Oct 29
Sorta Impressions: The Rock Band Instruments
On Saturday, I took a trip to Best Buy to pick up The Orange Box. While waiting for the clerk to fetch a copy from the back, I noticed something awesome: the Rock Band demo station. So I walked over, and a very short journey began….
First I had to figure out which controller (the drums or the guitar) were the primary. It was the drums which has the standard letter buttons and D-Pad on it. I cycled down to demo, waited it to boot up…. and got nothing. The disc was scratched.
I did not feel like trying to flag down an employee to check the disc, so I just examined the instruments. The drums look like a basic version of those electronic drum sets you see in music stores. The set was sturdy and I was able to wail on it pretty roughly.
The guitar, however, left me a little wary. The first issue was the strum bar. It is clickless and, therefore, has a smooth wiggle. I’m not sure whether this will screw me up by not knowing exactly when a strum registers. The frets felt very sturdy though, and the same went for the solo frets. The only issue is the center button. In Guitar Hero, the yellow fret had a thick line to let you know your hand placement. On the Rock Band Stratocaster, the yellow fret has five small dots in the shape of an X. These bumps did not easily register with me and your finger pads would have to be the width of a Snickers bar to feel all five of them at once.
Overall, the instruments are sturdy, but I’m not sure how long it will take to get used to the small changes.
P.S. Best Buy is already selling the USB hub which comes in the bundle. I have no idea why.
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You know, in retrospect, I should have tried out the guitars at E for All. I figured, hell, I’ve played Guitar Hero before, I know what that’s like. But now that I think about it, I could have gotten a feel for the new guitars and let you guys know what they’re like.
As far as the drums, they work well. There were times that I’d miss a drum head, but that’s likely attributed to the fact that I rock extremely hard, so I can’t be bothered with something like [i]spatial precision[/i]. My only complaint is a minor one, and that’s the bass drum pedal takes a bit more force to hit it than a real one would, so by the end of the song, my leg muscles were getting tired, but then that’s more an issue of me keeping it in the “up” position when typically you keep your foot in the “down” position, and then pop it up and back down when you want to hit the bass. I wasn’t sure if that would work with the game, so I didn’t try it.
The microphone is a microphone. I had no trouble using it as a fake tambourine either. There’s not much more to say about it.
Yep, I’ve been playing Rock Band at the local Best Buy since Sunday. They have a mic that didn’t work, a GH3 controller, a RB guitar, and a drum set without pedal.
It’s a blast, we had 3 people of decent skill rocking out. It really sold me on the game, I’m getting the set. The RB guitar feels strange at first. The drums are nice, but hard to play standing up.