I have a confession to make, I have been not so secretly spreading the guitar hero meme for over two years now, and it feels good. Every time I corrupt another soul with the dark fire of star power, bending their minds to the rock gods with promise of multipliers and whammie bars, I get a rush better than any drug known to mankind.
It began innocently enough a couple of years ago when I purchased Guitar Hero thinking it would make a good party game for my upcoming birthday. Tradition dictates me and ex uni chums head over to the all you can eat Chinese then make them regret they ever considered the offer by consuming several times our weight in crispy duck and by recompense equivalent volumes of beer, then head back to my place for some games and to nurse the inevitable MSG headache.
On this occasion I infected Byrn with the Guitar Hero meme so thoroughly that he went out and bought a PS2 specifically so he could play Guitar Hero. He was only the first of many victims, the process continued when we took it along to various blond cons. I also took it to any event where there would be a TV and time to kill, I recently infected many at a company bbq increasing my measure power by orders of magnitude.
Anyway the point is the new Guitar Hero is soon to come out but there is also the new pretender to the throne Rock Band which offers much the same mechanic but more and newer techniques as well as a supposedly very similar song line up. So what to do get both or just the one there is some question as to how different the two are since one is a refinement of the other and they supposedly share a very similar play list is it worth shelling out for both.
Also what platform to get it on. I find myself in a dilemma that I have the ps2 guitar already but the ps2 is a dead platform. It's been taken out and shot the corpse just hasn't stopped twitching yet, I also lack the room for yet another machine under the TV so have to retire the PS2 and rely on backwards compatibility which is dodgy for Guitar Hero due to the custom peripheral.
PS2 version also lacks some of the more modern refinements, most of which like fancier graphics in the case of GH are a bit pointless and online play I could live without but downloadable content for this game I could get behind being able to pick out new tracks is appealing. Then it's a question of which platform to go for, with Rock Band PS3 and Wii offer wireless peripherals which may or may not be compatible with Guitar Hero, but the 360 offers the far more mature downloadable content platform than either of the other two machines which vary from non existent to shaky at best.
At the moment the smart money is saying hold off on Guitar Hero 3 since it is just a tweaked GH2 offering very few improvements and Rock Band may just blow it out of the water never to be seen again.
Comments
"At the moment the smart money is saying hold off on Guitar Hero 3 since it is just a tweaked GH2 offering very few improvements"
GH2 was the same in comparison to GH1, and you bought that.
Look at it as a song pack if that helps. Its a lot of tracks.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do either. Nothing for the time being I suspect. My "Next gen" purchase will likely be a Wii, for affordability and mates-have-osity
Yes but at the time it was a one horse race and it didn't necessitate a new peripheral.
If I'm faced with the prospect of which of the various competing peripherals to invest in then it becomes more than just this is a song add on pack. I've also yet to see definitive statements that GH controller will work on rock band so that alone seems worth waiting to make sure since I'm not going to buy both.
I was tempted by the Wii version partly because it was slightly cheaper I'm not sure about their DLC plans though. It should be feasible even if they currently don't bother.
Wii isn't really Next Gen according to the keepers of the console war keys, it's last gen + 0.5 ;)
The other thing that concerns me with GH3 is the reliance on coop play some bits now can't be unlocked unless you are playing it two player.
Course with online play that's less of an issue I guess, though that stabs Wii in the face since it currently doesn't support online play.
I think the big thing hanging over Rock Band is the pricing. Assuming the traditional $1 = £1 (despite the apparently record difference between the 2 currencies today) you are looking at £170 for the game and controllers. For that sort of cash its going to have to be better than awesome. I would expect it to be delivered in person by Dave Grohl, along with a series of lessons by him on how to best use the drum kit...
I'm also going to stick my neck out and say that the only next gen game I've seen so far is Wii Sports, in that it could not have been done on the last generation of machines. Every other game could have been, albeit with less funky graphics. I think the next one will be Wii Fit, but not 100% confident until I've seen it in action...
I'm with Pete on this one, it's damn expensive for a game and not really next generation at all. However, to offset that (as Kate might argue) we bought a PS2 to buy GH1 (infected by Byrn, so we're EMW second generation infection) and with the extra controller, it was probably up to the £160ish mark. If (for the two of us) the cinema delivers £8 per hour of fun then we'd need about 20 hours play together to get our money's worth. I would argue that we've had far in excess of that. It is expensive, sure butif you're going to get a lot of play out of it, why not? (By that rationale, btw, I think Civilisation has the best value, sucking up weekends at a time).
I also agree with Byrn (aren't I complicent this morning?) that you'll probably buy both. If you don't then the knowledge of the existence of the other will eat away at you. You might want to wait until the world trip is over for Rock Band and get your quick fix with GH3 but I can see you getting it anyway.
On a slightly different tack, do you see yourself learning how to sing in Rock Band so you can get through the 'Front Man' bits? I'd like to see that.
As for the plucky PS2, I do agree that it's dead but it is still selling new in the shops for 90 odd quid. That's not bad for something that's been superceeded by far. We still fire ours up to play GH1/2 but not for much else (alright Tony Hawk's Underground perhaps but only because we find it really funny when I miss a ramp and he goes head first into the floor. I should be called 'Tony Hawk's Skater Hater).
I'm rambling now. So I'll shut up.
Wii fit does look interesting some of the new video's I've seen of the thing in action would suggest it would be compelling.
Even if I do go for rock band I doubt I'll get all the bits up front, it is fairly pricey since you can get a whole new gaming system for that money.
The drums and guitar seem an interesting combo. I would think about buying both it and GH if the peripheral will work with both which is currently unknown there have been some rumblings from Moore and the like but no definitive statements.
Years ago (before my voice broke) I knew how to sing I was in a choir and everything, appeared on stage with Gerry off of Gerry and the pacemakers. My finest hour, well next to singing on jim'll fix it with Brian Cant of course.