Rock On!

January 5th, 2008 · No Comments

My copy of Rock Band finally arrived yesterday and I was able to unpack it and get it set up. There is a surprising amount of stuff in that reasonably sized box! They have packed everything in there pretty tightly and it is held together really well so that it won’t get bounced around during shipping.

After getting it all unpacked I put together the guitar and the drum kit but left the mic for now since I don’t really want to submit my friends to my horrid warbling sometimes referred to as “singing”. After that I got on xbox live and got the latest updates as well as downloaded some necessary music: Fortunate Son and some All-American Rejects songs. Once those were slotted into the game’s content library I hopped on xbox live and was able to do some song quick play with my friend and my cousin.

I was amazed at how well the game runs on Xbox Live, but I guess there really isn’t that much data necessary to represent 4-5 note sequences being pressed simultaneously. Playing on Xbox Live i’m still able to see the other 2 band members’ note streams and which notes they are hitting. I can also hear when they screw up because it stops playing their part in the song if they mess it up. The biggest difference I could find is that as the drummer, I couldn’t mess them up as badly as I could if they were sitting next to me in person. What I mean by that is the drums make the loudest sound with the sticks hitting the pads as you play. People on the guitar make a light strumming sound but it is not that distracting. If you are all playing in person and the drummer gets way off the beat it can really mess everyone else up. Luckily with Xbox Live, when I get off the beat it just doesn’t play my drum part anymore so it doesn’t bother the other people as much. I suppose in a sense that is less realistic since me screwing up really should screw up the whole band, but it is a game after all.

Another thing I noticed is that the drums while having the same type of idea as the real thing, are missing several pieces. Real drum kits have around 4 drums and 3-4 cymbals with a bass drum and possibly even another foot pedal for the hat cymbal. You are talking a minimum of 9 pieces if not 10 or 11 in a real drum kit. Rock Band only simulates 5 with 4 pads and 1 foot pedal. It would be nice if they had an add-on or for Rock Band 2 maybe included 2 more pieces arrayed above the base 4 pads that way you could represent more cymbals and get a lot closer to the real experience. I’ve also been told by some real drummers I know that there is a “rebound” factor to hitting a real drum that allows you to do nice drum-rolls etc. that Rock Band cannot simulate. There is a little bit of rebound though with the way the pads are designed so it still works pretty well for my part.

Well, i’m gonna go back to playing Rock Band some more so that’s it for this blog entry. I just finished “Green Grass and the High Tides” as made famous by The Outlaws on drums at “Medium” difficulty. Trust me, that is harder than it sounds!