The fine art of button mashing

You know, guys… I don’t have a big problem with game difficulty. I mean, to a reasonable limit, challenges in games are expected and fun. I play Rock Band on Expert difficulty, and while I have a blast and can clear “Souls of Black” with quite a good performance, I don’t expect to gold star it. And that’s alright.

What kinda pisses me off in a music game, though, is when the song is difficult for difficulty’s sake. It’s when I have to give the song my total attention and effort, and when I finish it my fingers are hurting and the experience just plain sucked in the end. Rock Band and Guitar Hero should have difficult songs, yeah, but those songs should at least be FUN to play. “Souls of Black”, “Master Exploder” and “Almost Easy” are difficult, but they kick ass. I sing along, I bang my head and tap my feet to them.

When I bought Guitar Hero 5, the song I looked foward the most to play was definitely “Sultans of Swing” by Dire Straits. I played it and well, it kinda sucked. Now, I can 5-star that song, no problem. But they took a legendary song and… well… the note tracking was lame. Not that fun. And I kept thinking “boy, I bet that if this was done by Harmonix, it would be much better”.

And then I read something over at Versus Clu Clu Land that I found to be very enlightening. Here’s an excerpt:

I talked with a Harmonix staffer about the process, and I was surprised to learn that the most important factor in the process is musicianship. The people responsible for note tracking, she told me, aim to reproduce the way that the song is played on a real guitar to the greatest extent possible within the confines of the guitar controller’s limited repertoire of moves.

Please read that entire post before you continue. It’s very interesting. Yes, I will wait.

Alright, yeah, I had heard about it from other sources, that Harmonix’s staff in mainly composed of musicians. But even if you didn’t know that, you can actually feel it coming through in their games, can’t you? I mean, the note tracking is VERY different from the one you find in Guitar Hero. While Guitar Hero seems to aim at purely the challenge, Harmonix manages to work some kind of magic in their tracking that makes the game invite you to groove and dance along.

And I’m not alone in my perception either! Check this post at Sexy Videogameland:

It got me mulling the whole contentious culture war betweenGuitar Hero and Rock Band. The general opinion, to me, seems to come down to a couple key differences; Guitar Hero is squarely a gamer’s game, geared at challenging and inflating the button-masher’s sense of ego and technical mastery, while Rock Band is a true “band simulator” that’s all about the music, man. Activision, says the general consensus, is a sellout extraordinaire, slapping the once-glorious franchise with cartoony trappings and horrible energy-drink metal, while the eclectic, sophisticated musical tastes of the Harmonix team are well-respected.

Damn, that Leigh girl is right! The difference is in feeling like you’re actually PLAYING the song, that’s where the FUN is! I mean, I know that Youtube is stuffed with videos made by plastic guitar virtuosos where they FC every single song in the games, and I am guessing this crowd wants challenging songs to compete among themselves for the best score, but aren’t they the minority? I really think that Activision and Harmonix should aim at making FUN games, not hard ones.

And here’s a good testing method. Give an average Expert player (one that struggles with, let’s say, “Under my Wheels” by Alice Cooper) a song to play. If he smiles, or dances, or taps his feet while playing it, the note tracking is good. The first time I tried “Deuce” in Rock Band 2, I failed. I’m gonna admit that. But I did the whole classic KISS “move your guitar up and down” dance while failing the song. I was having a blast with it.

“Sultans of Swing” on GH5 was MUCH easier than “Deuce” in RB2, and I didn’t have much fun with it. What a freaking shame, it’s one of my all-time favorite childhood songs. I got so disappointed.

Overall, Harmonix beats Activision hands-down in the note tracking category. Whatever their process is when tracking the notes, it’s working. “Blue Sky” is such a DELICIOUS song to play. I keep coming back to it and I play it every time I play RB2. It’s a note tracking masterpiece.

But “Visions” freaking SUCKS. And I will come back to this particular one later.

First post! An about me before we crank it up.

Well hello there fellas, welcome to RB2>GH5! As the name implies, this blog is about the Rock Band and Guitar Hero series, and my clear preference of one over another. And before we begin, let me get one thing perfectly clear: I do not work, nor do I know anyone who works ar Harmonix or Activision. This is a fan blog, and the opinions I will port here are my personal ones, period.

With that out of the way, let me introduce myself. I am a brazilian guy, 30 years old, and I have a full-time job. The reason why I’m saying this is so that you know I’m not a kid trying to waste anyone’s time with flaming or other random dumb shit. Also, I play music simulation games to have FUN, not to post videos on Youtube. So this blog is about having fun with the game.

Also, please pay attention to the “brazilian” detail. Yeah, english is not my native tongue. I’ll try my best to write correctly, but if you english-speaking folks out there spot any mistakes, feel free to correct me. Actually, feel free to correct me about anything at all. I don’t get offended by civil criticism.

So anyway, here’s my gaming bio. I’ve been playing guitar games ever since Konami launched the Guitar Freaks arcade series. Back then, the guitars only had 3 buttons and I’d pay most of my intern paycheck playing “The Endless Summer” and “Fire” at Gameworks. For a while, it seemed to me like I was the only person in the world who was interested in this kind of game. Even back then I was SUCH an enthusiast.

And then Guitar Hero came out.

Boy, Guitar Hero was a dream! Unfortunately, I didn’t have the money to own a videogame that could run GH1 and GH2, so those are two titles that I’ve never played. When GH3 came out, though, you could buy the PC version of the game, so I bought it and played ad nauseum.

And then I recall going to a friend’s house one day and playing Rock Band 2.

The moment I played Rock Band 2, I said to myself “this is it. I have to own this game”. And I am going to keep the story short so I don’t bore you, so after saving some money (now I have a decent job so it wasn’t that hard) I now have my full HD TV, my XBOX 360, 2 guitars, drums and mic.

Alright. And I have RB1, RB2, The Beatles: Rock Band and GH5.

I had the idea of starting this blog right after playing The Beatles: Rock Band and Guitar Hero 5. As I’m gonna explain in more detail later, GH5 was a big disappointment for me. Actually I think the game’s not THAT bad, but it does a really great job at highlighting all the GOOD stuff that the Rock Band series has that Activision just hasn’t discovered yet.

So basically this is a blog written by a big fan of music games, who would like to have more fun with such games, and who hopes someday someone from Harmonix (and hopefully Activision too!) will read what’s written here and make their games even more fun. Actually, since Harmonix is working on RB3 as we speak, I hope my ideas will be of some use for them.

Once I get some posts done, I’ll try publicizing this space in forums and maybe other blogs, so I’d like to welcome visitors willing to comment with criticism and ideas.

And now let’s get this show on the road!

Well hello there fellas, welcome to RB2>GH5! As the name implies, this blog is about the Rock Band and Guitar Hero series, and my clear preference of one over another. And before we begin, let me get one thing perfectly clear: I do not work, nor do I know anyone who works ar Harmonix or Activision. This is a fan blog, and the opinions I will port here are my personal ones, period.

With that out of the way, let me introduce myself. I am a brazilian guy, 30 years old, and I have a full-time job. The reason why I’m saying this is so that you know I’m not a kid trying to waste anyone’s time with flaming or other random dumb shit. Also, I play music simulation games to have FUN, not to post videos on Youtube. So this blog is about having fun with the game.

Also, please pay attention to the “brazilian” detail. Yeah, english is not my native tongue. I’ll try my best to write correctly, but if you english-speaking folks out there spot any mistakes, feel free to correct me. Actually, feel free to correct me about anything at all. I don’t get offended by civil criticism.

So anyway, here’s my gaming bio. I’ve been playing guitar games ever since Konami launched the Guitar Freaks arcade series. Back then, the guitars only had 3 buttons and I’d pay most of my intern paycheck playing “The Endless Summer” and “Fire” at Gameworks. For a while, it seemed to me like I was the only person in the world who was interested in this kind of game. Even back then I was SUCH an enthusiast.

And then Guitar Hero came out.

Boy, Guitar Hero was a dream! Unfortunately, I didn’t have the money to own a videogame that could run GH1 and GH2, so those are two titles that I’ve never played. When GH3 came out, though, you could buy the PC version of the game, so I bought it and played ad nauseum.

And then I recall going to a friend’s house one day and playing Rock Band 2.

The moment I played Rock Band 2, I said to myself “this is it. I have to own this game”. And I am going to keep the story short so I don’t bore you, so after saving some money (now I have a decent job so it wasn’t that hard) I now have my full HD TV, my XBOX 360, 2 guitars, drums and mic.

Alright. And I have RB1, RB2, The Beatles: Rock Band and GH5.

I had the idea of starting this blog right after playing The Beatles: Rock Band and Guitar Hero 5. As I’m gonna explain in more detail later, GH5 was a big disappointment for me. Actually I think the game’s not THAT bad, but it does a really great job at highlighting all the GOOD stuff that the Rock Band series has that Activision just hasn’t discovered yet.

So basically this is a blog written by a big fan of music games, who would like to have more fun with such games, and who hopes someday someone from Harmonix (and hopefully Activision too!) will read what’s written here and make their games even more fun. Actually, since Harmonix is working on RB3 as we speak, I hope my ideas will be of some use for them.

Once I get some posts done, I’ll try publicizing this space in forums and maybe other blogs, so I’d like to welcome visitors willing to comment with criticism and ideas.

And now let’s get this show on the road!