http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5GpRJItqjw

There are no words.

That’s all I needed. I would pay $6.25+tax (500 MS points) for that alone.

But “Exo-Politics” and “Supermassive Black Hole” are also in the 3-song pack being released on May 8.

Meanwhile, Rock Band is getting some pack with Fallout Boy in it.

So for one week, GH3 > Rock Band.

But I might need to finally buy Rock Band when “Hysteria” is released for it (guessing it will coincide with the European release on May 22).

Guitar Rising – due out in late 2008 for PC (and Mac)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOMGbr0Nx-k

So want this. I know you do too, Justin. I only wish I had an electric guitar instead of an acoustic guitar right now.

My questionable vocal capabilities aside, I should’ve been one of the first people to buy and cherish Rock Band. (Technically, I was, but I bought it for a Canadian and shipped it to him out of the goodness of my heart.) I was hyping the game since its infancy, proselytizing the masses, only to turn around and buy Guitar Hero III because I couldn’t wait the extra month. With a new rhythm game to play, I decided I would wait on Rock Band. Since then, I’ve played it on Festivus over a friend’s house, and at Best Buy a couple of times — once for an hour and a half with a complete stranger. It was a amazing bonding experience.

So I’m still waiting. I’m waiting for a reasonably priced game+drums SKU that will never come. I’m waiting for the full albums that were promised to be announced. I’m waiting for Muse, Soundgarden, and Led Zeppelin to get DLC packs. I’m waiting for the complaints about the fake instruments to stop flooding the internet. But these are just the excuses I come up with. I’m not refraining from buying the game due to these reasons, I’m coming up with these excuses because I’m afraid of buying the game. (Yeah, I just watched Se7en today. I love that movie.)

It’s taken me a while to sink down to each level of nerddom I’ve experienced in my lifetime. I lurked GAF for almost a year before I finally registered. For years, I never had the urge to go on IRC, but I eventually did that. When I first heard of Guitar Hero, I thought everyone on GAF praising it was a loser of the highest order; it took real-life friends lauding it and me playing GH at Best Buy numerous times to finally accept its transcendent awesomeness into my heart and home. Talking to a internet friend on the phone — another step that really set off an alarm with my self-consciousness. Now I have reached another crossroads: owning a massive plastic drum set.

I don’t know how I could look my parents in the eye while owning a collection of Fisher-Price musical instruments in their house. It’s bad enough that I already own two fake guitars that take up a good amount of under-the-bed storage space. A third fake guitar and I might as well build a fake guitar stand. Oh wait, someone at GAF already did that. I pray to God that I never get that accepting of my pathetic hobbies.

Maybe I’m too insecure, but I think a bit of self-awareness and restraint is a good thing. I have no doubt I would own Rock Band if I lived on my own, but by that time I’ll be supporting myself, which hopefully would alleviate the embarrassment of owning such toys. Nothing screams pathetic like living at home with piles of music game controllers surrounding you — which is pretty much what would happen considering I have no storage space left.

In closing, I love you Rock Band, but I think I’m going to limit myself to Guitar Hero for the foreseeable future. I just wish it had awesome DLC like you do.

Now, I’m going to go back on my word and verdict by saying that I’ve decided against buying Rock Band for the foreseeable future after playing it at Best Buy. The guitar parts on expert weren’t challenging at all for a Guitar Hero veteran like myself, and the drums were a joke. This was because there was no bass pedal included in the kiosk. I know that with the bass pedal it’s going to be 5x harder, but I couldn’t help feeling bored by the game. As a result, my hype meter has fallen dramatically. With GH3, I have my rhythm game fix for a few months. The online aspect of GH3 just adds so much replayability to the game, even if the majority of Live players are absolutely insane and pick “Through the Fire and the Flames” way too much. I might just split the cost for Rock Band with Justin if he’s up for it around Christmas time. Either that, or just buy the drum-only SKU when it’s released early next year. There’s not enough room in my humble abode for so many faux instruments.

I’ve been helplessly addicted to a couple of XBLA games. I got a quadrillion points in Every Extend Extra Extreme unlimited mode and haven’t played much since then. Timed mode and online are the only modes worth playing in that game. Even then, there’s not really much to it. Setting off the explosion before your shield runs out and on beat is the entire game. “Revenge” mode is even more broken. It takes a special development team to come out with two worthless games in one. I just became entranced the first time I played it, which led to the 1,000,000,000,000,000 points.

The other XBLA game that I’ve been playing incessantly is Puzzle Quest. It’s a puzzle-RPG hybrid that is incredibly addictive. It has the basic mechanics of Bejeweled – you have a rectangular playing field, and you match up gems in rows of 3 or more – only now you have spells and leveling up to deal with. The only catch is that after playing the game for a while (probably 20-25 hours), I still don’t think I’m close to completing it. While it’s a fun game, such a simple system can’t sustain such a long quest. But I’m going to end up finishing it and maxing out my character’s level at 50 just for the achievements. Damn it.

I also just finished playing some Halo 3. I did fairly well, too. Too bad that once I buy Call of Duty 4 in three days nothing else matters. Circuit City is offering a free copy of Call of Duty 3 with the purchase of COD4. I can’t wait to sell that piece of shit. In addition, Circuit City is also selling Virtua Fighter 5 for only $39.99. I really was gonna ask for that for Christmas, but I can’t pass that up. Burger King is also offering a coupon for a $10 Gift Card with a purchase of a game $39.99, so I’m going to take advantage of that too. Here’s the coupon. You have install some bullshit coupon printer, but whatever. For the record, these deals are seemingly only for the 360 versions of each game. Sorry PS3 owners.

Man, I love my 360. Between all these games, I’m gonna be set for a while. I might just sell my copy of Rainbow Six: Vegas. Poor guy never even got a chance to shine.

This Sunday (or Saturday night, if you’re hitting up a Best Buy midnight launch) Guitar Hero III will officially be hitting store shelves. In less than a month, the makers of the first two Guitar Hero games will be releasing their new massive game pictured above – Rock Band. The former is the standard 5-button plastic guitar affair that gamers have come to know and love — or possibly get sick of — while the latter comes in a $160 or $170 (depending on whether the graphics are next-gen or not) package complete with game, guitar, drums, and microphone. But you already knew this.

What you might not have known is how Red Octane made the guitar peripherals for the first two Guitar Hero games, but is part of Activision now, so while Harmonix moved on to make Rock Band under EA, Red Octane is still with the Guitar Hero series. Together with Neversoft (famous for creating the Tony Hawk series) they have created the third installment. For some reason, they’re deciding to be fucking douchebags and are locking out the Rock Band guitar somehow, which means it will NOT be compatible with Guitar Hero III. Complete and total bullshit. At least the 360 GH2 guitar works with 3, though. Over on the PS3 side, it seems that the GH3 guitar will not be backwards-compatible with the old games. On top of that, the adapter that was created to allow gamers to use their old PS2 guitar controllers doesn’t work well at all. What a mess.

Naturally, Harmonix is being awesome and all the previous Guitar Hero controllers (including GH3!) will be compatible with Rock Band. On the bad side, their will be only two packages available this year. Game-only and the massive package mentioned earlier. These will be released for the 360 and PS3 first, while a PS2 version will follow a few weeks later (Wii LOL). I NEED the drums and I NEED the game immediately, so they’ve got me hooked. I’ll never sing and I could conceivably buy GH3 for my 360 and use that guitar, but the Rock Band guitar looks about as cool as a fake guitar possibly can (just look below) and has more functionality. So massive Rock Band package it is. God, I never thought I’d write so much about peripheral compatibility.

So I guess the real question is: Rock Band or Guitar Hero III?

I’m going to have to say that Rock Band is required. If the price seems a bit too steep, think about it: Two friends could share the price of a massive package, buy an additional game-only, and then share the peripherals for $115 each. That’s only $15 more than the game+guitar package for a next-gen version of Guitar Hero III. Of course, maniacs like me will buy both. GH3 does look to raise the difficulty to even a higher level, which is what is pulling me towards it. Plus, I can’t wait a month to get my fake musician fix. But really, looking at these songs, which are supposedly on Expert, Rock Band looks to be pulling a Nintendo in regards to the guitar. (Rock Band is really about the DRUMS to me, and I know that’s going to be hard as hell, so I’ll be more than happy.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xjpu_DYCpeM

To be fair, most of those parts aren’t solos anyway. And “Epic” does look like it’s difficult enough to make me miss some notes. And Rock Band definitely looks a shitload better than Guitar Hero III. As much as I can gather from a shitty YouTube video, anyhow.

So there we go. I’m spent. Buy Rock Band. Buy Guitar Hero III if you’re really good at the past two games and aren’t sick of the formula yet. The setlists are both awesome, but the DLC (downloadable content) puts Rock Band over the top. Who’s Next and Nevermind (entire albums!) right off the bat. Unbelievable.