Guitar Hero World Tour vs. Rock Band 2 - an Unfair Comparison

So let's begin by rehashing my initial experience with rhythm games. My very first was Donkey Konga for the Gamecube. Cute little game with drums. It was a lot of fun, though limited in challenge. A great way to have non-gamers enjoy a video game. But it didn't stick. It was fun in small doses...after a while your hands hurt and you got tired of playing cutesie old school Nintendo music and Mighty Might Bosstones "The Impression That I Get" which was by far the best song.

So several years later, Guitar Hero comes out, and I remained blissfully in the world of Azeroth through Guitar Hero One and Two, only leaving Cenarion Circle for an occasional sleep session and 8 hour work day. Needless to say, I didn't play many other games.

So when Bootstrap Bill brought over Guitar Hero III for the Wii, I was excited. We started playing the set list, and I started out on medium difficulty. I liked it. A lot. I bought the game, even though I didn't own a Wii (though there is one in our house). Unfortunately, the game was limited in the Wii version, but I didn't care. I was jamming out to Scorpions, Aerosmith, ZZ Top, and Metallica. I loved the way that it brought the authenticity of playing the guitar, but removed the large challenge of learning how to strum and play chords correctly. Now it was fun AND easy. As South Park said, real guitars are for old people.

So I got up to expert on guitars with Guitar Hero III, and got sluck on the &@#*ing Slayer song. But it was a ton of fun to play. Then, Rock Band came out. And you can drum? For those of you who have known me for all of my life, I can't play the drums worth a shit. But I always pretend that I can. I'll drum the current beat in my head on my steering wheel, on my legs, on my brother's head, on whatever is available at the time. So I can drum without really learning how? AWESOME!

Rock Band was amazing. It still had the fun guitar parts, but the drumming was unreal. I loved it, and I played it until I was good enough to play songs on expert. There aren't too many songs I can't play on expert Rock Band (damn you Iron Maiden drummer, damn you.) and I can play most anything on expert guitar as well.

Eventually Rock Band lost a little luster, but it was still fun to play here and there in a group setting. And I believe that I posted a while ago my thoughts on Guitar Hero III vs. Rock Band. Rock Band is a lot more fun in a group setting because you can play with 3 others instead of only 1. But Guitar Hero has a much better single player mission mode, and has a lot better guitar parts in my opinion.

Then the problem with Activision vs. Harmonix broke out. Instruments weren't compatible. WTF guys! You're missing an incredible opportunity to reach more people!

And then we found out that Rock Band 2 (hereby known as RB2 because I'm lazy) would be coming out around the same time as Guitar Hero World Tour (hereby known as GH4 because I'm really lazy). And GH4 will be competing directly with RB2 by added singing and drums? Wow - that's awesome! But.....GH4 drums have three toms and 2 cymbals. There goes the idea of eventually having compatible instruments, eh?

So we reach around a few weeks ago just before Rock Band 2 comes out for the PS3. I got to "rent" the game that weekend before it came out because I'm cooler than you. We set it up in my parents' basement where we usually play, because there's a high def projector screen down there and plenty of room. We hook it up and start playing. And initially it was fun, though it didn't seem much different than RB1. Then it started to happen. We started to fail song after song. We each have been mostly playing Expert level for weeks now, and we couldn't do it. Even the original songs. We couldn't get the calibration to work, despite the new tools being MUCH better. Every song felt off, and even though we were hitting notes right, it wasn't giving us credit. Even when we played the downloadable songs that we could ace on RB1, we couldn't do it.

That combined with the limited song selection frustrated us to no end. We ended the night prematurely having played for about 2-3 hours. What was to blame? Perhaps the calibration, perhaps not. But one thing was for sure...it was much harder and more frustrating.

That brings us to tonight. We got to "rent" GH4 for the weekend before it goes on shelves. Thank God that Sony made Activision and Harmonix play nice. Our 4 tom drums worked just fine and our RB1 guitars played the songs very well. I can only assume it works the same way in the other direction. PRAISE BE!

So we picked it up in the same way as RB2. We calibrated and started playing. And.....it worked. We could play the songs on expert! Amazing!

We played three player tour unlocking set lists. If we got stuck on a song, we kept trying it until we got it (because GH4 doesn't give you fans that you will lose). Some of the GH4 parts were really challenging. It seemed that the notes don't appear for quite as long as they do in RB2 before you need to hit them. While this difference may be measured in milliseconds, it was enough for it to be harder to see unpredictable parts. Also, the parts though still pattern based, differed a lot more. So yes it was harder. But it wasn't frustratingly hard. RB2 was frustratingly hard - when you think you are playing the part correctly, but it's not precise enough. After a single calibration of GH4, we didn't have this problem. GH4 parts were more challenging (and I'm sure they'll get harder) but we didn't feel the level of frustration. We played one song 8 times before we got it, and it felt great when we were done. We played for 3.5 hours, and if our hands and legs didn't hurt so badly from Expert drumming Dammit, we might still be at it.

Also, to address the set lists, I've heard so many people say that they like RB2 setlist a lot better than GH4. I call shenanigans. RB2 has some great artists like Rush, Guns N Roses, and Panic at the Disco, but the songs are "The Trees," Shackler's Revenge," and "Nine in the Afternoon"? WTF! Meanwhile, we actually didn't mind playing Beastie Boys and Michael Jackson because the songs were "No Sleep Til Brooklyn" and "Beat It." Note to Harmonix: Please pick better songs from these artists! Songs that are fun to play maybe? Seeing Mighty Might Bosstones and finding out the song is "Where'd You Go" is like the guy finding out that Lola was a dude. Meanwhile, "Hot For Teacher" is an amazing Van Halen choice for GH4 - I can't wait to unlock it.

To be fair, my assessment is biased. I'm playing expert mode, which is not going to be the most popular mode. Also, I couldn't get RB2 to be comfortably synchronized, though part of that I feel is the game's fault. I also got stuck with songs that I didn't enjoy or couldn't beat on expert - and Hard is just a joke once you've beaten Long Time/Foreplay on Expert. Not even fun.

I'm also using Rock Band 1 instruments, which means only 4 drum spots, no cymbals, no touch sensitivity, no guitar slide, and no wireless drum. I didn't try singing on GH4, (though it was much improved on RB2 from what I noticed) and I didn't try out enough songs on either to give a solid opinion. But what I can say from experience is that both are MUCH more difficult on expert than Rock Band 1. Rock Band 2 requires more precision, whereas Guitar Hero builds on GH3 and went balls to the wall on some of the parts, even for the drums. If we could get RB2 to calibrate right, then I'd have a fair assessment on my hands. But based on what we saw, I would recommend GH4 over RB2. A week ago I wouldn't have believed it, but it's true. I'd like to try out the guitar slide and the 5-piece drumset sometime, but money doesn't grow on trees. At least we can play both because Sony helped out the consumer. I hope both games do well.

Couple small notes I didn't touch on

• still don't like how GH4 makes you choose difficulty level of you instrument before your setlist - makes group setting more difficult for rotation
• I've heard the RB2 "No Fail Mode" is amazing, but I haven't tried it (maybe I should have....)
• I like and don't like how GH4 shares star power among the players - it helps single instruments struggling to stay alive - I would have failed one song 7 times because it took me a while to get the hang of it. However, it's frustrating and not very intuitive to know whether you can/should use it before someone else.
• I like the way that drums trigger the star power in GH4 - you can choose when to do it at will, not when they decide to give you a fill part.
• I don't like how you can't do a single song in a setlist in GH4 - you have to do the whole setlist at once. Pain in the ass. Plus the hard song is always last, and you're like "well we're this close, we gotta beat it!" Never have I hated Blink 182 more than tonight.
• I'd better stop because I'm exhausted - I'll post again with more info once I've tried both again, but those are my impressions for ya. Sorry for all the rambling.
  

Super Random Blog Post

Lots of random ramblings, so try to keep up.

• Not a huge fan of Oblivion so far. Graphics are nice, it's about a million times better than Morrowind (which I was hooked on for a while) and the openness of it is pretty decent too. But you know, I can't handle openness. I need structure in my games - I need purpose, or else I'm going to spend five hours looking around for stupid herbs because this guy asked me to. And I'm going to hate every minute of it, but I feel like I have to do it. It isn't even that I want a linear game - just not an open plain.
• So I know that everyone can't wait for 12 more days when we don't need to hear about politics all day long. But didn't it start a year after the last Presidential election? We're never going to completely get away from it. Sometimes I want to become a hermit.
• Everyone's saying about how if the Tampa Bay Rays can get to the World Series, the Pirates can. But the Tampa Bay Rays have something going for them - they aren't a bunch of dumb *#$@s.
• Hinterland is an interesting game. It's too bad they couldn't add an extra layer of complexity and do multiplayer. That would be crazy awesome and a whole lot more fun. Even single player against AI with a town on the other side would be sweet. As it is, I've played through the game 3 different times, and it's losing its luster already. It was fun, but it could have used more depth.
• Economic downturns are necessary parts of capitalism. There are tons of bad businesses out there who just made a living off of the fruits of others. When the economy goes down, yes it means unemployment and bad times for a lot of people. But it also means weeding out the crap. Good businesses will stay lean and make it through stronger than ever before. I hope we're one of em.
• Team Fortress II. Way too much fun for its own good.
• You can now buy a 30 GB solid state drive for under $150 that boots Windows Vista in less than 7 seconds. It's so fast that people are overheating their CPUs because the CPU is used to waiting for the hard drive, and now that it doesn't have too it has to work too hard. In about a year, it will be feasible for even poor folks like me to have their OS and games installed on an 80GB solid state disk. What's even the point of RAM then?
• What's the regular hard drive companies' response to the solid state drives? A terabyte drive available for under $100. Two years ago, it was $2 per gig. Now it's $10. Absolutely nuts. Can't wait til Black Friday.
  
• Hockey is twice as much fun to watch than football. Football is 10 times more fun to watch than baseball. Suddenly I don't mind if the Pirates suck as long as the Steelers and Penguins don't.
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force has made a comeback in my life. Friggin hilarious. www.mcpeepants.com. I read that the new Family Guys are incredibly good - anyone confirm that? If so, I'll have to check em out.
• If you're bored, check out our Ethix Systems newsletters at newsletter.ethixsystems.com. You might learn something.
  

What I'm Playing

Since it's been a long time since I posted, here are the games that I've been playing in my spare time (which has been somewhat limited lately).

Jedi Outcast II

I beat this game over the course of about two weeks playing on and off. I've beaten the game numerous times - it's one of my favorite FPS games, because you don't need to have great shooting accuracy. After the first two level sequences and a training mission, you get a lightsaber, which means you don't need to shoot much for the rest of the game. I flew through the game because I've beaten all of the puzzles once before. But boy is it fun being a Jedi. I was going to get the new one, but due to its cost and the poor reviews I've read (they say the controls and camera angles are frustrating) I've decided to hold off.

Warcraft III

Sometimes the classics never go away. Can you tell that I'm poor at the moment? I broke this game out after a long time, and I forgot how much fun it was. It really did revolutionize the RTS genre with the introduction of heroes. I used to dislike it, but with my WoW experience the game takes a new meaning. First of all, I know where things are going on. When they say "go to Dalaran" I know where that is. It's far more engaging as a result. Secondly, I learned how to use the abilities of the heroes for benefit - I had never really used the paladin's heal or the death knight's coil as a heal before. And boy does it make a difference. Heroes really do change the game for the better.

Team Fortress II

I've been playing this one for almost a year now, and it never loses its edge. It's eternal PVP 16 vs 16. Even though there are only about 10 maps and only 9 classes, it never seems to get old. This is my default "I'm bored" game, and it gets more fun when playing with people you know over vent.

Guild Wars

I never thought I would play another MMO, because it gets so time consuming. But I've found that an MMO is only time-consuming if you make it so. Playing this game with Nick and Justin slows me down. We only play when we all can play, which is only once or twice a week. It's very enjoyable - lot of differences from WoW, some good and some bad. But it's nice getting back into a cooperative RPG.

The World Is Flat

No, this isn't a game. It's a book about how the world is changing due to technology. It's a very interesting read and sheds a lot of light as to how our world is going to change since anyone in any part of the world can participate in the global economy now. It is very long, but it's interesting to hear stories about big companies and their struggles in adapting to the flat world.

The Economy - What's Going On

I've been reading and hearing all sorts of different opinions about the current state of the economy. And since I actually feel like I have somewhat of an understanding about it, I wanted to post so anyone can understand the basics about how it happened and what the bailout is all about.

The Problem

In the beginning, there was the housing market. Between 1997 and 2006, the average American home rose 25% in value. For years, people were making a killing off of the housing market - land was becoming overvalued, especially in prime real estate locations. I'm actually not sure of the cause, but let's just understand that housing is like anything else as a commodity. Prices go up and down with demand. People had a high demand for real estate, and so the prices went up. Is your area building tons of housing? I know ours is.

So these mortgage companies decided to get a piece of the housing action. They gave mortgages to individuals in a high risk category, meaning they would likely not be able to afford their mortgage payments. Usually this is a bad idea, right? Well when the attempted owner could not pay for the house, the company got it. And since real estate was going up so much in value, they would end up turning a profit anyway. Genius, right?

It was quite a profit center, until the real estate market started being more realistically valued. Due to overbuilding during this period of housing boom, we had a housing bust. So now these companies have all these bad mortgages that people can't afford to pay. As a result, these companies declare bankruptcy. Heard of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Both are mortgage companies designed to help people who are having trouble paying their mortgage. Now that there are a whole lot more people who can't afford it, these companies went under, and the government has already helped bail these two companies out by offering low-rate federal loans to them, but it wasn't enough. The biggest company to go under was Lehman Brothers, and this triggered the crisis as we know it today. To read more details (and there are a lot more details) check this Wikipedia article: Subprime Mortgage Crisis

The Bailout

What are the trains of thought with the bailout? Well, if things continue as they are, credit will begin to become more difficult to obtain. Companies would not be able to access credit, and economic progress would slow down drastically. As a result, we could have a stock market crash, and a depression (though not the Great Depression). I've already read stories about established auto dealers not being able to get credit to increase inventory.

The bailout proposes to spend 700 billion dollars toward purchasing these bad mortgages. This supposedly would stabilize the market, and allow people to just start fresh with the market. The problem with this plan is that it may only temporarily stop the flow of things. The biggest problem with the plan is that the 700 billion dollars aren't coming from anywhere - it is all deficit spending. Another problem that most people see with it (and these are mostly business owners talking) is that bailing out these companies doesn't teach any culpability. If you make bad business decisions then you go out of business. But if you make bad business decisions at a high enough level to affect the economy, the government will simply bail you out. Not a good lesson to be teaching young businesspeople.

My Thoughts

I'm not sure what to think really. I think that we are a country with way too much dependence on credit. When you're having financial troubles, you need to start using your debit card, and not a credit card. This is the only way to curb your spending to within your means. We're all trained (especially the younger generation) that soon we'll have more money, so might as well spend some now. We may need a depression to wake us up and teach us that money doesn't grow on trees.

On the other hand, I hate to think that people losing jobs and going destitute is the right way to fix things. Maybe the government will actually put things into place to prevent this from happening again, and the bailout would be a good thing. It's funny though - the Great Depression was caused by people overspending money they didn't have on overvalued stocks, and as soon as stocks became less valued everyone lost everything. Now, people overspent money they didn't have on houses because institutions let them, and as soon as houses became less valued, these individuals and the institutions lost everything. Notice a trend?

I personally think that while it would cause a downturn, lowering the ability to get credit would be a good thing for this country. Learning to rely more on savings will stabilize our economy far more than a bailout would, although the short term would be rocky.

If there's one thing I know, it's that the media is blowing the situation way out of proportion. It will be a while before things get bad, and our economy is still thriving. We still only have 5% unemployment. Things aren't as bad as people think. I hope that the bailout doesn't pass simply because of the media attention it's receiving.

Team Fortress II: Class Parity

One of the biggest problems that people always had when I was playing WoW PVP was how difficult it was to defeat a specific class with a specific build 1v1. If you specced your character a certain way, no matter how skilled you were, the other guy would likely beat you by following a particular formula.

This problem exists anytime you play a game with more than one class. TFII has 9 classes, and there is definitely class parity here. Ever try to take down a heavy with a pyro? Or a soldier with a scout? Yes, if you can ambush a person you have a great chance of taking them down. But in a one on one showdown, the demoman is going to kill the spy 98 times out of 100.

So why is this not a big deal in TF2? The primary reason is that people can change classes on a whim. If the heavy is pwning you as a scout, then go spy or sniper and kick his ass.

I get a lot of enjoyment out of playing each class, when the situation calls for it. When I connect to a game, I get two pieces of information: 1. the map I'm on, and 2. the classes that everyone else is playing. Using these, I decide what class to play. Here are my thoughts on when each class is most important, and when I switch to them.

Scout: Usually a poor choice quite frankly. Unless the opposing team has very few good engineers, this will be a difficult choice to make. However, if the map is very wide open, and there are plenty of the other classes, I will go scout. Scouts are great if you know the map that you are playing on. If you can get behind the opposition, and kill the medics, snipers and engineers (before they create a turret), it can make them play a lot more defensively. Two scouts working together are lethal against a team without any sentry guns up.

Soldier: A great choice if the map features a lot of long corridors, and if the team has few soldiers or snipers. Every team needs someone able to fire from afar, so if everyone is playing pyro and heavy, soldier is a great choice. Soldiers are also great with medics with a kritzkrieg and not quite as good teamed up with a medic uber. Finally, if there are great positions to rocket jump to, soldier is a great choice simply because of their ability to get somewhere unexpected. It's hard to stand your ground when rockets are being flung your way, so even if you aren't getting any kills, soldiers make the enemy run for cover - a valuable thing when attacking or defending.

Pyro: Contrary to the soldier that loves long corridors, pyros thrive around corners. They are great for sneaking up behind enemies, especially with the backburner. Pyros are one of the best uber targets, since they have practically unlimited ammo and if they can get in range, will destroy most fortifications. On the other side, the only true way to defend against an uber pyro is a pyro with the compression blast. The best counter to an uber-heavy team is a pyro with compression blast. Finally, pyros are great spy checkers - spies hate pyros.

Demomen: I love the demomen - they have rocket jumps like soldiers when used right. They can plant traps for the opposition very easily. A team with 3 demos playing defense is almost unpenetrable. Demos are great defending a small area with one entrance. They are also excellent destroyers of sentries, so on offense if the opposition has tons of sentries, sometimes all it takes is an uberred demo since you can toss your stickies out and blow everything up at once. Demos are great for offense too, since you can fire blindly from behind cliffs and ledges without taking fire from the opposition. Great teamed up with a medic.

Heavy: A heavy is an easy decision. If you have medics and engineers and no heavies, your team is retarded. A heavy is a fantastic medic and engineer friend. On offense, it means teleports and ubers. On defense, it means unlimited ammo from a dispenser and uber-counters. Nothing frustrates an offensive uber more than a defensive uber two seconds later. Not great against good enemy spies or snipers, but against everything else, if you can get your minigun spinning fast enough, you can hold ground exceptionally well.

Engineer: If you don't have any engineers, this is the most important job to have (toss up between medic). You provide teleports to get your allies closer to the action more quickly. You can defend a spot very easily. You provide more ammo and health for those who need it. The key to an offensive engineer is getting teleporters up quickly, watching for spies, and defending against the overzealous enemy trying to get behind everyone on your team (usually a scout or pyro). The key to a defending engineer is keeping a sentry up, watching for spies, and preventing any non-uberred opponents from killing you or your sentry. Also, help your fellow engineers! A level 3 sentry is better than 2 level one sentries. Work together to win.

Medic: If your team has no medics, do it. It's not a glamourous job, but an absolutely necessary one. Don't go medic if your entire team is engineers, snipers, and scouts. They are all retards - you need some heavy hitters like soldiers, pyros, demos, and heavys to do anything well. But assuming you have some of these, go medic. Your team will be much more effective than if you do anything else. Use your ubers wisely to take down opposing sentries or defending against other ubers. Use kritzkriegs when necessary (rarely are they better than ubers). Heal anyone who needs it, and make sure you don't die unnecessarily, unless you just finished an uber - dying at 90% ubercharge is frustrating as hell.

Sniper: I'm not very good as a sniper for the most part, but you have no snipers and the opposition has none, sniper is perfect. Nothing makes people duck for cover more than being one shotted from afar. If the opposition has a bunch of snipers, go spy instead. If you have two snipers or more, play something else.

Spy: If you don't have one, this is a fun class to play. If you have a lot of spies on your side, unless you coordinate it will likely be best to try another class. Spy checking comes in spurts - if there are a lot of you, they will watch more. Spies are integral to destroying opposing engineer stuff and killing snipers. They are also great against dumb medic/heavy combos who aren't paying attention.

Your individual role is very important. I think that everyone should learn how to play every class so they can figure out what their team needs the most. A team with 5 engineers should have a heavy or pyro so they can spy check. A team with a bunch of heavies really needs some medics. Hopefully I'll be able to post more often and talk about more about specific strategies, but remember to choose your class wisely - it may be the difference between success and failure for your whole team.

Actually, yes I am that busy

Seriously. We have a lot of important things that we are doing here at Ethix Systems.

1. Scratching ourselves
2. Playing Team Fortress II
3. Working on the business itself

I'll make this brief, because Nick is gazing at me like my head is going to come off if I don't get back to work. We're not only very busy working on projects for clients, but we are also building our business infrastructure. We are planning on hiring an intern, which is taking a lot of time to work out. We are developing a support contract for our existing clients so we can help them budget their software expenses. And we are developing a newsletter to tell people about the kinds of projects we are working on. (If you want to receive it, I'm sending out the first one today. Send me an email at decarr@ethixsystems.com)

But the kicker is that I'll be starting to teach a web programming class for 5 weeks at Saint Vincent on Tuesday. So things are going a little crazy.

Not to fear - I'll be back. I have much TF2 to discuss, and I'll hopefully have some other things to share. But lately, it's been mostly business and I haven't had much interesting to share.

Don't stop visiting please. Just be patient!

Dan

Team Fortress II: Meet the Scout

In an effort to rejuvenate my blog posts, I thought I would post in here about the game that I'm easily playing the most these days.

Team Fortress II is a very fast paced game FPS with a twist. There are 9 classes to choose from, each with benefits and downsides. I'm going to start with the most difficult to play (in my opinion) and give some tips.

The Scout.

Read more: http://tf2wiki.net/wiki/Scout

The site probably says a lot of stuff that I'm going to say, but...I'll say it anyway.

The scout is a lightweight, fast-moving killer when used properly. One on one against a heavy, pyro, soldier, or most of the other common classes, you don't stand too much of a chance. Engineer turrets? You can just about forget it.

But there are some things that scouts are great at - speed and maneuverability. Your double jumps allows you to get some places that only soldiers and demos can get to. On top of buildings and ledges are great places to shoot from unnoticed.

But the very best thing that a scout can do is run behind enemy lines and wreck havoc. With an open battlefield, plenty of things to hide behind, and lots of health packs, a scout can suppress an enemy charge very well.

Scouts are excellent in melee since their bats hit quickly, and you can finish off a sniper or medic this way often before they even realize you are there. Hiding behind corners, killing one or two people, and moving on. That's what makes a great scout. You can't hold a single position for very long. If you get caught on fire, you will probably die. A shotgun blast to the face may do it too. You have to move, fire, and get out.

So in my opinion, the best scouts are the ones that sneak along behind the enemy and kill the little guys. If you can down a sniper or a medic, often that will change a game. But you have to be very careful not to stare down a heavy. Fire and run, and get to the healthpacks first, and you'll be fine.

Not the best class to start playing TF2 with. Position is everything, and you need to know your maps very well.

Next time: The Soldier.