockeys produce.  And I especially love the staff, they're AWESOME.

My 360 guitar hasn't given me any problems yet, although I haven't put it through its paces either.  I'm about to see how far I can get in one sitting, though.

If anyone is up for some online play, let me know.

Also, on the 360 it sometimes loads so fast I can't read the little quotes.

Having played the Wii GH3 guitar and the Rockband guitar for the 360 (on the Rockband tour) now, I have to say the rockband guitar feels better, like less of a toy/controller. The GH3 one is great, but it's still too much Fisher Price for me.

What can I say about F13?  It's really my favorite website in the entire universe!  I love the irreverent banter and sly wit these keyboard jockeys produce.  And I especially love the staff, they're AWESOME.

I laugh at all the people who wander in wanting to pick up a copy. A copy of a game they KNEW they were going to buy.

FFS, just reserve. it's not hard.

/rantoff

Alright, i'm on hour 10 of straight GH3. Co-op campaign was beat on Expert, except for One, which I had to do on Hard.

And i'm on the final tier on single player Expert.

It's official - they've made the game harder. The hardest tier is INSANE. Raining Blood is fucking ridiculous, Mark of the Beast is ALMOST beatable, and... well, One on Expert is fine except for the solo.

Fuck. FUCK.

I had to stop at Tier 7 when my arm started failing.  I'll take another stab tomorrow.

Oh, and Cliffs of Dover?

FUCK YOU TOO.

Fuck. FUCK. This is going to push me to practice and practice and practice. Stupid game.

Thoughts from someone who's gone a bit more than halfway through hard on single player on the XBox360 (Hey, I want to unlock songs in an efficient, quick manner for my roommates):

* The load times on the 360 aren't even remotely annoying to me. To be fair, I haven't seen the PS3's load times on Guitar Hero 3.

* Got lucky on the Gee-tar, I guess.  It's working just fine.  The strum bar is a bit stiff, but that's about all I can really say that's remotely bad about it. I've played some Rock Band, so I've quasi-familiar with the Rock Band stratocaster. While the Rock Band guitar looks nicer and has some nice heft to it, the Rock Band guitar also took a bit getting used to with respect to the finger spacing.

* Apparently some of the bundles coming out of Walmarts are bundled with wired guitars instead of wireless guitars.  However, they appear to be a bit cheaper too, as a result.
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/10/28/consumer-check-make-sure-wal-marts-guitar-hero-3-bundle-is-one/
http://kotaku.com/gaming/guitar-hero-iii/wal+mart-version-of-gh-iii-comes-with-old-guitars-315952.php

* I'm a sucker for the new unlockable "fantasy" guitars, some of the designs are pretty cool. While it's easy to take potshots at the lounge-act style drumming animation for the drummer or the scary scary face of the singer, I really like the fact that this time around they got the singer's mouth to clearly move in sync with the lyrics (I dunno, maybe I was paying more attention this time), as well as the fun little in-between tier videos, adds something to the game experience and actually tells a story with respect to the other Guitar Hero franchises.

* My roommates are a bit leary about the battle modes.  They were traumatized from playing a lot of the original Guitar Hero 1 multiplayer, when there was only one fixed difficulty level for the two players. I tend to play songs on hard/expert, while they tend to play more hard/medium.  As a result, I tended to beat up on them pretty badly. As a result, when Guitar Hero 2 came out with cooperative mode, we all jumped all over that, being the only way we played.

EDIT: and oh, for those of you that were bummed about the lack of offline coop quickplay in Guitar Hero 3, apparently they patched it in: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3164008  Haven't actually tried it yet, all I've done is single player so far.

* I'm going to reserve judgment on the songlist and the entirety of the boss battles until y'know, I've gotten close to finishing it.

Well, if the Morello and Slash battles suck, guess what? Lucifer sucks too. No, we haven't beaten One yet. Granted we've played it 3 times. Marathon sessions leading up to 1 (once through coop, twice through single player now), don't particularly leave your hands in good shape.

Got the PS3 version around midnight last night from my 2nd closest EB.  Interestingly, I tried the closest one earlier in the day to reserve for that evening, and while they had every other version still available, all their PS3 copies were already reserved.  Happily, the next one (I've got like 5 EBs/Gamestops within about 5 blocks of me) was able to reserve one.  When I showed up at about 12:10 (line gone), the PS3 pile was much smaller than any of the others.

I started playing on expert, and I was doing REALLY poorly...  Tried calibrating lag, it didn't help...  Finally figured it out, when audio is going through HDMI as well as the picture, it's got significant lag.  Hooked up the PS2 AV cable I had there and resumed playing with that, much better.  :)  Basically breezed through (I think only the battle with Slash took more than one try) to the last tier, and hit the hard stuff.  That last tier is tough, reminds me of GH1, BATM and CFH level difficulty...  I'll get through them eventually, but, it was going to take lots of work, so...

On to hard.  Breezed through to the final tier again, got through all of that but Raining Blood easily, and then on to the final boss battle.  The Devil Went Down to Georgia was one of the two (the other being Through the Fire and the Flames) songs I was most looking forward to in GH3.  It's just as much fun as I expected.  I didn't really mind the fact that it took me a few tries to get through the boss battle, since I was having fun playing the music.  Amusing glitch: Fail the battle, go through the boss battle tutorial, then come back.  The boss is now playing on easy, not hard.  Not that it really helps.  Anyways, finally beat that, and then got to do TTFATF as part of the credits.  I liked the stage they used for it, and the song is great, as expected.  Amusingly, I was kinda annoyed by the fact that I had to ignore the credits to play, because having worked at Treyarch / Activision, I wanted to see which people I knew were on there, and so had to watch them through the menu, later.

One other glitch I ran into on one song was that the guitar part, even though I was playing, totally cut out for a while on one song.  Not sure what caused that...

Online play is interesting, but getting a game going is a pain...  The game doesn't play nicely with strict (type 3) NATs, and at first, I almost always failed to get in a game.  Adjusted my configuration so that it was moderate (type 2) and it was able to do better, but most quick match attempts still failed.  Hosting a game worked, and trying to join worked better after that though.  Ran into one glitch while playing a co-op game...  My partner got star power "stuck" on...  The multiplier meter would keep jumping back and forth between x4 (for me) and x8 (for him).  Not sure what caused that...  I doubt he saw it, as we did activate star power again one time later in the song.

The link account functionality on the official site for the PS3 version at least is totally broken at the moment...  Can't link my game account right now, so I can't really comment on what the site has...

As for the guitar, I like the feel of it.  Had some trouble with misstrums, but I moved the receiver, and the problems I'd experienced went away.  The detachable neck seems like a nice bonus when taking it somewhere.

Overall, it's lots of fun, and a great addition to the series.  The boss battles are tough, but since you can skip them after the third try, they're not really that bad, and give a nice sense of accomplishment when you do beat them.  I recommend picking it up if you haven't already.

If I wanted GH3 PS2 or a boxed GH3 of various forms with Guitars I could have had them at 1AM at Wal Mart.  But I passed.
(Came home to find out on email my friend bought GH3 anyhow. So I cant wait till 2,80s, and 3 are on the budget list.)

Seriously, any major release is better gotten at Target or Walmart as opposed to EBStop.

If you are gonna preorder shit do it online and let it arrive at your damned door.

Alright, Cliffs of Dover is in the bag. Three more songs to go until the encore. My new training regiment will be to play the section 'Mosh 1' on Raining Blood at Slow speed, slowly training my fingers to not be assholes and fight against me. From there, we move it up to full speed, until I can get decently through it. From there, we move onto 'Mosh 2' - if I can get those two handled, I'm pretty sure I can finish up Raining Blood.

Then I get to work on the solo for One, which hopefully the Raining Blood practice will help with. Then it's just a few tweaks to my Number of the Beast playing, and I should be rolling well.

I haven't had any problems with the 360 wireless guitar whatsoever, it's been a real trooper. any mistakes i've had with it are from my own tired fingers. It's still running strong on the two AA batteries it came with, and this is after 12+ hours of usage now.

Do you have to unlock songs in co-op career to play them in co-op quickplay? Or is it like GH2, once a song was beaten, it was unlocked for all modes of quickplay?

Honestly, I don't know. I work funky hours, so I bought the game, played single player, and then went to bed.  Haven't even cracked a peek at Multiplayer yet. I'll try to remember to check when I get home.

As an by-the-way, it looks like with XBox360 players, they are having problems entering their code that links the Xbox Live with the Guitarhero.com portal. It keeps on telling some people "Invalid Token".  I'm aware of this because I'm part of this group, so...  No clue if PS3 and Wii players have the same problem. But hey hey, chalk this one up to launch issues.

There are songs that only unlock through Co-Op. Now, as far as Quickplay competition goes, it seems like you unlocking them on either side is fine.

Strokes, Bloc Party, etc are Coop Only.
Cliffs of Dover, Paint it Black, etc. are Single player only.

That's to say, you only unlock them in those modes.

1. Cut a hole in the internet...
The correct term is throne. Always made me chuckle.

Ah, that's not too bad then. I had read that if you wanted to play ANY song in co-op quick play, you needed to beat it in co-op career, and then you can only play it in quickplay at the difficulty you beat it with in career.

If it's just the co-op only and single player only songs that do this, that's not so bad.

Is there any reason that I shouldn't go out after work and buy a PS3 with GH3?

The moment has arrived and I need either to be encouraged or discouraged.

No, there isn't. Get a 60GB while you can.

And not an 80g?

Because of bc or what?

If GH3 is the only game you're buying it for, I'd just wait another couple of weeks for the PC version.

I almost bought a console just for Guitar Hero.  The announcement that GH3 was going to be on the PC came just in the nick of time.    :awesome_for_real:

Correct. 80GB is software. I would trade 20GB for hardware BC any day of the week. You get a free game with the 60GB at EBGames now. Heavenly Sword can be that game. Also, you get the 5 free Blu-Ray Deal.

R&CF not available as the free game?

Of course not. It's 6 days old.

Samwise: Honestly, I'll probably end up with both.  I've been milking this PS2 for about five years, and it's time to upgrade - the fact that the PS2 version has no downloadable content provides me with the excuse to get a PS3.


I assume that the PS3 still allows you to drop any SATA drive into it, so I could settle for 60g. 

The bc is important to me - hell, I still play my PS1 JetMoto 2 disk on the PS2.


Allright, sold. 

Now to resist the urge to leave work early...

I agree. I was momentarily very weak between GH3, GTA4 and Mass Effect....the moment passed. Plenty of great pc gaming to get me through until 2015 when Bioware finally makes the PC version ;)

Got it for my 360 yesterday and yeah I think it kicks ass.  Wireless is so much nicer.

Now loved GH II but I suck at it, having just started scratching hard and finding it very tough.  I'm ripping through medium, just shy of battling Slash.  The boss battles are kind of lame, but it's a pretty small part of the game.  I like the stages and the events during encores.  The fretboard is easier to read at least on the characters I tried; some GH II fretboards gave me trouble seeing some notes.  The track list is a pile of awesome.

Hammer-on/pull-offs are definitely way easier.  I really struggled doing them before but I do much better on them now.

Rock Band is neat, but I wonder if it's trying to do too much.  I don't really have much interest since I would never get enough people together at once to make full use of it.  Plus I don't want to do any damn karaoke, so drums are about the only extra thing I might do.

So... has anyone else figured out how to play against your friends without some scrub joining your game first?  Activision's automated phone support has exactly zero information on the game, and there's nothing on their website regarding playing specific people.

This game rocks. I'm destroying medium before I move to hard/expert, to get back into the groove and get some cash... I've got lag through the stupid HDMI port/1080p/progressive scan/whatever -- it's really really annoying. My PS2 which is also hooked up works just fine as long as it's not in progressive. Boo.

It's also like playing the entire soundtrack to dazed and confused (http://www.amazon.com/Dazed-Confused-1993-Various-Artists/dp/B000002L1V/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3/105-3250744-0754011?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1193713009&sr=8-3). There are what, 4 songs from that CD on here?

I had to set my delay on lag to 37ms.

The most annoying part is that they didn't move the actual bar at the bottom -- they just adjusted where the 'valid' hitbox is (to below the actual bar). This really blows, since I can no longer line up and adjust visually, I have to do it by sound alone now. It's set at 50ms for me, so that I can actually hit the strum when I hear the notes and have it count. Things with constant strum (barracuda) still mess me up occasionally since it seems I'm actually closer to the next button by time I hit the first one -- if I don't count, I sometimes miss the trailing notes on the end.

Their calibrate lag thing is confusing and sucky too. If the clicks and the circle don't line up, they don't make it clear what you're expected to sync on -- when it hits the center of the bulls eye or when the sound is heard. I had to just guess and increase it until it seemed right.

I synced on circle.

Finally finished up Hard single player. Wow is tier 7 and 8 not fun to play. It doesn't help that with a few exceptions, I'm not crazy about the musical selections either. Cursed a fair amount playing the final song. Still haven't fine tuned when's the best time to dick over the boss.

Now that I've finished (Hard anyways) the whole setlist of Guitar Hero 3, I definitely think the people I live with and my own musical tastes has me more excited on playing Rock Band. The songs that we all enjoyed playing were songs of moderate difficulty that at least one of us enjoy listening to.  Out of the higher tier songs, I figure the songs that will get some play around here will be limited.  Probably stuff like Cherub Rock, Pride and Joy, and maybe 3's and 7's. Maybe Muse's song, but my timing on the long strumming parts is off.  Probably need to see it multiple times to get that down.  It doesn't help that the whole house is a bit strumming impaired.

Anyone found Bonus Tracks that are really enjoyable?  So far, the only one's I've bothered to unlock are I'm in the Band, In Love, Radio Song, Ruby, and She Bangs the Drums  :rimshot:.  I'm blowing the rest of the money on characters and sweet sweet guitars.  :awesome_for_real:

Oh, speaking of money/unlocks; I finished Hard, and on a lark, played a single song on Medium.  Yep, you get money for Medium, even if you finished the song on a higher difficulty.  You get money for songs completed in Coop Career too.  I THINK the breakdown is 900 for 5 stars in Medium, 1200 for 5 stars in Hard, and 1800 for 5 stars in Expert.  I think someone earlier in the thread says you get money for songs completed in Easy now too.

Speaking of unlocks: are some of the unlockable character's alternative costumes (not styles) contigent on the completion of a difficulty?  I'd elaborate, but I'm not sure if that constitutes a spoiler or not.

I'm fairly agnostic about systems to get. I went into a devil's agreement with roommates that everyone would buy a system; I ended up having to buy the XBox360. As someone who's interested in Mass Effect and has no friends who own a PS3 but have multiple friends who own XBoxes, I'm not complaining.

Make sure you try out Impulse.  I think it's really good.

YES, RAINING BLOOD ON EXPERT COMPLETE

SUCK MY DICK, SECTION MOSH 1

Alright, I beat it on Expert, got my Through the Fire and Flames on.

Goodness gracious.

I made it all the way through the game on one set of AA batteries!

I guess that bodes well for the quality of the wireless guitar... EXCEPT FOR THE DETACHABLE NECK THAT MAKES BUTTONS RANDOMLY NOT WORK

dumbest idea ever

First, let me say that the new PS3 is solid.  Having only played GH3 on it, I can't comment too much, but the machine and its native OS are streamlined and intuitive.  When I walked out of Best Buy, I felt like I had robbed the place.  $650 netted a 60gb PS3 with all bells and whistles, a second sixaxis controller, GH3 with guitar and 5 blu rays.  Plus the outrageous sales tax.  I was expecting to pay closer to $800 and get less.  The setup was simple and, despite what I've read, I was able to navigate the menu system lickity split. 

Guitar Hero 3.  It's not revolutionary.  Thankfully.  That had already been accomplished, and the big changes that were made were the bad ones.  Boss Battles stick out like a sore thumb.  They are annoying interruptions to an otherwise seamless game.  They aren't unenjoyable, but they are gimmicky.  It felt like trying to play Guitar Hero while someone was moving the guitar, breeding swine and had set the curtains ablaze in order to distract me with smoke.  No wait, that's exactly what Boss Battles are: distractions.  And it makes sense, because the last time I saw a battle of the bands, the singer from Crotch Rocket was aiming a fire hose at the guitarist from Fracas as he tried to play a solo. 

What?

The tabbing is so much better.  As a result, the songs are more difficult, even on the lower tiers.  It's nice to be challenged right out of the gate.  The song selection isn't great, but I'm not complaining.  I really want to see what will be available to download.  One thing that struck me about the song list - a lot of very repetitive material.  When I finished 'Story of my Life' I commented that we had just heard the most repetitive song ever written.  As if irony and fate had conspired to kick me in the soul, 'Rock and Roll All Nite' was the encore. 

The guitar itself is a nice upgrade.  Detachable neck and dongle aside, the 'feel' is much better.  The buttons aren't as loose as my PS2 guitars and take a little getting used to.  I do have a small complaint.  I am college educated.  I managed to set up the PS3 without a hitch.  I was able to navigate the menus and bring it online.  Why did it take me over twenty minutes to figure out how to get that damned guitar to talk to the PS3?  I'm just saying.  Maybe hiding the instructions behind the stickers was a bad idea. Thank you for making me look like a complete dumbass.

I give it 5 stars. 

Guitar Hero is a fun game.

However every change they made was for the worse. That is failure.

Plus GH2 had a better set list.

First question!  Do you play games?

Second question!  Do you listen to music?

You really think it is harder? I fucking SUCK (haven't even finished the medium tour on GHII yet), and I have 5 starred every easy song I have played so far on the first try.

God the boss battles are clownshoes.

I'm not planning on playing this game, but I like the look of the GH2 setlist more than the GH3 one. There are more really horrific AOR numbers in GH3, and when it comes to the guitar bits War Pigs > Paranoid, The Trooper > Number Of The Beast. Not that there aren't some great songs in GH3 (Cult Of Personality, Holiday In Cambodia) but there are some even more awesome ones in GH2 (YYZ, Misirlou, Bad Reputation). Of course, I guess it comes down to how well or poorly they've set them up.

When are they bringing out Synth Hero so that I can try my hand at aping Rick Wakeman, Richard Wright, Klaus Schulze, Ralf Hutter, Richard Barbieri and Billy Currie? I could totally cope with playing the keys the right way up. :)

I found easy to be very easy, with 5 stars almost the whole way, except goddamn Raining Blood; can't get better than 4 so far.  Even got gold stars on some which I couldn't do before.  But I've found medium to be more challenging than in GH II.  No fails but even some early tracks I'm going to find hard to get 5*.

Yeah, it's harder.  I started on Hard, and it wasn't too bad (disclaimer: I've beaten Expert on GH1 and Gh2).

On GH3, I'm getting stopped (and I mean, I need to go back to practice and break the song down) on Holiday in Cambodia for Expert. I've dicked around with practice, it's highly unlikely unless I devote a truckload of time into mastering the solos, I have no real chance of taking down the trickier songs of tier 7&8. After Coop on hard is finished, I'm probably going to just bust the unlock code. I've made my peace that I probably don't have the chops currently to clear Expert.   :oops:

Also, looks like there's a glitch with the Wii version: http://www.nintendowiifanboy.com/2007/10/30/rockers-report-guitar-hero-iii-dolby-pro-logic-ii-is-missing/

Btw, how is the online play?  Am I going to look forward to just getting challenged by guys who want to play One and Through the Fire and Flames over and over?  :rock_hard:

I still think that the GH3 tabbing forces you to be more dexterous.  That may or may not translate to difficulty for everyone, but for my stubby fingers it does.
 
That said, I think the tabbing in GH3 makes more sense, so that lessens the difficulty in a certain sense.


I have to admit I was a very tiny bit pleased when I kicked Slash's ass.

But that was probably a hygiene thing.

After playing the crap out of raining blood and one on expert...(so fun and so hard)

I want Guitar Hero:  Metal Edition.   


Tier 1

Judas Priest - The Ripper (Sad Wngs of Destiny)
In Flames - Gyroscope  (Whoracle)
Hypocricy - A Coming Race (The Final Chapter)
Witchfinder General - Witchfinder General  (Death Penalty)
Black Sabbath - Into the Void (Master of Reality)

Tier 2
Celtic Frost - The Usurper   (To Mega Therion)
Manilla Road - Crystal Logic (Crystal Logic)
Gorguts - Testimonial Ruins (From Wisdom to Hate)
Supuration - Through the Transparent Partition   (The Cube)
Nevermore - Insignificant  (Dead Heart in a Dead World

Tier 3
Fireaxe - Food for the Gods  (Food for the Gods)
Angel Witch - Atlantis (Angel Witch)
At the Gates - Terminal Spirit Disease (Terminal Spirit Disease)
Candlemass - Dark Reflections  (Tales of Creation)
King Crimson - Red (Red)

Tier 4
Voivod - Forgotten in Space  (Killing Technology)
Mercyful Fate - Descreation of Souls (Don't Break the Oath)
Bolt Thower - Armageddon Bound  (For Victory)
Iron Maiden - Montsegur  (Dance of Death)
Metallica - Orion  (Master of Puppets)

Tier 5
Coroner - Nosferatu   (R.I.P.)
Blind Guardian - Another Holy War (Imaginations from the Other Side)
Atheist - Unquestionable Presence (Unqestionable Presence)
Children of Bodom - Lake Bodom (Something Wild)
Prong - Beg to Differ (Beg to Differ)

Tier 6
Slayer - Cleanse the Soul (South of Heaven)
The Haunted - Trespass  (The Haunted Made me Do it)
Symphony X - The Turning  (The Odyssey)
Deicide - Revocate the Agitator (Legion)
Morbid Angel - Rapture (Covenant)


Would be my dream.

That last tier would be so evil. 

Which game is the one that has Wrathchild? Is that GH3, Rock Band or something else?

Edit: Rock Band would make sense because the bass part is kick ass.

That's the 80's expansion.  Wrathchild and Electric Eye are definitely the high points on that one.

Raining Blood and One on Hard kick my ass.

It sucks.

What I want to know is where is dueling banjos for their shitty-ass boss battle? It MIGHT even redeem them, make them more entertaining. MAYBE.

Also, I hooked up my component and switched to 1080i. All of a sudden my lag vanished. It's either HDMI, 1080p, or something else. Blah. Good enough for now.

Finally finished my first career tier (easy, heh) .No failures (other than bosses), and 5 stars on almost every song the first time through.  Beat Lou on my 2nd try, and somehow made it through TTFATF in one shot (holy FUCK! I can't imagine it on expert). I am slowly starting to learn to incorporate HOPOs when I see them, but I still fuck up about 1/2 the time and either strum them anyway or forget to strum the note afterwards.

I hate that as you progress through the career, the songs tend toward bad metal. The driving impetus for me is to unlock/play new songs that I have heard and enjoyed, not to show how 1337 I am shredding some 1 hit wonder done by guys with long hair and leather pants.

Couldn't agree more!  I also like learning about new songs and bands, but the only song I've found so far is the Priestess tune.  I also don't have anyone to play through coop with, so that's like 5 more songs I can't unlock.

dragonforce angerfies me.  I get worse and worse at it each time I play.  I can only get through the beginning one out of four tries.  And then always lose around 82-85%.

No FUCKING DOUBT!

I finally got this (PC version).  At a $10 discount, no less, because Best Buy has a policy that they give you $10 if they can't give you the thing you ordered inside of 5 minutes, and it took three of their best and brightest 12 minutes to figure out what I had ordered and bring it to me.   

:awesome_for_real:

(edit) Finished it on Medium.  Boss battles weren't as bad as I feared, but they'd be a lot better without the "mash a button before you can play again" attacks.

You finished it in 3 hours? I may have to rethink this one!

I have 5* on everything in easy.  Getting 5* on Raining Blood was harder than 5* on most Medium songs I found.  Medium is clear and I have 5* on about 75% of them.

But damn Hard is, HARD!  I have passed a whopping 2 songs on tier 1, with crappy scores.  Is there a certain way I should practice the fingering?  I'm sure there's something better than my mash buttons frantically technique.  Or should I just not go here until I can 5* Medium?

If you don't plan on having people over to play it, I wouldn't get it.

My gripe with GH3 is similar to the other versions I have played. The "hard" songs are either just so damn spastic or crappy heavy metal that I just don't like them enough to really get good at them. It kinda sucks that the higher you get the worse the songs are it usually turns into a double whammy for me.

Rock bands choices seem at least a bit more consistant but will have to see how it plays.

I didn't expect it to take long to finish it on Medium.  Finishing it on Hard will probably take me the rest of my life.   :grin:

Also, there are all those bonus tracks and whatnot.

My fiancee totally loved me playing GTA:SA, just because she liked the soundtrack (and grudgingly admitted it had some decent humor). So I'm hoping it'll get her interested a bit. She'll never be a gamer, but I like to have a few things she's interested in.

What an odd night. Bought GH3 (and the EQ2 expansion) and hit the bar for the blues jam. Learned a few new tricks, two of my favorite guitarists were playing and the house band was an import from the Capital District, a decent blues band (they normally play Allmans stuff).

So I get home, install GH3. While it's installing, I pick up my (real) Gibson and cement in some of the new tricks, as well as a new rhythym chording line for Whipping Post I lifted from one of the guys, I'm now almost 100% on Whipping Post (irl, heh).

Game is installed, I plug in the controller and launch the game. An aside about the controller, as has been mentioned, definitely Fisher-Price material. But for an $80 package, it'd have been nice if they at least would have removed the 360 branding so it wasn't quite so obvious the PC controllers are last year's 360 controller overstock. Hey, at least I paid $20 less than you console folks, I guess.

Work through the tutorial because I've never played GH before. Seems simple enough, though a bit finicky. After the tutorial, I jump into practice mode. Looking at the track list, I figure I'll  try a tune I already know. This is my first GH3 mistake.

Talk Dirty to Me. Fun tune to play, I've known it on guitar since it came out (I'm old). I figure since I know it, I'll try it on expert. What a mess. So I try on Hard. Then on Medium. Finally, I can get 80% on Easy if I ignore the guitar and just pretend I'm playing a video game with music in the background, because otherwise I fuck up.

On harder modes, the clownschool attempt to distill an entire fretboard into 5 buttons vexes the shit out of me. On easy mode, the rhythym parts are fucked up...sometimes you're playing the drum part, sometimes the bass part, sometimes the guitar, and sometimes just some basic rhythym barely connected to the song. I did try tweaking the visual lag thing, and it seemed a bit better, that's when I started getting 80% on easy. But whenever I let down my guard and started actually getting into the songs I'd bomb. I had to keep seperating the song from the game, it was really annoying, actually.

I ran through the first four songs in practice mode and got them all to 80% or so. My left hand hurt. It might actually be good for some grip strength training, or it might just be a shitty ergonomic design on the guitar, dunno yet.  I'd say the single worst part is the right hand stuff, though. I'm a very syncopated guitarist, I like to play around the beat. There were some sections, especially the triplets in Barracuda, where just hitting the beat rather than playing the figure was super bothersome, because it made me feel like all those shitty wannabe metal guitarists in the 80s that couldn't syncopate a rhythym and would distill any song into simple downbeats.

Any tips from GH vets? I'd be especially interested in what any of the musicians here have to say. I was pretty upset at how difficult it was simply because I had to treat it as playing tetris rather than just grooving to some tunes. Much easier to just play actual guitar imo.

Honestly, I think that people that actually play guitar have a harder time of it than people that don't, and comically enough, it's their musical inclination and habits (as in that syncopation example you gave) that get in the way - I may not have your chops on the real deal, but I definitely ran into a lot of similar problems.  The best tip I can offer is to watch the screen instead of listening to the music (as tragic as that is) and play stuff you're not familiar with first.  Also, start with medium instead of easy - only go back to easy to pad your career score after you're done with medium.

I've got 10 songs left on Expert (not counting The Store, or song packs).  The tier I hit now is causing me to fail some, but challenge is good.  Last weekend I finally beat GH2 on Expert.  Once I got past Psychobilly Freakout, I sling-shotted (shat?)  through the next 3 songs, then only Institutionalized gave me any real trouble.  I got past Psychobilly Freakout, by deciding to only hit half the notes in two sections, instead of scrambling to hit all of the notes, and hitting 10%.  Crazy how it worked out.

It is a lot easier for me to hit the hammers and pull-offs in GH3.  The layout sometimes has too much sparkle motion, but I'm just so used to GH2.  I'll get over that.  Aside from the initial loading of the 360 version, the songs load up insane fast, like 3-5 seconds.  Nice improvement over GH2 360.  I do like how the notes are laid out in GH3, it seems much more ...  natural than some of the GH2 spreads.  It'll take me awhile to get used to all of the 3-note chords.  Fast transitions between xx x's, and x xx 's, into xxx's. 

Tier 1 songs really suck.  Tier 2 is not much better.  GH2 the boring songs were spread out a bit better.  Story of My Life... god it drags.  Rock and Roll All Night, has 3 sections where you sit there doing nothing.  Not fun.  Tier 3 and up, great fun.  Knights of Cydonia is awesome to play on Expert.  My favorite song layout so far.  The main riff in Paint it Black is sweet too.

Standard technique when it guarantees success. Did this in GH1 on problem songs also.

Freya!

As a guitarist, the thing you'll have to accept in order to like GH at all is that there is no way in hell that playing a thing with one "string" and five frets (four if you cheat and capo the top one, which I haven't done yet but am sometimes tempted to try) is going to be like playing a guitar with six strings and umpteen frets.  In fact, it wouldn't even be possible to play most of the GH songs on such an instrument.  So you just have to kind of let that go and play make believe.

On the other hand, I don't think I'd be quite as enthralled with Guitar Hero if I was a remotely professional-quality guitarist in real life.  Half the fun is being able to briefly delude myself into thinking that I'm actually playing the song.  The fact that you can play these songs for reals means that's not going to be so much of a thrill for you.

If you capo the green button, it'll break all your chords that don't include it.

Also, I just realized that I love playing that stupid Pat Benatar song.  I hate myself so much.

Ahhh, is that it?  I'd pretty well convinced myself that you could keep a note pressed down indefinitely as long as you didn't need to play anything lower than it, but I hadn't verified that it worked for chords too.  Good to know.

EXACTLY what you have to do.  I got into trouble on Raining Blood, Ace of Spades, etc because I can play the whole songs through on guitar and they have gimped the chord progression and either added parts that aren't in the real guitar version to make the game "harder" or they completely ignore other aspects of the rythm.  I find myself playing the real song instead of what the game wants me to play and I end up failing or screwing up my score.  So I just look at the pretty colors and try and make my fingers do that regardless of what they really want to do.

You're out of your mind. Do you sing along and get into it, or are you just gaming it? Rock and Roll All Night is an absolute blast. The sections where you aren't playing are for singing, headbanging and throwing horns.
Well, I was able to put some more time in last night. Finished the initial practice tunes and tried a medium tune, which was kinda hectic but I got an 82% or something on it. Mostly it's just getting used to the buttons and translating the onscreen images to frets. I'm getting mid-high 90s on easy now, so I'm getting the hang of it. As Selby mentions, the toughest parts are where they really stray from the actual guitar part.

It's still a hell of a lot of fun, even though it's kinda silly compared to actually learning the tunes and just playing them. Talked to a couple librarians that play, we might have it set up with the projector at work for the xmas party this year.

GH3 is at it's most fun when you have a group of people playing it and taking turns imo. Add some alcohol to the mix and it's a riot.

I have zero chops as a musician, and am not very good at any of the GH stuff myself, but one thing I found is that for songs you know, do not play on easy or medium. The technique they use for "making it easier" is to blow over actual notes, and if you actually know the song, you want to actually play those notes--which is the wrong thing to do.

The only difficulties where I can even begin to play a song I know decently is on hard, and I --really-- wish they had an interim difficulty level where you had 4 active frets, but more accuracy in the notes played--I can't get to that 5th fret very consistently, but on hard I still try to play changes that don't actually show up on the screen.

This is my first GH game, so the progression from easy to medium is really good, because it's easing the control scheme barrier by starting with 3 then 4 buttons. From a strictly gaming standpoint, I think they did an excellent job with the difficulty level progression.

All the GHs do that, from Easy to Hard, they add a new fret button, and add more notes/chords. GH3 tends to be easier in the early tiers at the difficulty of its predecessors, and much harder on the last tier (speaking from my challenges with Hard). I'm not impressed. If they really wanted to give the grognards a challenge, they should have added a bonus "Legendary" or "Heroic" tier for the schild's of the world. Heck, most people I know can barely get by on medium. I'm considered the "expert" and I can't even complete hard in GH3, unlike the last 3 games.

Or they could just send someone to your house to stomp your cock while you play.  :oh_i_see:

The jump from medium to hard is a lot bigger than the jump from easy to medium.

 :oh_i_see: <- me playing on Easy

 :awesome_for_real: <- me playing on Medium

 :uhrr: <- me playing on Hard

I'm down to One and Raining Blood in Hard.  I hit those nutso sections and the hook is just too fast to survive them.

I can beat nearly everything on Expert, but in an attempt to unlock all that crazy expensive crap in the game's store I spent some time playing through on hard.  Raining Blood dominated me several times, so I think I quit.  Also, their remake of Devil Went down to Georgia made me cry.

I've played guitar for about 15 years.  Used to teach guitar, saxophone, and theory.  Play the piano a bit, and I can sing.  And I didn't have any of the adjustment problems in coming to GH that some of you are talking about.  There are a few songs where they screw up the tab, like in the chorus to "Killing in the Name" in GH2, but I've found very little inconsistency between what you hear coming out of the speakers and what you play.  I haven't played GH3 yet, but from the YouTube videos of "Raining Blood" on expert, I'd say it's pretty accurate tab.

You're totally my new hero.

I can play Raining Blood on bass.  :oh_i_see:

[edit] Actually, y'know what Slayer song is the hardest of all (on guitar)?

Behind the Crooked Cross. I can fake the more melodic riffs like Raining Blood OK, but that song wears me out...Despite it being slower than the average Slayer song. Lots of downpicking.

I can play Blackbird!

That's the skill I miss the most, I used to have sick downpicking skills. I can live without the fast scalar or sweeping stuff, but I do miss the downpicking.

We used to play Master of Puppets almost double-time compared to the album version, downpicked. So much heavier than alternate picking, though I fake it ok.

Hey, back on GH3 for a sec.  Does anyone know if the USB XBox controllers work with the PC version?  I'd assume so, but I'd like to be reasonably sure before putting money down for one.

According to the GameTap review, you're good to go.

From GameTap (http://www.gametap.com/home/read/article/8a2509011560458c011562d8bc1f13c2)

Apparently even the wireless controller for the XBox 360 works with the PC

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/49827

THe controller included with the pc game is still branded with a 360 logo, so I'd assume they're compatible (and all 360 stuff thus far has been afaik).

What I want to know is why can't I play GH1 and GH2 on my PS3 with the GH3 guitar? :(

because god hates you.

I play guitar as well and I find that the tab on expert is pretty close to the real thing. Granted you don't learn to play guitar from GH, you do learn guitar pacing and various techniques, at least in theory.

For example, you learn to break down parts in a way guitarist do, like I play intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, breakdown, solo, chorus outro, random wankery. You learn that in GH and if you know the verse or chorus you can play it without looking at the screen which is kinda neat.

I also like that common guitar techniques like power chords, scales, chords, bar chords and arpegios are all there, in there own dumbed down form. For example all the metal style songs have there share of power chord progressions with palm muting gallops and silly solos with arpegios or long bended notes, Etc. Then the blues style songs have their scale style note progressions and bar chord stuff and normal chord progressions.
so the theoretical techniques are all present, minus tremelo bar usage in the "floating" sense. I really wish the bar was floating so you can bend up or down, and I really really really wish that the tremelo options had forced tremelo forms, so sometimes you can bend it like you want, and sometimes that bend had to get to a certain pitch, and how close you were to it and how long you held that specific pitch increased your score accordingly.

Also, and I know this is kinda weird, but I would like some chords to be held and consequtive down strums would play the next note int he chord in a string pattern.... so for example, you have in succession, green-yellow-blue, that would look like a bar chord pretty much if you laid your fingers in that oder. You often get chords like this when you play.

If you got that note progression, and you caught that green-yellow-blue made that chord shape, I think that you should be able to fret that chord then do 3 down strokes and get those notes out of that chord. This would just be another way that GH could emulate actual guitar techniques. This could either be a completely unecessary but a fun way to add some depth or they could designate sections that play this way, (like the arpegio sections that are notated differetnly) and they could even give you some sort of multiplier or something for playing specific sections like that.

Last, I would love if the next GH has some fx pedal that you can attach that had multiple little pedals on it so you can have different fx and sections of the song would call out the required effect needed. the pedal can have like 2 normal pedals and a wah thingie... now I am just dreaming...     

I had this same thought when I first started playing.  It seemed less like Guitar Hero and more like Robot Guitar Player 2000 because you had to play the exact same way every time through a song.  It would be much more enjoyable with even a little bit of freedom, like the ability to get notes out of a chord as you mentioned.  But even that small change would affect the game mechanics in such a way that the follow-the-skittles fret board would be useless.  It would require a more guided and less precise visual cue system.  Freestyle Hero?

You know....good point. Part of my problem is that I'm considered a sloppy guitarist from a metal standpoint, always have been, because I'm a 'feel' player and play behind the beat alot. I'm used to improvising the hell out of things, I blame my ADHD :P No fills, no extra triplet strums, no playing in swing 8ths, just Robot Guitar Hero.

I messed around with the higher difficulties, and while I like the way they work better than the low difficulties (they make more sense), I find it takes some time to get down. Time I feel is wasted not learning real songs...bah.

Sky: You hit the nail on the head. I really like GH. It is a good game. But I have the ability to play this crap for real, so putting any amount of practice or even a moderate amount of play time for fun, is time I am taking away from actually playing real guitar. In my crusade against buying GH3 I have played so much actual guitar that I am getting better everyday. Not to sound like a jerk but I would rather play guitar than pretend to. I am glad it is there for people who don't wish to play guitar, but seriously, after a certain amount of invested time, it turns into wasted time cause you really could have learned that crap on guitar.

If learning to play an instrument was as fun as hopping on Guitar Hero, I'm sure I'd be doing it.  I've made several abortive attempts to learn keyboard, but it's just dull dull dull stuff when you're a novice.  Being a novice at Guitar Hero, though, you still get to feel like you're playing a song.

It should be more exciting when you're a novice actually! Getting giddy over just making the simplest of sounds is how it starts out. Then moving on from there and thinking you're hot shit with simple songs. Etc.. If you don't have that, then it's probably not meant for you. Either that, or you should try another instrument.

Sorry, but playing "twinkle, twinkle, little star" doesn't fill me with excitement, no matter what instrument I'm playing it on.

You're doing it wrong.

Wow, it just sounds like you have very little dedication to playing an instrument, so in that case GH really has filled that spot. Generally speaking though, I think  that if there is any interest in guitar beyond just playing it on GH then it is wise to move on to learning how to play an actual instrument. I think it is kinda neat that GH can act as a replacement for having a way to interact with music in a very innovative and friendly way, but I  also think that it is sort of silly in its own way.

I guess that can be said for Bemani games as well, (although I don't consider GH Bemani ) They kind of emulate doing something in that can be tried in REAL LIFE. This isn't like flying a plane or street racing or joining the army and shooting fools. It is just playing guitar. It is accessible to everyone, just like dancing and singing and playing drums, whatever. (with the exception that getting into drum playing can be expensive)

I think that excessive amounts of time with something that is virtual as opposed to actual, when the real thing is completely within your grasp, is kinda silly.

I'm a gamer, not a musician. Guitar Hero keeps score. Real Guitar may ALLOW me to score, but starfucking isn't my bag.

Playing real guitar isn't accessible to anyone btw. It might be to me, but neg. Don't care.

I play games to have fun.  I have also played racing games, but that doesn't mean it would be wise for me to go on and become a race car driver no matter how much fun I have driving in a game.  I find guitar hero to be fun, but I don't find learning a real musical instrument to be that much fun.  That doesn't say anything about my dedication to playing an instrument, it says something about what I find to be fun. 

How about Harvest Moon?  Is it silly to play that when you can just go out and learn how to farm in real life?  How about Phoenix Wright?  Because despite your claim: "This isn't like flying a plane or street racing or joining the army and shooting fools. It is just playing guitar. It is accessible to everyone, just like dancing and singing and playing drums, whatever. (with the exception that getting into drum playing can be expensive) "  All those things ARE accessible, they just require more "dedication" than you're willing to put forth (Right?  That's what you imply with the GH example..)


Like virtually all entertainment?  Why watch dramas when you can live life?  Why read science fiction when you can learn real science? 

Enjoying entertainment isn't silly, it's just what you do for fun. 

Ok. Maybe I was too subtle. If you're not having fun learning an instrument, if you're learning tripe like 'twinkle little star' YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG. Do you think I learned twinkle? Do you think Slash did? Do you think Page did? First song I learned was Breaking the Law by Judas Priest.

The point is that the time it takes to learn songs on expert in GH, you might as well learn the real thing, because that translates to so much more. Your Harvest Moon example is reaching into the stupid to make a bad point. Unless you've figured out how to run a farm in a half hour a day. You can pick up an instrument whenever you have a little free time and jam. Also, I'm willing to learn how to fly a plane if you can show me how I can just pick up a plane at a pawn shop and take it for a spin tonight. Now excuse me while I go try to erase the bad logic of your post from my mind.

And schild, playing guitar is accessible to anyone, no idea why you think it's not.

I may have not been as clear as I thought I was. Playing Guitar Hero and Drum Mania and DDR, any games that incorporate real movements and theory and technique, these are things that are intruding in accessible real life activities. I already addressed racing games, FPS and other games, none of those are anything like  they are in real life with the exception of racing sims with an actual car cockpit Etc. Playing guitar, or dancing or singing or playing drums...Al these things are accessible activities that build REAL LIFE SKILLS.

I am okay with people who play that have no interest in learning to play an instrument or dance or sing or drum. But really, when you are going through the motions, learning guitar rhythm and pacing, theory on how guitars work and how they work in a band, how to drum and actually sing or dance, if you really would rather build virtual skills, have virtual chops Etc, it just seems ass backwards to me.

It is not a problem if you play on a casual level, IE me and Schild, (whom is good at GH but plays very seldom, lke only when there is get togethers) I am talking about people who need to beat Jordan or anyone who is legitimately practicing. It is a waste of time in my opinion, cause it is close enough to real life that it becomes a cheap knockoff of real life experiences.

Fact is no one gives two fucks about how good anyone is at GH or DDR or any type of similar game for that matter, but good guitar playing or dancing or singing. They are legitimate skills. People respect and acknowledge that.

By all means, play and enjoy yourself, entertain yourself, cause that is what it is, entertainment. But once entertainment tries to step in and mimic real life activities that I can safely, experience for myself, without danger to me in any physical or mental form, then it is a waste of time to me. I live to experience things that I safely can, not to fucking pretend to.

Don't bring books or movies or valid forms of imaginative entertainment into this. I can't race futuristic machines at break neck speeds, so I play F-Zero, I can't become a super future soldier and save the planet from Locust invasion, I play Gears of War. I can't go one some great tip to space and experience an amazing space opera, so I play Mass Effect.  I can't start a farm and have absolutely no knowledge of how to or desire to do so, and Harvest Moon surely wont show me how or give me a similar experience.  :roll:

 

Schild: You can learn anything you want, you choose not too. We don't count here cause we never practice GH. And the amount of time it takes us to throughly  kick that game to shit is insignificant at best. I just want to cut out unecessary time wasting when it comes to games and GH gives that to me in spades.

Doesn't have to be twinkle, twinkle... Umm.. Learn a basic minor and basic chord shape, put it on organ, then shoot for Knockin on Heaven's Door. Easy song. Or alternatively, Highway to Hell

:awesome_for_real:

RB is a bit different because I do know how to sing, and as much as I would like to cover Dani California, I am not Anthony Kiedis.

See, I couldn't care less about whether someone respects and acknowledges my ability in a video game, and it's certainly not a good reason in my mind to learn any skill.  "Legitimacy" isn't a reason I choose to do something I enjoy.


Look, if you enjoy something, it's entertainment. Whether you consider it "real enough" or not is irrelevant.  There are people who spend equally insane amounts of time getting good at chess, darts, and the high jump.  Are those "legitimate"?  Why, and more importantly, why should anyone care?


How ANYONE spends their leisure time is valuable to them.  Just because you think it's silly doesn't make it so.  And all those imaginative entertainments?  They're time wasters in the same way guitar hero is.  If someone finds playing guitar hero fun, but doesn't find learning a musical instrument fun, that doesn't make the activity silly or deluded any more than playing any of those other games are. 

Personally, I DON'T sit there and practice song after song on GH with the hopes of beating it on expert.  Hell, I can't even finish a song on hard yet.  But I shake my head at the smug self-righteousness I see people level at those who do.  Having a hobby and being obsessed with it isn't different just because that hobby has a very rough approximation to something YOU deem as having more "worth".

Seriously, there's no difference between the GH freak who needs to master every song on expert and any other hardcore gamer who needs to beat a video game into complete submission.

I remember that the comment for the guitar you win by 5starring all of expert in GH2 was something like "This guitar will compensate for you having no friends."

Quick noob question. This is the first time I've played any of the GH's.
Started my career, earned some cash, went to the shop where I saw a Killer B I just had to have. So I bought it but can't equip or play it.

Do you have to unlock Basses in general to be able to play them? I heard it mention about bass/guitar in battle or co-op mode or something like that. Are those modes the only way to play a bass?

Basses are only in multiplayer or practice mode.

It's guitar hero, not bass hero ;)

Bah... well, they are "bass guitars" technically, but yeah I get your point... Lars just looks like he needs a bass hangin' below his knee.

Cool though, thanks for the quick answer.

To get this thread more on topic to the game, I went out and purchased it for the ps2 yesterday because I was dying to play it and haven't bought my next-gen console yet.

Thoughts: The boss matches are fucking stupid. I get lucky and get two whammies to beat Slash on hard, otherwise he wipes the floor with me; What the fuck is with the ramped up difficulty on Hard once you hit the Slipknot song? This song is harder than most of the expert I've played (I'm beating the game on hard to unlock songs then going back in quickplay and playing songs I like on expert such as When You Were Young/Paint it Black/Sunshine of Your Love) and I've failed the beginning 3x after just cruising through most other songs. What's up with that?!

Overall, very fun though. Song selection is way better than GHII and the venues aren't nearly as kitchy.

Oh, another minor gripe: When naming things and whatnot, the cursor doesn't start on _, so when I went to name my band, I typed in The Pants Party with the Y as the last letter when I hit start, but it came out as The Pants Part because I thought The Pants Partya looked funky. :) (I'm sure you can change the name in options, I'm just lazy).


If any of ya'll really like the guitar type games and haven't added this to your library yet, you are missing out. Possibly not Great Success due to boss battles, but there are definitely some delicious slices of cake throughout.

Hammer. You're a fighting game fanatic. You could use that time more productively training Muay Thai and Brazillian Jiu Jitsu. (yes, at home, yes, even alone). And that would be a fuckload of a lot more productive and potentially useful than being a god at SF/SSB.

Anyway, is there any GH1 or 2 stuff available as DLC for GH3 players? What about the extra tracks for GH2? Are they compatable with GH3 in any way?

Ok. I'm officially at buyer's remorse now. I'm going to try to finish the game at easy and maybe run through medium. But the two higher levels are just stupid.

This is definitely a console gamer's game, not a musician's. Spent some time trying to play songs I KNOW ON GUITAR on hard or expert, slowed down. The controller fought me the entire way.

Easy was kind of fun. I think the rest of the game sucks, the cover bands aren't all that great and the controls suck.

I'd offer my copy up to f13 on the cheap, but shipping would be a bitch, eh? Lost my receipt, so I have to suck this fucker up, I guess. Pissed.

For a true musician, wouldn't you kinda have to suspend your disbelief for the guitar a little bit? I'd liken it to a swordsman getting upset because a MMO lets him whack-a-foozle fifty times with a sharp rapier instead of a one hit kill.

I understand it might be hard, but to condemn a video game because it doesn't represent a true guitar seems like a fallacy.

I refer to this webcomic! http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20070509

Well, yeah. That's the problem. I'm then left with a shitty console game with cool music. That cost me a fucking bundle. Could've bought two pc games for that price.

Yes.  I still get annoyed when I play Raining Blood due to constantly trying to play the actual guitar version and not the game.  It's a console game first and foremost, I learned that the hard way on the 1st one.  But I knew what I was getting into, so no regrets and it still entertains me.

Lol, you should have done your research.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlnP-LJBzUc (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlnP-LJBzUc)

You know, the first time I played Guitar Hero at a friend's house I ended up ripping through the entire game on Medium in a couple of sittings, and I've always assumed that I was able to skip Easy because of the moderate guitar-playing ability that I brought to the table.  That theory is completely shot to hell now.

Maybe it's not a guitarist's game necessarily, but I think that having some basic musical training helps immensely with timing.  Knowing the difference between triplets and eighth notes and being able to recognize them coming at you on the screen makes a big difference in my game.  My friend and I were co-op careering "One" on hard, and he was having a really hard time with the sextuplets in the latter half of the song because he couldn't figure out how many notes there were.

Heheh...ironic that Dani California is the one song I'll even step up to the mike on--I can't sing at all, but somehow that song vibes for me.

No shit! That's pretty much how it went!

Also, Tom Petty should sue the living fuck out of RHCP for Dani California.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=WdTYcnUBADw

Azaezel: I have done a lot of BJJ, Muy Thai, Boxing and Wrestling. I still grapple... So I have done more than my share of actual fighting. But you're missing the point. Fighting games are nothing at all in any way like actual fighting. Other than some technical, meta game/ mind game similarities, (high and lows, submission loops, strategic positioning, etc) There is very little that is true to real life in execution. The point I am making about guitar hero is that sometimes playing a song in guitar hero is actually the same or just as hard as playing it in real life. There is a lot more in common with GH and real guitar than people give it credit for, and although that is pretty neat, I think that way too much time with GH could be used learning a real instrument. Now this is just my opinion, you guys can do whatever  you want, but I really think that games like GH, DDR, and the drumming in RB are too close to their real life counterparts to be worth investing any serious amount of time into. Although Gh doesn't have all the intricate technique found in actual guitar playing, there are very basic similarities that are a little too close to the actual thing in my opinion. It really is in the timing and pacing and movements. Guitar is harder to learn, but I hate the idea that one can put in a little more effort and actually learn an instrument.

GH actually requires  very similar rhythm and timing of actual guitar playing, while other games genres, are absolutely nothing like their real life counterparts. 


It is really weird cause I think that actual guitar playing makes GH way too easy for me. I can thrash the crap out of the game on expert with the exception of a few songs. My hands  just seem more coordinated and it makes it simple for me to look at that screen and press any combination of 5 buttons. I wonder if guitar Pro made this happen cause I always play straight off my screen on my computer with teh guitar on the program muted so I can play my guitar over the GP music. that is just fun. For any actual guitar players that don't have anyone to play with very often, guitar Pro is just great. It is easy to find Tab for it and it can be upgraded to play good sound files as opposed to midi. Very sexy. Too easy to learn guitar with programs as great as that around.

Well dude I'm not really clear on what your complaint is to be honest. I own 3 guns, a Ruger .270 International, a Savage 7 mm and a Heckler Kosch 9 mm pistol (I'm a Canadian btw, so save the politics if you are thinking it - not you Sky - the royal You).

Point being, I don't criticize shooters that may not really replicate what a .556 rifle or a 9mm handgun shoot like. I accept, as I do for films, that some realism is sacrificed at the altar of entertainment.

Now I don't play guitar, wish I did. But I know GH I - III are not simulations - they're approximations. They're rhythm games with a guitar shaped controller, and they're fucking awesome at that. Don't think of them as 'guitar' games, think of them as 'rhythm' or 'music' games. They're really good - well worth your $50 - as long as you realize it's not a guitar simulation. Just like shooting. You get used to it. And after that you can love it.

Squirrel, the idea of you having guns makes me pee my pants. Only a little though. Do you keep them near the liquor?

Heh yeah actually - the gun case is right beside the liquor cabinet. But I keep the ammo locked up downstairs. So inadvertent mayhem is pretty limited in scope. That said, on a long weekend with a rental truck whiskey and guns is a traditional canadian pass-time.

See, here's where I don't follow you.  Investing time into something you find fun is the same regardless of how "close" it is to something else.

Again this is a matter of personal taste. I play both real guitar and GH and every time I play GH I feel like it is time better spent playing actual guitar. I sure this is just me, but like I said it make me feel like I am wasting time if I play it for anything more than like a half an hour, and other games never make me feel that way.

Fun is fun. Unfortunately, fun is fun for different people. Tons of threads on f13 nowadays need a huge slathering of YMMV instead of mindless banter.

I started co-op yesterday with a friend and was pleasantly surprised at the beginning song set (compared to solo play) and I was delighted to discover that I unlocked Sabotage.  :woot:

No, I get it. I just don't like it. If I was only out $50, I wouldn't bitch nearly this much, but this and the orange box blew my entire gaming budget for the year, and I don't really like either. I'm tired of gaming for the year.

You don't like GH or Orange Box? Why do you hate fun? Bummer to have 2 games you don't much care for eat your budget though - what with Mass Effect, Assassins Creed and all the other good shit out. Sell em on craigs list and get 1 game you do like I guess.

Hell, what version of GH3 did you get Sky? PS2 or 360 and I'd be willing to take it off your hands for full retail minus the shipping. (Can't run the PC version.)

PC version, I don't do consoles (so getting Mass Effect is out for the time being, too). I don't hate fun, they are good games, just not my style. I can differentiate :P

Craig's List in my area is just for gay hookups, I already checked into selling it there. And got creeped out.

I try to turn everything into a positive, and this has really kicked my ass to practice guitar more and lay off the gaming for a bit. So I guess it's ok, since I probably won't be buying much until next year anyway (or 2012 when Spore comes out).

No offense man - but as an early HDTV adopter, which I know you are - I seem to recall we have nearly identical TV's, these two statements are irreconcilable. Whatever floats your boat, but if it's not an economic issue you're missing out on a tonne of fun. Of all flavours.

Actually, more like a handful of games. It's partly economic, because I just don't see buying a system for half a grand to play a couple games on it. I have my pc for that and a shitload other things. No use having this conversation, really. I've looked into consoles and have followed quite a number of threads here. I'm not anti-console because I think they suck, I think all the current generation are great. Just too expensive, I've blown a couple hundred on the xbox back in the day, but it bore out the scenario that would happen today. I'd play maybe a half-dozen games on it and then it would sit in the closet for the next ten years until I threw it out. The xbox games were GREAT, but in the end it's a waste of money imo.

And the last thing I need are MORE games, honestly.

I know I'm behind the curve here, but I just picked up GH3. It's nothing like a guitar, it makes my left wrist hurt, and it's fun. Much more like playing keyboard or drums.

Oh, and I'm terrible at it, but that may or may not improve. I did have some problems getting the guitar to be detected, the wireless apparently doesn't like my tv, I have to get the controller sync'd then turn on the lcd. Which is odd, as the normal ps3 controllers have no issues with it.

I am tempted to get this for PC. What systems are you all running it on?
I've got an Athlon 3200 2.0 Ghz with 2 gigs of RAM and an ATI x1550

If you feel like paying shipping from NY I could sell you mine, pm if interested.

You will probably experience The Claw at first.  It hurts, but passes with time.  Also, I didn't play properly for the first couple of weeks until I understood exactly how to play by only holding the buttons that were necessary and strumming on time.  Once I minimized the number of maneuvers, the stress of 'playing' was diminished.  It also helps to free you up mentally to anticipate what is incoming on the fret.


I'd bet money that you will.


That sounds more complicated than the complete dumbass experience I had figuring out that you have to sync the dongle before the guitar. 

The last boss match on Hard sucks so very much.

It's not just that I'm finding it fucking impossible.  It's that the first two minutes or so are FILLER.  Some of the bits in there are actually kinda fun to play, but how well you play them is completely irrelevant to whether you win the battle or not because all of the "battle power" notes are buried in the bullshit parts that come later on.  So I'm just letting them scroll by and using the repetitive strumming parts afterward to fill the Rock Meter back up.  What a waste.

Oh, and the boss always gets his battle powerups first, ensuring that you get a Broken String right as your own notes come up and you miss them.  I think in the ten attempts I've made at this thing I've maybe gotten ONE attack to land.

FGGLAKJLKJLSASAAAHHH

I'm stuck on the Lou battle - Hard.  He gets his powerups first.  Keeps me from mine.  Which.. another player should in a battle match.  It's really frustrating though, because I want to play Guitar Hero, not this boss match shit.  I can't skip it.  So I'm stuck.   When I do hit him with some shit, he's the fucking computer, so he fights through it.  It just comes down to hoping the CPU decides to miss notes...  Right?   I gotta hope for the Whammy hit.

True Love Waits
Sweet Home Alabama
She's Nineteen Years Old
The Thrill Is Gone
Sleepwalk

Songs I've learned since buying GH3. Recorded two of them. Forgot to put my copy of GH3 in the classifieds this week. Should raffle it for the library or something.

Not that I've been playing this a lot. Or even much. Barely, even.

But whatever the fuck happened to all the promised DLC for this game? There's the Foo pack, which I got, a few freebies of varying quality, two other shitty packs, and three shitty individual songs.

Exact same can be said for Rock Band's "full album" bullshit.

Agreed. But when did Rock Band come out compared to GH3?

(RB isn't released at all over here yet, GH3 came out about the same time as in the US, maybe 2-3 weeks later.)

Rock Band was supposed to have 3-4 full albums downloadable by now.

I know they said the metallica album would be, but 3-4 is pushing it...

Nirvana's Never Mind was supposed to be week one. Then there was like some grateful dead shit or something a rather.

Having followed RB closely, the only album that was ever mentioned as a week one was Who's Next (which didn't happen). The Nirvana and Metallica albums were rumored to be out some time after launch but never given a hint of a date. It was all Intarweb speculation. The only official word about the Grateful Dead stuff was that Harmonix had secured the rights to 15-20 unspecified songs from them for eventual use in RB. That all said, if they aren't out in the next couple months, I will be disappointed (especially Who's Next).

Right now Rockband has more DLC than GH3, having been out one month less. I knew RB was going to have more/better DLC, and I was right. It just wasn't as good as I expected.

Baby Please Don't Go
Chitlins Con Carne
Secret Agent Man

I've just about lost all faith in DLC for either project.  Of course, the stuff for Rock Band has been slim but consistent while I'm STILL waiting for GH1 tracks to be downloadable on the 360.  Where's Ziggy Stardust, dammit?

So the fact that I sucked at GH3 really made me want to be good. I have done a lot of practicing and am now decent at playing on hard. My one problem is the Hammer Ons and the Pull Offs. I suck at these and that makes some songs really tough. Right now I have hit a major wall.
Slipknot. I cant beat the song on hard. I did the practice on all different speeds for like 2 hours, and I still cant do the song. My best is 15%, but the average is is around 8%. Its really putting me off. This song blows.

Who's Next and Nevermind should have both been out by now. I would have bought the game anyway, but those albums were a major reason I wanted it on Day One.

So after playing Slipknot for 3 hours straight, I managed to get the 96%.... and broke my strummer. FUCK THAT SONG!!!

 :ye_gods:

If it's any consolation, the game only gets more ridiculously hard from there.

I've pretty much stopped playing since hitting the Lou boss battle and finding out via the internet that it's basically undoable by mortal men (i.e. orders of magnitude harder than anything else on the Hard difficulty level).  I like "challenge" in my games up to a point, but once it starts to feel like a job I move on. 

I still play every now and then, but whenever I do I can never shake the feeling that I should be working on that goddamned boss battle so I can finally 'finish' Hard mode.  And that sense of obligation kinda puts a damper on the fun.

Takes a fair amount of patience/luck but it's doable. It's really all about being cheaper than he is with the "star power" tricks - learn where they are and deliberately miss parts of passages to hit them, unload the moderately annoying ones nearly as soon as you get them (wait at least for him to start playing again,) and save the really screwed up ones for his fast passages. In short, you do the complete opposite of what makes Guitar Hero fun. The anti-fun, if you will. And hence, I suppose, the thread title.

My own personal Lou is my girlfriend. I beat hard, and can hang on expert, but she is really worlds better than I am. To the point where it is completely and utterly discouraging.

At least Lou doesn't tell you to "Suck it, bitch!" after watching you repeatedly fail "Through The Fire and Flames" on hard, and then finishes it on her second attempt. :uhrr:

Ok, I have been using my Les Paul guitar a lot, and I think the strum bar is starting to stick a little bit. I have noticed on very fast songs its not popping back in to place quickly some times. Has any one else had any problems with their Les Paul? Also, what should I do if its out of warranty, its not like I can go and buy just the Guitar again, and I dont want to go buy the stupid wired one.

Any advice?

I've always had to up strum on very fast songs.  Is it that it just doesn't return to 0 fast enough for you to get the next beat or is it actually borkened?

Try upstrumming like Murgos said. Otherwise you'll need to crack it open and play with the sensor that registers the strumming.

Its not that its not registering, its that some times when I get strumming very fast, it feels like it sticks down for just a split second. I can still play, but I am worried about it getting worse.

Anyway, on to the good news. I beat the Slipknot song on hard last night. I have been trying for two weeks, and I also have the CD in my car so I can listen to the song over and over. I managed to finish it twice. Once with 78% and once with 77%. I also beat Knights of Cydonia and then got One to 77% on my first try.

"One" is a bitch for a while, but only at the solo.  Save your star power for that first barrage of notes, and maybe go into practice mode to get you ready for the rest of it.  It's totally manageable once you've got the solo down.  "Knights of Cydonia" is possibly my favorite song.  The video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YygyHCRrKho) is excellent.

Still can't beat "Raining Blood" on single player expert, but we're getting closer: my roommate and I beat it on co-op twice.  Having the bass there to help makes a world of difference.  So it's just that, the Lou battle, and Dragon Force standing between me and complete domination.  Grrrrrreat...

Ugh. I've been picking at hard mode, but I think I'm too old and slow for it.  :drill:

Late to the party... again.

Just picked up GH3 for our new (Xmas 07) Wii.  OMFG!  Totally owns me and the kids; even the wife (who was an 80s headbanger) is enjoying a game on the console finally.  I think we put 20+ hours on it the first weekend; me and my daughter (12) have gravitated to Medium and are most of the way through that.  The coolest part is getting to expose the kids to some of this music they would otherwise have no access to or desire to seek out.  My son (8) loves Metallica's "One" and my daughter, the girl scout, loves White Zombie's "Black Sunshine".  The only thing that is going to fuck this up is if GH goes soft and puts out a Hanna Montana / Naked Brothers version.

New upcoming DLC (probably)

Journey, Boston, Foreigner

http://kotaku.com/346459/journey-to-boston-with-foreigner-+-new-ghiii-dlc
http://www.joystiq.com/2008/01/18/guitar-hero-3-gets-journey-foreigner-boston-dlc/

Foreigner's "Juke Box Hero,"
Journey's "Any Way You Want It"
Boston's "Peace of Mind."


WTF is going on? Did Activision remember they have a guitar game or something?

Not that any of these three song titles means anything to me. I probably know all 3 songs, just not by name, I guess.

Fuckin' kids. Neal Schon is a great guitarist (Do you like classic Santana? That's mostly Neal, and Black Magic Woman was a Peter Green song). Those are all big guitar rock songs. How do you not know them by name?

Ah, well. Is any of that coming to the PC? Not that I care, I donated mine to the library. Fuck that game, I gots real guitar to be playin!

I'm up to the Lou battle on medium now (Wii.)  I took a ton of time off since I beat Easy over xmas.  I only tried Lou twice and gave up because I was playing too long anyway.  My hands hurt.   I didn't get below 90 on any song before that, but somehow didn't even get past One the first time.  I got it the second time at 86% or something.  Man, that one is hard.

My two oldest kids now walk around singing Slow Ride over and over.  It drives my wife crazy because they play that song over and over.  They haven't gotten past it yet.  My daughter (9) is close though.  My oldest son (7) is at least getting something out of this game.  His sense of rythm and ability to hold a beat was just terrible at the beginning.  Now he's getting the hang of it.

His cousin of the same age was over at our house over the weekend and he couldn't even figure out how to strum and hold a button down at the same time.  My son kicked his ass at least.

Hey, I thought I read that we won't be able to download new songs for the Wii.  Can somebody confirm that?  That just sucks.  Plus, I want to get an extra guitar, but am told that isn't available either.

Kids? We're probably the same age.  :-P  My "classic rock" listening as I grew up was more in the vein of Dylan, Doors, Floyd, The Animals, Hendrix, Deep Purple, Sabbath, Moody Blues, Beatles, Lennon, Creedence, Neil Young, Springsteen, etc.

Also, Foreigner. Cold as Ice? I Wanna Know What Love is? Waiting for a Girl Like You? Fuck, they're the definition of daggy.

I'm bumping because we are having a GH3 night at work this week. Tonight I did a test run. This is my first time playing a GH game, on medium made it up to the first boss without losing, lost to him and quit. Hard kicked my ass though. I could certainly use a level between medium and hard, but maybe if I played all the way through on medium first I wouldn't say that.

You wouldn't say that if you played through medium. I quit halfway through hard the on the first one and went to expert. Hard is missing notable notes from songs, makes you suffer through the beginning of expert. Imo, easy, medium, expert is the way to go.

I would say screw medium and easy, and just start on hard.  Just to avoid the "extra button" at each phase.  Jump right in on orange and blue.

I would say no way if you never played the game before, hard will just be way to frustrating. It almost broke me. The only reason I didnt totally ditch the game when I tried to play hard was because of some stubborn streak of "since I cant do it, now I have to" type thing.

Hell, being my first time ever picking up one of those guitar controllers, even medium was pretty hard for me. Some one never playing a GH game before, starting on hard will be insanity.

Yeah, as a newbie it was a pain in the balls coping with the controller, mostly because of the fifth button. That was pretty unintuitive imo. Hard is the best from a purely musical vantage point, because you're getting more of the feel of the guitar line.

Easy and medium are easier from a 'grappling with the controller' standpoint, but they do odd things with the guitar line.

So I'd say Hard is mentally easier while the easy and medium are physically easier, if you follow.

Easy felt more like an extra percussion part rather than guitar, but it's definitely necessary for getting used to the controller and reading the notes on-screen.

Bah, I was blowing through medium first time playing. Guess I'm a gh podigy. :grin:

I only have fun at easy.  3 buttons is more than enough to worry about.

I think I can see that. I definitely make mistakes on Easy and Medium that are more due to me listening to the song and expecting a note than anything else. I would imagine Hard and Expert are closer to 1 note on screen = 1 note in song.

Yeah, they are. But a novice just wouldnt have the dexterity to handle the speed of GH3 on hard or expert. On Rock Band Icould see starting out on hard being much more doable. I would still recommend playing on Medium first. Skip easy though.

I've been playing randomly for the past few weeks.  I can do medium great but I just can't get the damn 5th button down and end up failing on hard. 

Whenever I move my hand to work with the 5th button I lose my hand position and mess up.  I've only gotten through 2 songs on hard, and thats because they didn't use orange much.

Wish it had more hard songs that were just 4 buttons. 

I think the difficulty scale is a bit off.

Adding the 4th button is not a big deal because it doesn't require hand movement. Meanwhile hard introduces hand movement and the songs are much denser. Were I doing it I would make hard add the 5th button but not much note density. Or something like that.

Yeah that definitely makes sense and would make it easier to get use to the hand movement.  There's always expert for the combined difficulty.

I disagree that it's dexterity (http://youtube.com/watch?v=3iacZDoXaVQ). As I said, the controller has a learning curve, even if one has excellent manual dexterity. A curve I couldn't be assed to bother with. It's also the reason I urge people to try actual guitar rather than waste time learning a guitar controller. Basic guitar isn't all that tough once you mount the initial learning curve, whereas mounting the curve for the GH controller only allows you to play GH.

Anyway, old gripes aside it would be nice if they had added an easy mode with all five buttons to learn on.

Yeah, I thought about this a lot while trying to learn hard. I know a lot of casual gamers who love GH3, but they just crumble under the jump from medium to hard, and end up giving up on the game at that point.

So we had our guitar hero night. I continued to own medium difficulty. I tried the DragonForce song on medium, didn't own that one though. I did make it to 41% on my first try, which seemed pretty good all things considered.

It's fun but as a real guitar player kind of weird. Obviously the fingerings don't make a whole lot of sense and trying to play along with the songs can give bad results. I tend to play too fast on some parts.

Hard to justify practicing too much when I have a real bass I could practice instead.

http://palgn.com.au/article.php?id=10642&title=Two+new+Guitar+Hero+III+song+packs

The "Modern Metal" pack holds no interest at all for me, but the Dropkick Murphys one looks good. The fact that it's free makes it even better.

Hmm...that Dragonforce song was just transcribed (18 PAGES) in my new guitar mag. I'm tempted to learn it, but my plate is too full for such silliness right now.

Oh - sold my PC copy to benefit the library. Woohoo!

You know Sky, you could just buy the "Strategy Guide".  It's just a book of charts for all the songs in the game.

What? That is about the opposite of what I just posted.

Game sold. Real guitar good.

Real guitars are for old people. (http://allsp.com/l.php?id=e166)

Thanks for the update!

:dead_horse:

Listen, assholes. I made a post because they were talking about Dragonforce and the guitar tab is in my newest guitar magazine. The bit about selling my game was an aside. THen a comment was made about me playing more GH3, so I clarified. The dead horse is because you fuckers keep commenting on it.

Now I'm tempted to fuck up this thread by continuing to post about how guitar is better and I sold my copy.

Or you could just fucking ignore it and carry on talking about GH3.


Jesus.

Hey, while you're at it why not post about the appalling lack of widescreen support?  That shit NEVER gets old!

Real combat is better than COD4 because it is real.  :drill:

But you're so fun to troll Sky!

GH is actually motivating me to practice bass so I can play the bass parts to the songs (on a real bass) while my friends play GH.

Sixteen by ten or fight!

You're already doing that.   For like, months.

Apologies.  I assumed that since you were posting in the Guitar Hero thread that you meant your guitar magazine actually posted the tabs for the song IN GUITAR HERO.  Sorry about that.

So I finally fucking succumbed. Got it home, set it all up, figured out how the hell to connect the controller - and in a fit of pure fucking idocy - I moved by 360 while the disc was spinning.

So I still have not played the game, and tomorrow get to find out if the $10 EB warranty covers a scratched disc...

Details on Guitar Hero IV are starting to come out (http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/873/873710p1.html)  In particular, they revealed info about the drum kit, character creation, and a music creation tool.

 :uhrr:


 :drill:


 :oh_i_see:

What?  Seriously?  Fuck them.  They had a FANTASTIC product.  Why are they adding all this extra bullshit?  Fuck Rock Band, just make more Guitar Hero.  They don't even need to release more discs, just keep feeding us DLC!  Bastards.

(http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/5862/guitarherods20080318012bv4.jpg)

So awesome.

Gamespot details (http://www.gamespot.com/news/6191026.html)

Seriously, who's the audience for this? People who break their Rock Band, thus making this a library comparison? People who want to make music on their console? People who didn't know about Rock Band?

Uh, I don't know. People who thought Rock Band was a kids toy with shitty tabs, ugly graphics, and a terrible Road Show where you played the same shit over and over because you were good at it?

Also, Guitar Hero has always been about the expert level challenge. Rock Band has "always" (in parens because there's only one entry) been about easy songs that you can play while you're drunk.

Though, I'm even better at Guitar Hero when I'm halfway smashed. I doubt that's the status quo.

Rock Band was about pleasing one instrument at a time.  Most of the songs had 1 part that was particularly difficult while the others were relatively easy.  Aside from that, I thought they fixed the World Tour bugs in a patch a few months ago?  The tabs on Rock Band do like like shit, though.

Oh, I didn't even mention that the hardware in Rock Band was just fucking terrible. TERRIBLE. SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN PUT OUT TERRIBLE. Had that Guitar been even 50% as awesome as the Guitar Hero one, I could've dealt with it. Had the drums not been loud and full of defects, I could have dealt with it. As it stands, the only thing they did right was buy a third party microphone.

Also, the DLC for both has been total shit. The latest Muse pack for GH made me want to punch something. Stockholm syndrome was the only good song.

Erm, ok? So they're going to spend even more money to buy basically the same experience just because the songs are tuned differently?

Color me unconvinced.

This isn't about GH3 vs just the guitar on Rock Band. This is a fairly serious total purchase, I'd guess somewhere in the $160-180 range (more complex software, sounds-like-more complex engineeering). I imagine more details will emerge in time, and ya, GH has a better image with the fanbase (even that, GH was built on success from Harmonix work first). But it's a pretty big expectation to expect them to jump into a price range at least three times what they paid for GH3.

Unless, again, the A-list offering is not the total bundle pack.

People who weren't sufficiently satisfied with the first iteration of Rock Band and have been holding out for version 2.0 before they invest $200 of their money into it?

Though if they really are skipping the vocals I'm holding off on this one too.  This isn't hard, people.  Vocals, drums, guitar, maybe keyboard.  Let me buy another guitar controller on its own so a friend can play bass.  Make the instruments out of not crap.  And make the tab look good because I'm going to be staring at it a lot.  Get it together.

Eh, easy and medium are tedious just because they are slow, but hard and above at least plays some resemblance.  Sure, it isn't as difficult as GH2 & 3 Expert level face melting, but not all of us are that good and need our fingers to fall off over practicing for hours to do well there.  I ran through GH3 once and wasn't really that impressed with the song choices, at least not enough to sit down and devote hours to mastering expert.  At least with Rock Band I have friends who want to play along for a good time.

Ok then.

Neversoft vs Harmonix. Don't care how you slice that shit, Neversoft is simply the superior company.

Selby, I wasn't talking about song difficulty.  I was talking about how the tabs in Rock Band are hard to read (when do I hammer-on?) compared to Guitar Hero, and aesthetically it's not very interesting.  I don't usually enjoy the face-melting either, as Schild can attest.  I also prefer playing songs that I like as opposed to songs that make my brain hurt.*


*Although Through The Fire And Flames is awesome.

Now that I agree with and understand.  Althought I do feel that aesthetically GH3 is worse than 1 or 2.

Are there many songs where hammer-ons are needed in Rock Band?  I haven't downloaded any extra content but don't really recall there being an overload of hammer ons (been a few months since I played last).

I can't remember any songs in Rock Band that required any sort of skill whatsoever let alone hammer-ons. Everything was more a case of 'fighting with the guitar to not be a squishy piece of shit."

Yea, hey! Where is the keyboard. Ok fine lots of switches and buttons and shit, but make GH4 or RB2 or whatever midi compatible and let us bring our Yamaha Best Buy piece of crap with us or something!

Not with people like me, it doesn't.  Face it, people who can play on Schild's level are few and far between.  I tend to think that I'm more the usual player, in that I stick to medium and like it.  Most people just aren't going to get to expert level, and that's all there is to it.  Rock Band recognized that and went for group fun while GH went with the idiotic boss fights and harder tabs.  Now they're doing a special "Aerosmith" edition.  Color me unim-fucking-pressed.

I'll stick with the game that keeps releasing quality DLC and doesn't cater exclusively to the elite tab-monkeys out there.

Pffft.

One of my roommates sisters came by last night, who is not a hardcore gamer, who is 19 or so years old, and thinks Rock Band was bland, boring, and full of shitty instruments. Which got a 'oorah' from me as I didn't prompt any of it. And she could only play Guitar Hero on Medium.

1) Use the GH3 guitar, no fighting needed. Ohhhhh wait, PS3 is better in every way isnt it.
2) A LOT of the songs need a ton of hammer-ons on expert mode once you passed the halfway mark.

Despite the snide comment, I do agree that the RB guitar is a PoS, and with out my GH3 guitar, I dont think I would have liked RB ether.

No, they didn't NEED it. They just allowed you to do it. ^_^

That's pretty much what I was thinking.  Or just pick a brand and license it.  Even with a reasonable markup they'd still be about half the price of the guitar controllers.  Which realistically means that they'd be a little bit more expensive than the guitar controllers, but I bet people would still buy it.

While I'm glad I picked up Rock Band for the PS3 because my 360 keeps breaking or telling me that brand new discs are dirty, being able to use the Guitar Hero controller would be a lifesaver.  I can't beat any of the final-tier songs with the guitar because I can't do fast runs on RB's guitar.

Progress report:

My roommate has beaten TTFAF on expert.  He can do it consistently.  We can *nearly* play it in co-op, but we get screwed over at the end of the twin solo.  Between the two of we've five-starred nearly every song.  And yes, I'm perfectly aware that I'm that guy (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/35-Super-Smash-Bros-Brawl).

Other:

I notice Konami's getting into the action as well with Rock Revolution.  Three different systems with three different sets of peripherals, each more expensive than the last.  I love where this is going.

Coldplay DLC coming to Guitar Hero III
Look at the DLC, look how it shines for you.

Activision has announced that the latest track pack to hit Guitar Hero III will come from popular piano-rockers Coldplay.

Both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 owners will be able to download the tracks from each console's respective download services on June 19.

The Coldplay pack will contain:

"Violet Hill"

"Yellow"

"God Put a Smile Upon Your Face"

This pack marks the third of the five promised track packs that Activision promised would arrive in June -- the first coming from Motörhead, while the second June DLC track pack featured songs from Kasabian, Kaiser Chiefs and The Sex Pistols.

Currently no price point has been announced, but we expect that it will attract the usual fee.

http://palgn.com.au/article.php?id=11831&sid=cd7015e9c1a37e3f84a1b5c941a48e65&title=Coldplay+DLC+coming+to+Guitar+Hero+III
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Well, it's good to see something being released, at least. Though Coldplay are the kind of band that are ok on the radio, I can't see myself buying their stuff...

Without 'Don't Panic,' fails.

Agreed.  People always give me crap about it, but Coldplay and Radiohead are two bands I just flat out don't care for and don't really like any of their songs.  Blasphemy I know, but that is life.

It's not blasphemy. It's just questionable taste. Not liking Billy Joel is blasphemy. ^_^

<-- Jew.

Motorhead though.  C'mon, that's the good stuff there.

"(We are) The Road Crew"
"Stay Clean"
"Motörhead"
 

One of the librarians just added this to the collection: http://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Hero-Songbook-TAB/dp/1423446925

Also: http://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Hero-III-Legends-Rock/dp/142344020X

 :rock:

I have to necro the post because I just bought Guitar Hero 3 and Guitar Hero: Aerosmith for the PS3 yesterday. I own GH3 for the PS2 but figured it would be a good idea since GH World Tour and Rock Band 2 are right around the corner (Yes I am a sucker for that sort of game)

God that wireless guitar controller is fucking awesome. It is hands down better than the SG ones for the PS2 and don't even get me started on the Rock Band guitar controller.

I five starred songs I never managed on the PS2 just because of the awesome controller. I even managed to finish "Raining Blood" and "Through the Fire and the Flames" and yet my hands didn't hurt at all.

Also no more half second freezes when star power is activated (as usually happens on the PS2 version)

If you want to seriously beat songs get a version with the Les Paul Controller

With respect to Guitar Hero: Aerosmith.

I like the idea. They put a lot of great songs in there and also have a lot of clips that are shown after a chapter is beat and which describe the history of the band in small soundbites. The locations are roughly modelled after real life locations which were relevant through the band's history.

For non-fans of the band it seems like a money grab though and for fans of the band there is not enough in there to actually make this a required buy.

They should build on the documentation and clips part. Some sort of "One year and a half in the life of metallica" but with songs that you can actually play in between would be great.

I am actually looking forward to Guitar Hero: Metallica now (did I mention that I am a sucker for that kind of game ;) )

Progress report:

We finally beat TTFAF on Expert in co-op.  After, like, eight months.  I feel stupidly accomplished.