Music Gaming Goodness: Rock Band 2 Rocks The House
by Derek Wilson on October 24, 2008 1:25 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Song Difficulty Ratings
With the original, the difficulty category of the song didn't always do a good job of conveying how hard the song would be for any given instrument. Some songs are just difficult on one instrument while others might be hard across the board. It is just a fact of music that writers don't normally consider the difficulty of the music they create (except in as much as it needs to possible for some musician to play it).
Rating the difficulty of each instrument in each song on a scale of zero to six and putting the song in an overall difficulty class seemed like a really good idea. Except Harmonix did a horrible job of rating difficulty per instrument. Because of this the difficulty ratings mean absolutely nothing.
Everlong. Great song. A beast on expert drums.
It is true that different people are good at different things, and thus sometimes it will be easier for one person to play something than it is for another. But even so, it escapes us just how the ratings could be this useless.
Well, there are a couple cases where you know what you are getting. With a rating of zero, the song isn't going to be that hard to play. If you are looking at five devils, it is incredibly likely you'll need to practice quite a bit as it is going to be hard. But everything else is a crap shoot.
Honestly, people tend to like playing songs they like, so difficulty rating isn't a make or break feature. But if we are going to get it, there is no reason not to do it right. As it is, its just a disappointment.
As it isn't really clear how these songs are rated, we can't really comment on how things went wrong. But we do have at least one suggestion for how things could be done that might help.
It might be helpful to have different difficulty ratings for each difficulty level per song. The difficulty doesn't always translate when you move to a different level. Everlong is a perfect example of a song that is almost simplistic on hard but really deserves its five devil rating on expert. Actually getting this information to the gamer might be difficult, but unless the information is useful, it doesn't matter how accessible the data is.
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7Enigma - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - link
A buddy sent this to me a couple weeks ago. Insane drum playing on Expert in RockBand.http://gamerblips.com/video/this_calling_5gs_all_t...">http://gamerblips.com/video/this_calling_5gs_all_t...
And just to give you an idea of how difficult this really is to play (if hearing it didn't quite sink in):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whkXozib-0g">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whkXozib-0g
silversound - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
Anybody have any ideas about the guitar hero world tour?Im planning to buy a RB2 bundle or world tour bundle since they are at the same price. Which one is better? Most of my friends got RB, any thoughts?
DerekWilson - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - link
i'll try to get some quick thoughts on GH4 up after we get ahold of it.if your friends have RB 2 and want to play with you online ... then ... i'd prolly go with RB 2 :-)
if you guys get together and play with eachother, it might be nice to add some variety and pick up GH4 so that you and your friends can play a little of both.
GhandiInstinct - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
Where's the hi-hat pedal?Electronic drum kits have 2 pedals.
crimson117 - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
"In songs with 16th notes or triplets, there still isn't much that gets by without being fairly accurte." ...unlike the Anandtech spell check process :)JarredWalton - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
Okay, I may not be the most up-to-date in terms of bands and such, but the number of songs and even band names that I recognize from the RB2 list is amazingly small. Half of the bands/groups I recognize then have one of their B-sides or some other unknown song on the list. RB1 was pretty bad in that area, but RB2 takes it to a new level. Plus there's the "20 free songs" you can get - but I don't recognize a single group or song on that list! If I were to want to pretend to be a rock star, I think I'd prefer to "cover" songs that I actually know. Guitar Hero seems to do a lot better in this regard; Harmonix appears to have cut costs by choosing cheap/free songs to license.Myrandex - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
I felt the same way until I played it, then I realized that I recognized a lot more afterwards. also as the author mentioned, I eventually obtained a greater appreciation for certain songs or even certain aspects of songs. There are definitely songs that I didn't know that I like quite a bit after playing RB2.And for the 20 free songs, I am greatly looking forward to Static-X "Push It". I love that band and I could think of at least 8 songs that I'd gladly pay for to be in the game (with Push It being one of them).
I recognized some other ones, but not too many. I don't know if the list that I saw was actually finalized or not though. The one song that I was looking forward to the most in RB2 was Linkin Park's One Step Closer. I could think of probably 15 LP songs that I'd also pay for in there.
Jason
jnmfox - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
+1 to the comments & +1 for more LP songsheadbox - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
Rock Band is genius- it gives all of the untalented people something to do other than waste money on instruments and annoy their neighbors. It's so well made that people can actually pretend they have some talent, allowing tone-deaf people who can't keep a beat to still have fun with music.headbox - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
I'd like to add: Rock Band is to music what FPS games are to military training.