Music Gaming Goodness: Rock Band 2 Rocks The House
by Derek Wilson on October 24, 2008 1:25 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Leeway, Forgiveness, and Accuracy
One change that we have mixed feelings on is the fact that Rock Band 2 is quite a bit more forgiving than the original. If you get a little sloppy on your timing, the game will still give you credit for playing correctly. You still can't totally miss something or add in an extra hit anywhere, but if you are a little late or a little early with something, RB2 is more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt.
This is good in that it can make the game less frustrating, but we were a bit worried it might take away from the experience if there weren't a real strict requirement to be on beat. Thankfully the change is subtle enough to be helpful while not just handing over victory. You still have to be fairly close on timing, but the extra wiggle room can come in handy.
There are some limitations to this added flexibility though. In songs with 16th notes or triplets, there still isn't much that gets by without being fairly accurate. Additionally (on the drums anyway), if two things need to be hit at the same time, then they really need to be hit at the same time. In other words, while timing for the hits might have some leeway, the game expects you to do things simultaneously more ... simultaneously ... where appropriate. This keeps the difficulty for songs with rolls nice and high.
Overall, we are happier with the leniency of Rock Band 2, but we still have some complaints when it comes to adding things in that aren't there. Some songs still leave out notes, and it can get frustrating for people who actually know how to play the songs. We still really want to see a music game where people can add things in on beat that fit the song without being penalized.
We aren't asking for the allowance of random hits anywhere, but things that actually fit. In our vision, if we were to set the difficulty to hard but play all the notes in the expert track, we would expect not to be penalized. Like wise if the game is set to expert but we decide to play reality, we'd like not to lose points. If the developers aren't going to map all the notes to something in the game, musicians shouldn't lose out for it.
Sure there are some tracks where doing everything would be fairly near god-like, and most likely very frustrating for mere mortals. But if every other note of a 32nd note roll is left out for the sake of playability, the game should really know what is acceptable in terms of going beyond the required notes.
The worst offender is the kick pedal really. There are a good number of songs in Rock Band 2 that are actually played with 2 kick drums (or a double kick pedal). Translating this down to a single pedal is really annoying. One hit on the kick translating to two just throws me off, even if it is the only way to actually get the song to sound right without requiring people to do impossible things with one leg.
It's possible to add a double kick to the game though. For those who really don't mind spending money to do this, you can get a Roland TD-8 and a kickbox with a double kick pedal. It doesn't add any functionality to the game, but being able to use both feet to do some of the things the game expects of one might be a nice option.
We would love to see some sort of double kick option that would throw all the notes at you if you plugged in a second pedal. Of course, this is some crazy hard stuff to do when playing real drums, but isn't that part of the fun? Maybe with the next version.
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Myrandex - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
Umm I don't think rockband implies talent.I have no musical talent, and nor to I desire to obtain any musical talent. I can't even read sheet music when someone was teaching me, and it didn't bother me in the slightest bit.
The point of RB is fun. That's it. I used to think that all of these types of games were lame, until a friend brought over Guitar Hero 2. We played it until 3 am, and afterwards I realized that these games were fun (until you had to play lame songs, which is still a fault).
And I agree that this game is to music as FPS is to Military Training; after an intense CS session I certainly am not ready to head to cs_iraq and preventing the terrorist from setting us up the bomb!
explovewhisper - Saturday, December 7, 2019 - link
Rock Band was released on November 3, 2009 on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii consoles, supports all existing Rock Band instruments https://nhacchuong68.com/Myrandex - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
Good article...I love RB and RB2, although I will admit with some of the songs I just think "WTF is this song doing in here" and here are SOOO many songs that I want to play on there that are not available.
I wish that there was some way to import songs into the game and define the tracks (or even let the game automatically decide that, although that'd take a lot of programming and remove a profit area from Harmonix with DLC), because frankly even the songs that are on DLC aren't the ones that I want to play. Sure some are there, but not the ones that I crave to play. And I am sure that there are plenty of other people in the same position as myself, and I am also sure that plenty of other people would not like the songs that I want. Thats the joy in everyone having their own invidial tastes (Rammstein is the band that I'd love to see more than anyone else on there for example)...
I remember 1 song on RB2 on expert on guitar was seriously just the green button at a certain interval that was not difficult at all (a lame rappish type song)...it didn't belong there at all! I fell asleep playing it on expert :-/
I don't play the drums often, but I will admit that the pedal from RB1 does frustrate me and the lack of an adjustable chair makes playin git uncomfortable (long legs makes it hard to hit the bedal properly because my knee will be bent at a less than 90 degree angle), so I pretty much just play guitar (or base). It is still fun though and I'd recommend it to anyone.
Jason
webstorm1 - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
I have a PS3, and there is an option to queue songs for multiple song downloads. You can select Download in the background, so you don't have to wait for any song to download before moving on. Then you just go to the game navigation menu (can't remember the exact name, but it's the one you would use to actually start a game from) and select each song after it has downloaded to install it. I'm guessing this is an Xbox 360 limitation in the online service, so it may even be fixed if anyone cares to do so.Myrandex - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
I couldn't quite figure out on page 1 what the author was trying to say for "You what you would if you..." slightly under the picture.Jason
Gary Key - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
Corrected now, had a HTML tag error there...Devo2007 - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
Instead of saying "The Premium Drum Kit" I think you should specifically mention that it's the ION Drum Rocker somewhere in the first half of page 5 -- it made things rather confusing when you kept saying "Premium Drum Kit" and then randomly referring to the kick pedal as the "ION Kick Pedal."DerekWilson - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - link
thanks for the advice. i updated the page.Diosjenin - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
I have to thank you for the thoroughness with which you've dissected the drum kit(s) in particular. I don't actually own either 1 or 2, but I've played the first one a few times and the critiques you gave of the first set I feel are quite accurate, so I certainly trust the critiques you give of the new one(s).I do have to ask - is there an option to designate the hi-hat as the leftmost 'drum' rather than the one second from the left on the non-premium kit (where I presume you can just switch the pads)? If there's an option in either 1 or 2 to change this, do let me know, but I haven't ever played on a system where that's been the case, and not being able to play with my right arm crossed over my left remains my primary qualm with the drum setup as a whole - even above the horrible bass pedal feel and construction...
DerekWilson - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - link
you can't reassign pads and must rely on what the programmers defined for each song.this is definitely the most frustrating thing for me. having the flexibility of the premium kit here is nice as you can, for whatever song, make it "right" usually by switching the plugs in the brain for the yellow and red pads.
it still just makes me want to buy a real electronic drum kit and a kickbox though.