39,327
edits
Rock Band: Difference between revisions
m
update links
m (update links) |
m (update links) |
||
Line 55:
** Outside of Battle of the Bands, your overdrive also empties itself between songs.
* [[Anti-Frustration Features]]: If you tire of ''Rock Band 2's'' [[Easy Mode Mockery]] in World Tour mode, you can unlock all the songs by playing the Challenge Mode on Easy.
** Some songs include drum beats where the high hat (usually charted to yellow lane) and the toms (which would be charted to blue and green lanes) are played simultaniously, meaning if the song was charted as is, it would require you to cross your arms awkwardly. For songs like this, Harmonix frquently charts the high-hat to the green lane instead, so you don't need to cross your arms. This can be seen in "[[Metallica|Battery]]", "[[Metallica|...And Justice for All]]", "[[
** If [[Pantera]]'s "13 Steps to Nowhere"'s drums were charted literally, it would require you to do a roll on the blue drum while frequently crossing your arms to hit the red drum. Instead, they charted that roll as alternating between blue and red, making it much less awkward to play, and turned it into [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBuIh9ehWT4 one of the most fun drum solos in the game].
*** Unfortunately, Pro Drums will undo this swap if you have the yellow cymbal notes turned on, since it uses the "Disco Flip" flag. Fortunately, the part is still playable: toms alternating blue-yellow with the snare on red isn't too terribly hard to do, and Guitar Hero 5 vets that are used to playing with the RB drums will have little difficulty hitting the part on stock drums.
Line 90:
** {{spoiler|Which was actually foreshadowed in one of the "LEGO Legend" loading screens: "The Inflatable Pig holds the record for longest distance traveled into space by an inflatable pig."}}
** The octopus who auditioned for drums and was rejected in the tour/story mode's opening cutscene comes back with his dad in one of the levels.
* [[Bulk-Buy Only]]: [[Ozzy Osbourne|"Bark At The Moon" and "Mama, I'm Coming Home"]] are only available as part of an 8-song pack.
** The exportable songs for ''Rock Band'', ''Rock Band 2'', ''Green Day Rock Band'', and the ''AC\DC Track Pack'' (except for a couple of songs by [[Bon Jovi]], which have [[Updated Rerelease|Updated Rereleases]] as DLC) are strictly all-or-nothing affairs. Some of the other track packs didn't have all of their songs available separately until later.
* [[Bullet Hell]]: Some difficult songs on the guitar, drums, or bass will feel like an inversion of this trope. Though many difficult songs will still have a relative pattern to their notes that can be mastered with practice, some songs have notes all over the place that don't seem to follow any reasonable pattern (they usually do, as [[Bullet Hell]] is supposed to, but getting used to that pattern is not easy). Of note is the guitar solo in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wtPdpPKrWA "Don't Tell Me You Love Me"], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7yhIT3LCog#t=4m38s this part] of the solo in "Blackened", [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35Ea9LPwHAY this part] of "Death Quota for Purification", the drum fills of [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VNtCInpPZM "Day of Mourning"], the drum fills in the intro of [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reH2KjzeNMY "Young Man Blues"], much of [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzWwmzyct-4 "Guns of Summer"] on drums, and on the, erm, "easier" side of things, the entirety of [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1NgbcsGDHU "Rude Mood"] on bass and the chorus of [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jdnc6Axd2U "Science Genius Girl"] on drums.
Line 136:
* [[Difficulty Spike]]: Moving from Medium to Hard on guitar or drums. Guitar charts start including the orange fret, meaning that you have to start moving your hands around instead of having your four fingers sit on green, red, yellow, and blue all the time. On drums, the bass pedal finds itself on the off-beats more often, forcing some extra limb independence out of players, and that's not taking into account the presence of drumrolls and fills with much more notes than one would see in a Medium chart. Moving to Expert is even worse, since the number of notes charted in Hard modes tends to be reduced until a certain standard of reduced difficulty is reached, while Expert is the song in all it's difficult glory. Expect to be murdered by the guitar solos.
** Moving from Medium to Hard in pro guitar has an equally difficult curve. Medium mostly has you doing not much more than calm streams of two finger power chords which are easily voiced as 0-2, 7-9, 5-7, whereas Hard starts throwing relentless walls of three finger chords, arpeggios, and even barre chords at you.
** The drums in Rock Band 2 suffer from a general difficult spike in the Impossible tier. The first few songs ("[[Motorhead|Ace of Spades]]", "[[Mastodon|Colony of Birchmen]]", "[[Rush|The Trees]]", etc.) are fairly easy for impossible songs, but then the difficulty shoots up significantly with "[[Foo Fighters|Everlong]]" and "[[Megadeth|Peace Sells]]". ''But'' then it gets '''even worse''', with FIVE songs that all qualify as [[That One Boss]] ([[Metallica|Battery]] (thrash metal), Shoulder to the Plow ([[Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly|southern-fried-stoner-pirate-death metal]]), [[Judas Priest|Painkiller]] (speed metal), [[Dream Theater|Panic Attack]] (progressive metal), and Visions (death metal) (see a pattern?).
** For bassists, the first real difficulty spike came on the day that "[[Muse (band)|Hysteria]]" was released as [[Downloadable Content]] (or packaged with the game in Europe) as the first song to be released for the platform with a genuinely difficult bass chart.
** Starting with Rock Band 3 and with all DLC since around June 2010, songs are required to use all buttons/pads on the various instruments at all difficulties if that button/pad is used in expert. It will still be fewer notes for the player to hit, but this helps with the hand position aspects.
Line 144:
* [[Doing It for the Art]]: Harmonix and ''Rock Band'' are considered by many to be the smaller-but-classier competitor to the more financially successful ''[[Guitar Hero]]'' (which Harmonix established). One look at their credentials or interviews does indicate how dedicated they are to, and how well they know, music.
** According to their PR, almost every person on the development staff is a musician in a band and Harmonix is their day job.
** Well, given the large number of Harmonix bands in the games (Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives, The Main Drag, Anarchy Club, Bang Camaro, That Handsome Devil, and Breaking Wheel to name a few), it's not hard to believe.
* [[Double Play]]: Not officially supported, but the game drops a lot of hints about using a mic with another controller. There are also Youtube videos of people doing [[Self-Imposed Challenge|all 4 at once]] using modified controllers.
** At least one person has [[Flawless Victory|Full Comboed]] Rock Band 2 (considered the hardest game in the series) playing guitar and singing at the same time.
* [[Downloadable Content]]: If each song is a pound, there's over a ton of it.
** Just to provide perspective, Harmonix fully expected there to be well over '''one thousand''' songs playable in the ''Rock Band'' franchise by 2009's end, and [http://www.rockband.com/forums/showthread.php?t=174116 they met that goal on Nov. 25.] ''The Beatles'' has its own store, too, making it the first band-centric game with DLC.
Line 210:
** Except that you can only have four members on stage at a time. Keys will replace either bass or guitar.
** Subverted in the DS version, where your guitarist alternates between guitar and keyboard during songs that have keyboard parts.
* [[Flawless Victory]]: Though not officially recognized by the game (but acknowledged once per Expert-level instrument per song by the metagame; for example, two Full Combos of Eye of the Tiger on drums counts as one Full Combo, but one on guitar and another on drums counts as two Full Combos, one in each instrument category), a lot of people try for Full Combos of songs (100% accuracy without hitting any nonexistent notes).
** Note that getting a Full Combo is ''not'' the same as maximizing your score. To do that, you have to know ''exactly'' when to deploy overdrive.
* [[Four More Measures]]: Or four fewer.
Line 240:
*** Actually, some guitar parts are easier on the keyboard than guitar, because some things are easier to do with your fingers pointing down than pointing up (like the crazy solo part in Freebird). Other songs that have a lot of strumming on the same note are significantly harder, though, like Beast and the Harlot (still doable though).
*** Speaking of keyboards... Bass on the keyboard is easy enough. Try [[Evile|Thrasher]], or BYOB, or any song with fast strumming. Have fun trying to keep combo!
* [[Hundred-Percent Completion]]: Aside from getting all achievements/trophies (for 360/PS3) or all stars in Tour Mode (the closest to an official 100% completion in the game), many players strive to pass, 4-star, 5-star, gold star, or full combo an entire game (meaning all the on-disc songs for that game) on one instrument. Rock Band 2, being the most difficult, seems to get the most of this, with at least one person having Full Comboed the entire game [[Double Play|playing two instruments at once]]. No one person has yet Full Comboed the game on all instruments, though at least one person has managed 3 out of 4.
** And in RB3, there is a new band goal to hit every note in the 83 on-disc songs in the game. All of them. Thankfully, it only actually requires it be done on one chart per song.
* [[I Don't Know Mortal Kombat]]: Real life guitarists can still suck at the game on guitar. Here: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btcvSWoQWV0 Rush bombs "Tom Sawyer" at 31%], while [[Jonathan Coulton]] And His Backing Band [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAgutrkFjBQ struggle through "Still Alive"].
Line 282:
** ''[[The Beatles]]: [[Rock Band]]'' had a special edition bundle with Beatle-themed instruments, including a guitar shaped like Paul McCartney's Höfner_500/1 bass, with instrument peripherals modelled after John Lennon's Rickenbacker 325 and George Harrison's Gretsch Duo Jet sold separately. The game is also sold as a Singstar bundle with two microphones (for the [[PlayStation 3]] only), as well as a [[Vanilla Edition|Value Bundle]] with original [[Rock Band]] controllers.
** ''[[Green Day]]: [[Rock Band]]'' was released in the States as both a standard edition as well as a 'Plus' edition at $10 extra, which allows players to transfer all the songs in the game to other [[Rock Band]] titles for free, and comes with all previously released [[Green Day]] [[Downloadable Content]].
* [[Lost Forever]]:
** Challenge rewards can only be obtained one time per band. While the "impossible [instrument] challenges" clearly show what the costumes look like (before coloring), the "Impossible Marathon, part 2" challenge has a reward of ONE (not a set. ONE) "crazy instrument" for each active player, corresponding to whatever instrument that player cleared Painkiller with. In order to get all 4 crazy instruments on one character, the entire challenge ladder must be gone through four times, each one in a different band. The amount of time one such run takes is comparable to the time it takes to clear [[Marathon Boss|Endless Setlist II]].
*** Remedied in Rock Band 3 - unlock once, use on every character you want for that profile.
** There are a couple of songs that were pulled from the store due to copyright issues.
Line 314:
*** [[Porting Disaster|Unless you're on the Wii.]] RB2 was the first time Wii owners got the chance to make custom characters or even select which premade character to play as; download individual DLC tracks of their choice which would then be incorporated into the general track library; make setlists; or have any choice in what venue to perform in.
* [[Mythology Gag]]: Beatles Rock Band is full of this. The dreamscape for ''Yellow Submarine'' sticks the band in the outfits they wore in [[Yellow Submarine|the film of the same name]], ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' appears to be performing in Pepperland, the dreamscape for ''Hello Goodbye'' references the promotional video for the song, and so on.
** Even the regular version gets in on this a little. When playing Gorillaz' song "Clint Eastwood", lines sung by Del are sung by the virtual band's drummer instead of their singer, a reference to the song's music video. Plus, the colours go inverted, and your drummer is blue!
* [[Name's the Same]]: Several, including:
** Testify by Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble, and Rage Against the Machine. Incidentally, that's another [[Mood Whiplash]] setlist.
Line 366:
** [[Crowning Moment of Funny|It's back in the third game's Modifiers menu.]]
** A more legitimate [[Power-Up Letdown]] would be Keys On Guitar mode. "Hooray", you think, after finally unlocking Keys On Guitar, "Now I can play the keyboard parts without having to buy the keyboard peripheral!" Sadly, the keyboard notecharts are frequently too complex to comfortably play on a guitar controller, and your playing doesn't count towards any of the game's keyboard-specific goals (well, technically, they do count, but they don't register as completed until you go back and play at least one song on an actual keyboard).
* [[Preorder Bonus]]: Done occasionally, often in the form of preliminary access to downloadable content or special codes to unlock new in-game instruments. Thankfully, none of it stays exclusive to preorders (songs are eventually put in the RB Music Store, and instrument codes make their way onto [[
* [[Rags to Riches]]: You get to see your band like this in ''3'', as you complete the Road Challenges.
* [[Rank Inflation]]: Playing on Expert allows you to get "gold stars" if your score reaches 150% (the 5-star cutoff score plus half of it) of the cutoff point for a five-star ranking. All other difficulties only go up to five.
Line 380:
* [[Rooftop Concert]]: Naturally, the final leg of the story mode in ''The Beatles: Rock Band'' is the group's rooftop concert.
* [[Save Scumming]]: Sort of. The RB3 Pause mechanic actually rewound the song, giving you in effect three seconds to breathe before the song started back up, allowing you to to repeatedly pause and hit difficult chord shifts/drum rolls with 100% accuracy. Harmonix released a patch where excessive pausing turns your crowd meter grey and discards your score for that song.
* [[Schizophrenic Difficulty]]: Every incarnation of Endless Setlist has a tendency to jump around a bit on individual parts since it's ordered by band difficulty rather than any specific part, but on vocals it's significantly more noticeable, although what's easy for one vocalist could certainly be hard for another and vice versa, so it's a difficult instrument to balance in the first place.
** Also RB2's on bass, because they're ordered by band difficulty rather than instrument difficulty. You're likely to run into this in general if you play bass and try to play the songs in order of difficulty, because when the game sorts them it assumes you want them ranked by ''guitar'' difficulty. Rock Band 3 sorts it by whichever part you're looking at the scores for (unless you're in multiplayer, in which case it sorts by band difficulty)
** Being randomly selected and all, Mystery Setlists/random setlists have a good chance of turning out this way.
Line 391:
* [[Sequel Difficulty Drop]]: ''2'' added No Fail mode, but nothing can be saved while it's on. ''3'' has a stricter crowd meter, but almost everything can be done with No Fail off (most goals now revolve around getting a certain number of stars instead of survival).
* [[Sequel Difficulty Spike]]: ''Rock Band'' has 2 songs that fall into ''Rock Band 2'''s "impossible" tier, 3 if you count the cover of "Run To the Hills" (which doesn't transfer over due to licensing issues, though the original version is now in the Music Store). Rock Band 2 has '''12'''!
** Vocals got the biggest boost in difficulty in Rock Band 2. Some of the songs that were in the impossible tier for vocals in Rock Band are in the ''fourth tier out of six'' in Rock Band 2. "Foreplay/Long Time", the hardest non-bonus song on vocals in the original Rock Band, was placed right at the bottom of tier five in Rock Band 2, meaning most of the songs in the upper ''two'' tiers of difficulty in Rock Band 2 are harder to sing than Rock Band's hardest non-bonus song.
** The Rock Band Network is seeing this in a ''tremendous'' way; the amount of songs rated at the maximum tier in at least one category, let alone multiple ones, is staggering. Vocals is usually the exception, as the songs in question are metal tunes with talkie lyrics without regard to pitch measurement.
** Interestingly, this trope is inverted for the regular DLC store, which has a lower percentage of "Impossible" songs (in terms of band difficulty) than ''Rock Band 1'', even if you don't include "Run to the Hills" in that percentage.
Line 398:
** This by itself is impressive. The addition of Pro Mode makes the IDEA of having a keyboard sane. For those that haven't read about it yet, Pro Mode makes the following changes to gameplay for the players with it on:
*** Drums differentiate between pad and cymbal hits. hitting yellow pad instead of yellow cymbal counts as a miss and an error.
*** Guitar (requiring a specific type of controller) will require the ACTUAL frets be hit (and correct strings strummed) instead of a catch-all fret button being held down. What TRULY makes this a major escalation is that they will be releasing a '''102-button''' (6 strings, 17 frets) controller to play it that way.
**** Not to mention an ACTUAL Fender (well, Squier) Stratocaster, with circuitry built into the neck that senses your finger positioning (some advanced techniques notwithstanding). Thus, you can play a song on Rock Band and through an amplifier at the same time.
***** Unfortunately, it has been revealed that a string muting device needs to be applied for the game to pick up the strums reliably. It doesn't hurt technique, but it does hurt the sound. The device can be removed outside of the game (or in the game with no-fail on). E-drums fare better in this regard.
Line 420:
** When Harmonix was developing the Rock Band Network, they code-named it "Rock Band: [[Nickelback]]" specifically to divert press attention (both have the same acronym: RBN). [[Funny Aneurysm Moment|It became less funny]] when [http://www.rockband.com/forums/showthread.php?t=194216 they actually put Nickelback in the DLC store].
** Not so much a Take That as much as simply a cheeky move, [http://blog.us.playstation.com/2010/09/17/psn-exclusive-rock-band-dlc-sale-next-week/ Harmonix announced a 50% off sale for the PS3] (hopefully to counter the arguments for their apparent 360 favoritism). Amusingly these were made-up entirely of albums and packs containing songs that had been announced for Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock along with several singles<ref>[[REM]]'s "''Losing My Religion''", [[Flyleaf]]'s "''Again''", [[Avenged Sevenfold]]'s "''Bat Country''", [[Anberlin]]'s "''Feel Good Drag''", [[Stone Temple Pilots]]' "''Interstate Love Song''", and a cover of [[The Runaways]]' "''Cherry Bomb''" (the version on WoR is a re-recording) to name only the singles</ref> as though to say "Look at the size of our library". Some of these packs were purely in response to Warriors of Rock's setlist:
{{quote|They have "[[
They have three [[Megadeth]] songs, well we have ''Rust In Peace'' which contains one of them. <br />
They have "[[Rush|2112]]"? We have ''Moving Pictures''. All of it.<br />
Line 464:
* [[Wrestler in All of Us]]: During some Big Rock Endings, your guitarist will not only smash his guitar against the stage, but also elbow drop on it (see the studio version of "Let There Be Rock" in ''RB2'' for an example).
* [[You Fail Physics Forever]] / [[Rule of Cool]]: The intro movies from the first two games, which had bands playing on top of their speeding cars, and making Isaac Newton squirm in his grave in the process. The singer is able to stand on his car's windshield, only supported by his feet, and with his body leaned forward almost horizontally. ''Without falling''. Repeated in the "dueling bands" intro for ''RB2'', where ''both singers'' do this by planting their feet '''over the radiator grills''' and leaning forwards in the same way, as if they were trying to faceplant on the running asphalt below.
* [[Zero Effort Boss|Zero Effort Song]] / [[Unwinnable]]: There are some songs that have so few notes that you can pass the song without hitting any notes, but it's still possible to fail them by simply hitting notes when there are none. Then there's "Thank You, Boys" by [[
** "Polly" by Nirvana on Drums. There are 8 notes to hit on Expert. 4 on Medium.
** In RB2, with various talkys (songs that have extremely few tonal vocal parts, which include "So Whatcha What" and "Give It Away" [one tonal phrase at the end] and "Visions"), one can play the microphone in front of the speakers and do nothing and pass the song, even at expert.
*** This also happens in RB3 with "Jerry Was a Race Car Driver": pretty much 95% of it is talky.
| |||