Madmanonfire said:
First, the counterargument.
If GH were to just get drums and vocals now, that would either be good or bad. Good if the franchise still survived, as it would bring in new people to try the new instruments. Bad if the franchise tried to push 5 guitar-only games so quickly, with a much higher chance of dying out sooner.
Rock Band generally has peripheral additions first. Gameplay additions come from GH first. I'll expand on this later. Besides, GH tends to improve on what RB starts, except for vocals which are mediocre at best right now.
It's too bad the majority of those songs are pricier than just buying a new game with over 60 on-disc songs. Not to mention how the charts can be questionable, that is, if you can see the charts at all with all the blinding crap in the background blinding you.
Pro-mode is merely a tutorial that can be applied to real life, and as such is not part of the "game".
Keyboard is a riskier addition than drums and vocals, as they aren't used nearly as much in songs people would like to play on a game like RB. It's also only worth playing on pro-mode because normally it's like playing an easy guitar part with no strumming. The mechanics for the keyboard don't look too enticing as well, but I'll have a better opinion once I feel like getting the peripheral.
And finally, they did both! GH6 easily surpasses RB3 as a game and they just stopped because it's not profitable anymore, not because they consider RB a threat.
Now I'd make up a long list of other reasons why GH is great, but I just had to type this twice because of my stupid backspace key backing out of the page and I've wasted enough time here. Here are 5 major reasons instead.
- RB3 lacks competitive gameplay. GH6 has quite the selection of competitive modes.
- GH charts are generally more accurate (if you can consider 5 buttons accurate in a sense)
- GH6 started most of the neat gameplay mechanics like notes during sustains and sustains as drum/cymbal rolls, that make it "more realistic".
- Every instrument can activate starpower anytime in GH.
- DOUBLE BASS!!
Charts is always an odd argument to make, Guitar Hero's charts seem to be harder for the sake of being hard. If I'm going to trust chart accuracy on a five button plastic guitar, I'm going to go with the group that created the entire concept and has a ton of people who went to Berklee and has a bunch of in-house bands(who have been featured in both GH and RB) for accuracy. If you can provide one Neversoft band I'll recant that statement.
The removal of competitive gameplay is a bit stupid, but Rock Band has always focused more on being a party game and the sheer amount of matchmaking work that would be needed for every instrument and their respective pro-mode counterpart would be ridiculous to do.
Sustained notes on Guitar Hero is about the only gameplay mechanic that was neat on their part, but they overdid it too much. If you are doing arpeggios on open chords I don't want to have to hold down a note that I wouldn't have to on an actual guitar. Rock Band 3 does have something similar to a sustain for drum rolls, it gives you a roll with the notes on a sustain so you know how quickly you should be going, but it allows you to go slightly faster or slower than that tempo.
The fact that drums can only activate at certain times is a good thing in my opinion. There is less work to worry about if you have a group going for a high score. Half of the work is memorizing when you are going to activate and drums can only do that at certain times so you've got a good portion of the work taken down because of that fact. I don't see how when you activate would make or break getting a game. I'd make the argument that you can still gain starpower/overdrive while using it, but Guitar Hero seemed to pick that up after Rock Band added it as well.
I don't see how you can make an argument that pro-mode isn't a part of the game. That is no different from saying that any other instrument isn't a part of the game. The only different between them and the other instruments is that there are tutorials you can take to learn different aspects of the instrument. Aside from the obvious chart differences.
Double bass may not be a regular standard for Rock Band, but you can't say that it doesn't have it at all [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rm6zfxZVAI].
You also make the argument that it is more costly to buy 60 DLC songs than it is to buy a new game, which can be true for the most part, but I have yet to see a full game on either Rock Band or Guitar Hero where I have enjoyed more than half of the songs in the game enough to play them regularly. That is the beauty of DLC, I don't have to buy it all. I have around 550 songs and overall with the three Rock Band games on top of that price it'd still be cheaper than buying every single one of the Guitar Hero games and then there is the mediocre amount of DLC presented on that.
This seems like a pointless argument to continue as we are both going to fight for our respective games. So this will be my last post for the sake of that. You're welcome to respond to this post, but I likely won't continue this. I just found it extremely silly to call Rock Band "such a downgrade" when it really isn't.
so no it isnt a downgrade. better tech. better(and more) songs. i think rockband has some life left.
