“Rock Band” News: RIDICULOUS

Some choice excerpts from a post on NeoGAF, relaying information from the latest issue of Game Informer.

- One disk with 4 separate campaigns. Guitar, Drum, Bass and Vocal. Each can be played on its own from start to finish, in addition, a full band game is designed to allow for one huge co-op playthrough.

- Will feature full support for four player online play on both 360 and PS3. Any combination of on/offline play will work and each player can pick their own difficulty setting.

- Guitars and Bass now have 10 frets. 5 for the regular sections of the game and 5 for the newly designated solo sections.

- Singing is now more in depth. There is a phoneme detector that will pick up individual vowels and consonants you say. Build up enough highly judged phrases and you’ll be able to sing free-form. If you do well enough in free-form, then you’ll trigger the vocalist’s version of star power.

- Microphone doubles as a tambourine on many songs to combat super long guitar solos where the singer doesn’t have much to do.

- Drums are apparently insane. You use actual sticks and hit one of four colored pads in front of you, in addition to a kick pedal attached to the drumming unit. Drummers will also have the ability to do fills etc. in their own little free-form section, do well and you’ll trigger the drummers version of star power.

- Announced songs:

Weezer – Say It Ain’t So - Original Master Track
Black Sabbath – Paranoid - Original Master Track
The Who – Won’t Get Fooled Again - Original Master Track
Nirvana – In Bloom - Original Master Track

So that’s all I’m going to copy and paste here. If you want all the info, go read the post right here.

That song list right there is pretty damn great. Especially The Who.

Basically, this game sounds like it’s going to blow the fuck out of Guitar Hero III, which makes sense considering these are the same guys that made the first two ground-breakingly awesome Guitar Hero games and decided to move on to make something even more awesome. Meanwhile, Guitar Hero III is being made by Activision and, other than the track list, it seems a bit rough around the edges. Rock Band just looks to take the Guitar Hero formula to another level. 10 fret guitar? A pretty big drum set? Free-form stuff? Campaigns for each instrument? Wow, I am never going to learn a real musical instrument. I’m also going to end up dropping over 500 bucks for an Xbox 360 and this game this fall.

Related posts:

1. “Rock Band” Announced by Harmonix, EA
2. First Rock Band Gameplay Video
3. Guitar Hero vs. Rock Band: A Clusterfuck