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Picking it up in roughly 4.5 hours. In 7 hours, I wanna see people on the leaderboards.

Discuss (how this game is too good for a subforum).

I was playing it inside Best Buy today. I was really close to picking it up, but...

I don't know what it is about that controller, but it doesn't do it for me the way the PS2 controller does.

The neck is too skinny, and the pickything (plectrum?) feels too tiny. It's made for small manchildren. I'm a 6'5" lout with manhands, and the PS2 works remarkably better, from my short experience with it.

That, and with the announcement of Rock Band, I don't know whether I can justify picking it up or not.

EDIT: And I don't say this from the viewpoint of a schlup. I only play Expert level songs now, and although beating the Buckethead song on Expert is beyond my grasp, I can get everything else.

I WANT IT SO BAD!!

My mean wife won't let me buy a 360 so I can play it.

The chickens scream and cry at your lack of dedication. You must please the chickens.

Yea, the neck feels too skinny.

Easy fix though. I'll ducktape something stupid to it to make it feel better. Alternatively, I might gut an Xbox 360 controller and put it into the PS2 one. The PCB shouldn't require too much work... Theoretically.

I can see you at the return counter now, explaining how it just fell apart in your hands.

Can't you just by a converter for the PS2 one?

Nope.


Yep.

Buckethead is on this planet to make guitarists and fake guitarists (read: GH players) feel inadequate. He is doing his job.

The name of that song isn't "Jordan" by the way. It's "Taste the Rainbow."

Okay, i'm a sucker.

I picked it up.

My hand hurts from the tiny controller, but i'm solidly in the top 10% in most Expert songs I've played, which is comforting.

I'm number 65 out of 805 who've played Six on Expert, yay.

I'm scared of the ensuing carpal tunnel...  So yeah, I think I'm going to pass even though I really want to pick it up.

Already modded this little tiny fucking piece of shit guitar with foam and cardboard. It's more comfortable. I'll have a review with pictures up tonight or tomorrow. Also, I think we might throw some racial slurs at Red Octane for even thinking it was OK to make a guitar this shitty.

The pain is worth it for leaderboards though.

Truth.

I'm interested in the ghettomod. Pics ASAP.

I need to rework it. After I finish unlocking the songs, I'll probably use the PS2 guitar as an outline and cut thick foam to match it.

I suggest Great Stuff, for the Comedy.

Nonentity.

Add me to your XBL buddy list: f13schild

Herro:

http://f13.net/?itemid=552

Also, he makes one want to eat KFC.

I am wondering why, though, the PS2 guitar is quite decent, and the 360 one seems shitty in comparison?

Why not just reuse the same mold?

The guitar is a different shape but I'm guessing Activision, which bought out Red Octane the original publisher, decided they wanted to save a few bucks and went with a cheaper design.

The new guitar is more solid than the old one. And looks wise, it's a much better design and far more intricate.

It's just poorly adjusted for maximum any comfort.

Okay then I don't know what's the deal is. Maybe they designed it to better fit smaller hands?

But it's not just a matter of smaller. I've got friends with tiny hands who say it's uncomfortable. It's like no one at Harmonix bothered playing with it.

I agree with this. The 360 guitar seems much more solid than the PS2 one, but isn't anywhere near as comfortable. I do like that you can adjust the strap a lot more than the PS2 version though.

I also wish it wasn't white...

Since I never have owned the PS2 version, just played it co-operatively at friends place, I started right from the beginning on beginner. So happy to finally own this baby. Hopefully they do the DLC right.

Alright - I'll snag you when I get home. We can have rock-offs when my hand isn't cramping.

I might swing by the hardware store and see what I can do about getting some foam stuff.

Does your homemade guitar mod work for both lefties and righties?

Nasty.

I said rock-offs, not getting-rocks-off.

Funny, though, how both activities (extended lewd activities and playing Guitar Hero 2 with the Xbox 360 controller for, oh, a song a half) have the same effect.

I'm still waiting for some enterprising DIY-er to mod a normal electric guitar so that it functions as a Guitar Hero controller.  Something along the lines of a stompbox that translates the actual notes into the appropriate button presses.

I beat medium difficulty, and started in on hard.  I haven't lost a song yet (but haven't 5-starred many either).

My whammy bar broke, it only works part time now.  No viagra jokes. 

I checked around, and it seems to be a common problem with the 360 bundle guitars.

I dig the leaderboard feature.

They know about the problem and QA is on it! Cause they weren't all there in the first place. Guess I'll be waiting until I hear something about these broke ass SKU's being replaced with good ones.

Apparently if you have one of the messed up models you can exchange them where you bought it from:

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=9732.msg288394#msg288394

Good luck getting an exchange if you got yours from EBstop.

Why?

Because they probably don't have any more in stock yet.

Exactly, they usually only stock pre-orders + 2-3. It's ridiculous how bad their allocation is.

Well, for some stores it's simply a matter of space; where are you going to put all of these units?

To which you could counter that there is shitloads of stuff that don't need to be stocked at all, or stuff that could be sent to a warehouse until demand rises. We have stacks and stacks of used Xboxes, Gamecubes, and PS2s. They're never going to sell, so we shouldn't need to carry so many.

But yeah, EBstop is getting pretty bad with what they will stock as far as new stuff goes. Personally, I think they hold on to FAR too much used shit that no one is going to buy.

Songs packs are available on XBL now for 500 MSpoints.

Track Pack One

Bark at the Moon - Ozzy Osbourne
Hey You - The Exies
Ace of Spades - Motorhead

Track Pack Two

Killer Queen - Queen
Take it Off - The Donnas
Frankenstein - The Edgar Winter Group

Track Pack Three

Higher Ground - Red Hot Chilli Peppers
Infected - Bad Religion
Stellar - Incubus

edit: Holy crap, that'll make buying all the GH1 songs about $100 if all the packs are going at that rate. Boo.

What's an "MSPoint"?  1 cent?

Yea. Too expensive. It'll be cut in half I'm sure. I'll buy those first 2 though. Bark + Ace + Queen + Frankenstein = Worth Megabytes in Gold.

Yeah, 3 songs for 5 bucks is BS.  It should be a dollar a song at most.

Correct. Even at a dollar a song though, the first game would still cost more than the game goes for now though, heh.

Yeah, Higher Ground is the only halfway decent song from pack 3. Not exactly a difficult song, though.

Now that I think of it, all three songs in that pack are somewhat middle-tier songs.

At least BatM and Frankenstein are top-tier songs.

Just in case you have yet to do the math yourself you get 1600 points for 20 bucks, so one "MSpoint" is 1.25 cents. Making these packs $6.25 a pop.
And yeah I second the fact that thats WAY overpriced. I would bite for around $20 for all the old songs. Not 100+

Microtransactions are the future! Instead of just charging you $60 for new titles, they can get extra cash by half-finishing the game and making you slowly buy the rest of it!

You suckers.

Heck even if you have finished the game and want to give future content away Microsoft won't let you.

A "microtransaction" would be getting one song for a fraction of a dollar.  There is nothing "micro" about six bucks.

Gulp just told me about this. MS wanting some kind of money out of everything that passes through XBL that isn't a patch. How ridiculous. Not surprising though because we do live in a capitalist world.

Get ready for Games For Windows, bitches.

Huh? Windows Live won't work the same way. Piracy will be an option. That's not an option on the 360. They'll have another, cheaper solution. (hopefully)

There's already been talk of a fee-based online multiplayer for Games for Windows. I don't think things will be as restrictive as the 360 where they have control, but my feeling has gone from 'hell yeah' (widescreen support in all titles) to 'cautious'.

The game in question was Shadowrun (in PC Gamer, iirc). I can't see it not being the case with Age of Conan and any other game that interacts between pc and 360. Whether it goes to non-interactive ports and pc-only titles, who knows. I do foresee micro-transactions, since they already exist on the pc in other genres and even with piracy it's a huge money-grab.

There was an update for GH2 on Live.  It fixes the whammy bar issue.  I didn't know what the update did, but wasn't complaining that my toy tremolo bar was working.

Isn't that the same update that's  bricking 360's? (http://forums.xbox.com/1/11717177/ShowPost.aspx#11717177)

Just curious.

Dunno.  Those dates in that thread though, are from the April 4th.  This update was just a few days ago.

That kinda scares me. Last thing I want is to brick my 360. From what I can tell most of the bricked 360's were from 05.

Where the hell is Godzilla?  Or Even rats?

Also, not sure if anyone else mentioned this already, but here's a link to a petition to lower the cost of the song packs:

http://www.petitiononline.com/GHIIDLC/petition.html

*edit* Never mind.  The petition was closed before I could sign it.

I took my time.  5-starred all of medium, including the song packs.  Finally moved full time to hard.  Everything was going great till Jane's Addiction - Stop.  My first loss in GH.  Twice in a row even.  Now I gotta hit practice.  Fuck that song.

There's a part in the main riff, that's like

YB

YB
YB

YB
Y
YB

YB
YB

I can't hit that solo Y.  It's going sooo fast.  I know how to hit it, I just can't yet.  I wish it was a hammer on. That's not what is crushing me on the song, I just still suck, but it throws me off, and the next few notes are out of control, as I try to stop slobbing to catch up after missing that note.  I think I'm finally going to have to learn to up-down strum.

The game is still a blast though.  I'm gonna learn to crush it on expert.  Had fun playing co-op with my roommate, even though I had to be the controller bitch.  No second guitar available around here yet.

Unlike bowling, your skill does not improve with beer.

Edit  Hard crushed. 1/3rd through Expert.

I'm moderately retarded.  Replied to myself.  Quoted no less. 

That was the song that gave me trouble first too.  I actually had to go through and practice it a few times just to get the main riff down, which enabled me to get through the rest of the song.

I feel like they wimped down some of the songs compared to the PS2 version.  I remember more notes in that version and it's been throwing me for a loop on certain songs.  Although Freya still can eat me as can Carry Me Home.

The 360 version is no different from the PS2 version. At least not on any of the songs that matter.

Feh.  I kept fucking up my 5 gold stars on the early songs in Hard difficulty because I was used to the PS2 version having more notes in songs like Shout At The Devil and Surrender.  The later stuff seems to be no different though.

Oh. I wouldn't know about Hard. We've never played on anything besides Expert. Except when the odd person comes over who's on a different tier.

I managed to even beat Psychobilly Freakout first try since I last played it on the PS2 version, but the fucking Freya song can still suck it, that much is true.

I don't know - something about those riffs + bad guitar = ow.

I start going comatose about 10 seconds into repeating it.

I'm stuck on Psychobilly again, just this time on Expert.  I'm gonna go back and start 5-starring hard songs, and see if that helps.

Can't... beat... Misirlou!

That repeating riff is just terrible.  My hand starts to shut down after about 10 repeats.  I can ace the beginning of the song and the outro, but that repeat section in the middle just kills my hand.  I almost have to pause it and take a break in between sections, but that's cheese.

The difficult part on Freya-Hard for me is the G
                                                                                      (O)
                                                                               (Y)

I have a hard time stretching my hand that fast.  I miss most of them.  The rest of the song, not so bad.

If you all come to the f13 gettogether in Phoenix, I'll charge a minimal amount for 4-5 starring these songs for you. Hell, I'll do it at cost for Misirlou because it's just fun.

^_^

Not quite a stringedl guitar, but modded guitars exist (http://www.flickr.com/photos/joeljohnson/314219859/in/set-72157594292942150/);

(http://farm1.static.flickr.com/107/316447282_6621c4fe8a.jpg?v=0)

I can do the stretching (long fingers), it's just the repetitive nature of it that keeps on going.  My fingers start to shut down after doing that for too long, which ends up screwing up the latter portion of the song.

Hey, that's one of the tunes I mess around with irl. Cool. I can't believe my girlfriend never heard it. That's crazy.

I find it funny hearing people gripe about stuff real guitar players bitch about. "Aw man, why do we have to repeat that verse riff so much, my hand is cramping!" Lolzerz.

At least you don't have to bleed for it, bitches.

Hey, I've got some pretty sweet guitar hero caluses now!  Makes it hurt less every time I convince myself I'm going to pick up a real guitar and actually learn how to play.

Anyone heard when you can buy the game with 2 wireless controllers like they have for the PSII?  Would love to pick it up when it has the flying V's or an SG (check out amazon for some cool skins people have done for both the Flying V and the SG!), heck as cheap as a playstation 2 is I could pick up one of those (plus I hear they have cool RPG's for it too).

Anyone know when they're re-releasing? There's no stock in all of the Greater Toronto Area and apparently it's because they're not shipping any more until they fix the controller. Wondering if there's info on a date somewhere that I'm not looking.