Demo Impressions: Guitar Hero Greatest Hits

It's err... Guitar Hero.















Okay fine, you deserve a little more than that. For those not in the know, this is taking songs from the first five GH games (GH, GH2, Rocks the 80s, GH3, and Aerosmith), updating them to support a full band, and using master tracks where they weren't before. The demo features one venue (some icy place, not sure what it's supposed to be), I'll get to the songs later. The graphics are about as good as World Tour (funny about that, since it uses the same engine), though the HUD seems updated a bit. I only had a chance to play solo (if the demo supports online play, I couldn't find it). And when I say updated a bit... the only real change I could see is that you can now see the progress towards stars for a song (kind of like Rock Band, but it's a bar that fills). Sure everything looks a little bit different but it appears to be nowhere near the makeover Harmonix is giving Rock Band for The Beatles. So, yeah... it's Guitar Hero.

Oh, and like any good music game, it has songs (the bad ones are pretty boring). The demo only has three (one each from GH, GH2 and GH3), all of which were covers in their original appearances, but as I said earlier, are now master tracks.
Take Me Out by Franz Ferdinand (first appearance: Guitar Hero).
It's awesome. This song is probably more hit and miss when it comes to liking it than the others, but I say it's awesome, and my word is law.
Rating: Awesome

Rock and Roll All Nite by Kiss (first appearance: Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock)
Not as awesome, but hearing the proper version is soooo much better than the crappy cover in GH3. Don't get me wrong, it's a great song, just not so much my sort of thing as the others.
Rating: Mostly Awesome

Woman by Wolfmother (first appearance: Guitar Hero II)
I probably like Take Me Out more, but this is just a rockin' song that is so much more deserving of being turned up to 11. Or 12, if 11 isn't enough for you. The important part is that it's turned up.
Rating: Awesome

And for the most important part of any demo review... will I be contributing to the cash cow that is GHGH (or GH²): Yes, but I didn't need to play the demo to tell me that.

Closest Musician, Part 1.1: A Minute with the Rock Band Guitar

Well, I didn't get a chance to try it in a song, but when I saw one lying around I had to pick it up and play around with it.

If you want to know whether you should buy a RB or GHWT guitar, let me sum the RB guitar up like this: I leave things that would work better as guitars lying on the ground after eating a whole bunch of grass.

Pros:
It has a switch to change your guitar's sound mid-song. If only I didn't prefer the sound of the original song...
Extra buttons for the solos at end of some songs... because I'm simply dying for a thousand or so extra points when I've already reached five stars.
It didn't break when I picked it up.

Cons:
The d-pad is stiff and not the easiest to manipulate.
The start and select buttons are far too prominent, and mar the looks.
Same for the connect button. While yes, I do realise that they correspond to feature on a real stratocaster, it doesn't change the fact that they look ugly.
The fret buttons make a lot of noise, require a bit of effort to push down and are generally very "clacky" to use the scientific term.
The strum bar is the exact opposite... very soft and mushy, doesn't make a noise or give ANY indication when it triggers. It's... disconcerting.
To finish on a less mean note (much as I hate to do so), the whammy bar isn't so bad. It's a bit too stiff, and generally just doesn't feel as good as a GH one.

A Closet Musician Compliment Sandwich: Rock Band

The following sandwich has: 2 fillings.

The song "Ballroom Blitz" is included. Now I don't mean to sound weird (despite the fact that I am), but I like some more out there tracks (as well as 70s and 80s music, for the most part).
It's not the original version. It's a cover. A TERRIBLE cover. Seriously, whoever did this version... quit the music business. Trust me, you're doing whatever is left of your self respect a favour.
Also worth noting: It's easy. I 100%'d it on normal (that might not sound impressive, but have you ever tried playing Rock Band with hooves?).
It is a fun track to play, though.

Closet Musician, Part One: A Day with Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band

So I've had Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band (henceforth, GHWT or just WT and RB, at least wherever I feel like abbreviating them), for a day, as the title suggests.

Today: Hardware (never mind that I only have the GHWT instruments, so I can't really compare the two games).
Guitar

• I do have the GH3 Les Paul, so I'll compare this to that. It's a little bigger, and feels a lot more solid (not sure if it weighs more... seriously, who puts a plastic guitar on a scale?), both of which are good things.
• The strum bar is a bit longer and taller (good), it feels about the same (not a bad thing) however the noise is a bit louder, but not to the point where it becomes an annoyance.
• The whammy bar is a bit longer, alhough I prefer the feel of the old one, people with hands not as freakishly large as mine might not feel the same.
• There's a new touch bar on the neck, although it can be frustrating to switch between the fret buttons and the touch bar, fortunately it's optional during gameplay, so I generally ignore it.
• The back button, which for the 3 people in the world who haven't played Guitar Hero, activates star power, has been moved. It's now fairly long and placed right next to the strum bar, so that you can activate star power easily without having to tilt the guitar (that works just as well though). There is a small circular start button on either side of it. However Xbox button and d-pad haven't fared anywhere near as well. They've been combined into a single stick (digital), with the Xbox button in the middle. It's fairly awkward to use, so navigate with the strum bar where you can.
• Finally, and most importantly, the connection between the body and the neck which I have so much trouble with on GH3 guitars (both of them) has been improved. It's still early days, but I don't think I'll have a problem any time soon.

Drums

• First up, I'd like to make this clear: the instructions for putting these things together are worse than Ikea instructions. I did get it together eventually, but I did have to call in help. With that out of the way, here's some thoughts:
• The drumsticks are pretty nice, they'd probably work fairly well on a real drum kit. Don't quote me on that though, I'm hardly a real drummer.
• The bass pedal is a decent size, I just have HUGE feet... I can get around the size problem. The problem is that it doesn't really have enough resistance, so I have to keep my foot up, which makes it hurt after a little while (and makes it harder for me to accurately hit the bass notes). Oh, and it has a couple of rubber stoppers and a bit of velcro on the bottom, and I never had a problem with it moving in the middle of a song. Finding a comfortable position was different, but I can be hard to please like that
  
• For navigating menus, there's a d-pad, Xbox button and 6 face buttons (back and start on either side of the Xbox button, and the A, B, X and Y buttons in the standard formation). They're near the back of the drums and underneath and below the cymbals, so they're fairly awkward to reach. Unfortunately, they're the only way to navigate menus (okay, you can use the pads to select options, but you still need to use the d-pad to navigate up and down) which can get awkward at times. I don't see why they don't map up/down to the cymbals or something, but far be it from me to question someone else's logic.
• There's a port to plug in a headset, but it's around the back, and the cable on the 360's headset isn't that long (that's not their fault, though). Unfortunately when wearing the headset, you can't move too far from the drums, and the cable crosses the blue pad, and gets in the way of moving the sticks.
• There's a drumstick holder! And by that I mean a couple of bits of plastic that fold up, and you lay the sticks down on there. Better than nothing, I guess.
• It gets kind of awkward with the cymbals raised above the 3 pads, but in-game they're displayed on a flat line. Don't get me wrong, it'd be stupid if they were separated, it just takes some getting used to.
• They're a bit noisy. Being drums, you'd expect that, but I just find it ironic that the thing that makes the most noise (the bass drum), is restricted to a quiet pedal here.
  
• Lastly, some of the pads aren't as sensetive as I'd like. The red pad picks up normal hits fine, but to hit an accented note requires a ridiculous amount of force (so I'm not doing it because I don't want to break the thing). The yellow cymbal requires a decent amount of force to register at all. The others aren't so bad but still not as good as I'd like. I've ordered a tuning kit, so I'll see what I can do when that arrives.

Microphone

• It's a microphone. It's wired, but there's a decent length of cable. It seemed to pick up my voice well enough (I failed, which is usually a good indication), so I don't know what else there is to say.

Come back tomorrow or whenever I get around to posting, for comparing the software.