Review: Band Hero

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.

Review: Prospekt's March (Coldplay)

Prospekt's March is an EP from Coldplay with mostly songs left over from the Viva la Vida sessions. I might review that later, but for now it's just the EP (which you can now get packaged with Viva la Vida anyway). It's important to state at this point that I like Coldplay and Viva la Vida, perhaps not so much as other bands and albums, but I won't review something I don't like (if I don't like it, I won't have it).

Since I'm not sure of the right way to do a music review (assuming there is one), I'll just write a couple of notes for each song. The unfortunate part is that it assumes you either don't know or don't care about the history and style of music. On to the songs:

Life in Technicolor II:
This is a version of Life in Technicolor from Viva la Vida, but now it has lyrics and it seems to have gained about a minute. I like it. I like the lyrics, I like the music (probably because I like the Life in Technicolor, but I digress), and it all flows together quite nicely.
8/10 - A worthy addition, though it does suffer a little bit because I've heard the music before.

Postcards from Far Away
A bit under a minute long, this piano piece is nice to listen to but it's nothing to write home about.
6/10 - It's short and nice but forgettable.

Glass of Water
Probably my favourite song on the EP, it doesn't quite beat songs like Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends from the album, but it definitely deserves a place next to them. It reminds me a bit of the song from the end of Bender's Big Score, actually.
9/10 - It's a great song, what more can I say?

Rainy Day
To be completely honest, this sounds to me like it could almost be a U2 song. Not that that's a bad thing (I'm not exactly the world's largest U2 fan, but I do like their music). Maybe that's what comes when Brian Eno produces music for both of them.
8/10 - Moves at a nice pace, sounds great.

Prospekt's March/Poppyfields
It's actually pretty slow, quiet and parts of it are just acoustic. Speeds up a little bit during the middle, and gains some more instruments, but it's probably the mellowest (is that a word?) of the whole EP. Slows down again near the end though, kind of a shame because I like the direction that it heads in, but not bad at all.
7/10 - Funnily enough, the title track isn't the greatest. It's still great though.

Lost+ (featuring Jay-Z)
I'll get this out of the way right now so that I don't waste your time. I HATE rap (or whatever you want to call it) music. I just find it annyoing, repetitive and in some particularly heinous cases, offensive to the ears. This track is just Lost! from the album with an additional vocal track stuck in the middle (rather awkwardly, it seems). Now that that's out of the way, let's move on...
0/10 - I'd give it negative points, but the skip button on my CD player works.

Lovers in Japan (Osaka Sun Mix)
As the title suggests, it's a different mix of Lovers in Japan from the album. To my untrained ear though, they're very similar.
6/10 - It's a nice song but I've (and so have you if you've listened the the Viva la Vida album) heard it before.

Now My Feet Won't Touch The Ground
Fairly slow (not so much as Prospekt's March though), and mostly acoustic (though like Prospekt's March, it picks up a little near the end), it's fairly melodic. It's only about two and a half minutes long, although ultimately, it's rather forgettable. I'm not saying that to mean it's bad, just that it's not very distinctive and blends in somewhat to the rest of the music.
6/10 - Slow, and a nice smooth finish the the EP but I bet you people won't really remember it.

Overall
With the glaring exception of Lost+ (of course, if you feel differently to me about that kind of music I'm sure you'd like it), it's all nice but some of it you've heard before, most of the rest you won't remember. Rainy Day and Glass of Water are fairly good though.

The score - not an average, not a combination, just a score - 8/10