| Welcome to Gambit. We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| Rock Band 3 | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: Mar 15 2011, 01:37 PM (653 Views) | |
| Benevolance | Mar 15 2011, 01:37 PM Post #1 |
|
Ancient Wyrm
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
Short version: Good game and a worthy upgrade if you like the genre. And the long version... There are a number of things I like. -Players can jump in and out on the fly, change difficulty and adjust most of the band setting right there on the fly. -Additionally, if you fail out of a song, you can jump right back in and play to the end (but you don't earn you any score). -The venues of Career mode were replaced with Road Trips, each with a bronze, silver and gold level of completion. Completing road trips and earning 'cheevos nets you gear. -You can earn 10 spades for completing a song: five regular stars as in RB2, and five bonus stars based on special conditions. -Your score is broken down by player, as is individual star count. Meaning I can net Gold Stars playing with the band without having to go back afterwards solo to 'clean up' song ranks. -You can rank songs immediately after playing them, on a scale of 1-5, indicating the odds of them coming up via random selection. -I never, never, never have to play Cool for Cats or Sabotage again -The playfield is clearer and easier to see. The opacity is slightly higher, meaning that the dancing background mofos are less likely to obscure the notes. -Activating star power no longer makes it nigh-impossible to see the notes. There are a few things I don't like. -They've done away with cash, so there is no buying gear. Everyone simply gets whatever is unlocked by play. There are a lot of appearance options, and I didn't expect I'd miss the shopping, but it turned into a wacky fun element. -The bonus conditions for earning stars are venue specific on the road trips - I'd prefer more random chance. In that vein, theydid away with the "X producer wants to swap a song", which I liked, as well as the "Want to do a private show for 3x cash and 1/3 fans?" I liked those options. -If a player changes difficulty on the fly, their progress is removed from the song score; it can kind of suck, because once or twice adjusting a setting, we've discovered it is possible to accidentally change the wrong thing navigating with those guitars. -Having to re-buy Queen is a slap. I can understand it somewhat, since they had to remap all the instruments but...how about a half-price upgrade option for people that own the original version? Or toss in the pro-mode options for free? -The career mode doesn't feel as fun. It's really short, for starters. It's about 1/3 - 1/2 the venues of the first. They are obviously targeting the game for freeplay, but I likes me some ladders to climb. -Some of the visual cues are different, which requires adjustments to play. For example, solos are now indicated by illuminated side bars, rather than changing the playfield colour. Things that are both: -Character creation is a little too detailed. But on the pro-side, you can change your character's physical appearance at any time after creation. That's a nice touch. So the character creation is more of a wash than pro-con. On the whole, it's a terrific game. They made a lot of solid improvements, most of which are aimed to create a better party in my pants experience. Can't fault them for that. |
![]() |
|
| Benevolance | Mar 23 2011, 12:43 PM Post #2 |
|
Ancient Wyrm
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
I got the keyboard hooked up to the midibox last night and gave Rock Band 3 keyboards a whirl. It's...interesting! There are two modes. The regular keyboard mode gives you five keys (C-G, whites only, for the musicians in the crowd) to press, just like playing the plastic guitars. It's fairly straight forward and if you've played Rock Band at all, the dynamic is fairly comparable to playing the guitar, just with more chords and faster transitions between chords. The pro-mode is where it gets really fun. It's mapped to the standard keyboard over a 2 octave range and you play what the song plays. The screen cannot display the full keyboard keys, though, so there are some cues before it shifts the viewable keyboard up or down. I like that I can actually play keyboard. Reading the pro-keyboard music as it streams, however, is rather difficult. I'm used to seeing notes on a staff and correlating that to a key, and being able to read further ahead of the music. Seeing the keys streaming down at me is not familiar at all, and you have about a 1 second prompt on expert pro-keys. Very twitch-response, if you're trying to read. It's like learning to read music again. Additionally, the game doesn't really indiciate what key the music is in. For people not trained as musicians, this probably doesn't matter; but for someone who knows his scales, the key tells you pretty quickly what notes you would expect to play, and which ones are outside. You can figure it out fairly quickly after the song starts and you're playing, but the intro section to a new song can be a crash and burn experience. On the bright side, however, because you're playing along with the music on pro-keys, in the same key as the music, and the same notes as the keyboardist plays, you can actually just learn to play the song and treat the stuff on screen as sectional prompts. And that's what I ended up doing with Walking on the Sun and Werewolves of London. I found it was much easier that way. |
![]() |
|
| The Nighthawk | Mar 23 2011, 11:35 PM Post #3 |
|
Bugbear
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
Friday is going to be awesome :D |
![]() |
|
| Benevolance | Mar 26 2011, 02:48 PM Post #4 |
|
Ancient Wyrm
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
I just remembered I was going to get you guys to help me move the table over so we'd have more room for Rock Band last night. D'oh. Still, it wasn't as bad as I feared it would be. I dislike the fact that it disables scoring on the mics when we switch into all instruments mode. And the music library isn't very robust yet for keyboard support. Mostly RB3 songs that are...uh, not all great. I think we need a few more nights to work out all the bugs. |
![]() |
|
| Andrul | Mar 26 2011, 03:44 PM Post #5 |
|
Ancient Wyrm
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
Sorry man, I'm not gonna be able to make it in time to help move the table. |
![]() |
|
| Benevolance | Mar 26 2011, 03:54 PM Post #6 |
|
Ancient Wyrm
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
You'd have to get there yesterday. But if you hit warp 10 as you slingshot around the Sun, I'm sure it will be fine. See you last night! |
![]() |
|
| Benevolance | May 29 2011, 02:23 AM Post #7 |
|
Ancient Wyrm
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
I finished almost all the keyboard goals this evening. The only one remaining is to 5 star every song in the game on Expert. I have 6 songs left to finish, but Free Bird, Roundabout and Antibodies are going to be brutal to learn. After that, it's on to pro-Mode keys. Edit: Oh yeah, forgot to add, I'm officially ranked 569 among RB3 keyboardists. I hope to bump up into the top 500 soon! Edited by Benevolance, May 29 2011, 02:25 AM.
|
![]() |
|
| Benevolance | Oct 24 2011, 04:05 PM Post #8 |
|
Ancient Wyrm
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
Coldplay finally released some DLC tracks for Rockband 3. The songs are not terribly compliated to play, but they are fun and catchy jingles. |
![]() |
|
| lgm | Oct 24 2011, 06:40 PM Post #9 |
![]()
Demogorgon
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
I wish there was something more to their music. Seems like they're hitting against a wall right before being great. I have no clue what it would be. |
![]() |
|
| Benevolance | Oct 27 2011, 06:51 PM Post #10 |
|
Ancient Wyrm
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
I dunno. I'm pretty fond of their stuff. The selection that they chose for Rock Band was quite good: Viva La Vida, The Scientist, Yellow, Clocks, Fix You, and Every Tear is a Waterfall (from the newest album). Every time I fire up Clocks or The Scientist I'm transported back to Caens, laying down covering fire across the debris-strewn courtyard with my trusty thompson while Nighthawk maneuvers into a better firing lane, then rushing from cover to cover while he provided firing support. We could quickly secure the center map against superior numbers in most games during those far-off days. |
![]() |
|
| lgm | Oct 27 2011, 07:22 PM Post #11 |
![]()
Demogorgon
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
The solution appears to be listening to music while killing people. |
![]() |
|
| Benevolance | Oct 29 2011, 01:43 PM Post #12 |
|
Ancient Wyrm
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
Coldplay is refusing to allow their new album to be streamed on internet radio sites. As a result, I am refusing to buy their new album until it is available for streaming. |
![]() |
|
| Benevolance | Apr 8 2013, 12:45 PM Post #13 |
|
Ancient Wyrm
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
Harmonix is no longer releasing official DLC for Rock Band, although the Rock Band Network will still continue to update songs. We had a 3 hour jam session yesterday and it was fun to break out some tunes again. As of last purchase, we have 150 DLC tracks, plus RB 1, 2 and 3, which puts our music catalogue at around 260 songs. That's about 17 hours of music. No wonder when we get together to play, it never seems like we get to play enough! |
![]() |
|
| lgm | Apr 8 2013, 08:56 PM Post #14 |
![]()
Demogorgon
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
That's cool. I was thinking about RB the other day. I need to get back to playing it again because I'm sure I've gotten worse. I have a free month of Live but I've been sitting on it waiting for my brother to play something more than Skyrim so we can play some games together. He has till I do my taxes and complete a few small renovation jobs. I'll go play with random people and try to lure you to some online RB again. I rediscovered my headset so I think I could actually communicate. Was a hassle with a keyboard. |
![]() |
|
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
| « Previous Topic · Games · Next Topic » |





![]](http://z3.ifrm.com/static/1/pip_r.png)




10:42 AM Jul 11