God, I miss Rock Band so much. When I started working for Massively, my son had just joined the Marines, and nights were quiet and free of any family obligations or having to make dinner (I eat mostly steamed rice and vegetables when I’m by myself). Every evening while the rice was cooking, I’d sit down with Rock Band, go online, and duel people on drums on HARD. THAT was a workout. I bought a mike stand so I could two-box, singing and guitar. ...
Yeah, I couldn’t see how they could make a tour of four guys pretending to play plastic instruments on stage and charge for it. But Rock Band Live is actually a (fairly cheap, considering) concert by some of the bands who have supplied downloadable content for Rock Band – Panic at the Disco, Dashboard Confessional, Plain White T’s and CAB. They’re playing all over the place – here in Connecticut, they’re playing in Bridgeport, one of the priciest cities in the state. Might be fun :)
So, just saw on Engadget that Mad Catz is gonna take an actual real electric guitar and turn it into a Rock Band 2 controller for PS3 and Xbox 360. So, real guitar, real size, real weight… except, you know, it’s still a fake guitar. Now, I’m really confused. Okay, you take a REAL GUITAR and make a FAKE GUITAR from it. Isn’t that… insane… a little? Now you know what would be awesome… if it still could be used as a regular guitar – SIMULTANEOUSLY…
I wonder how I ever thought I would get out of buying Rock Band 2. No such luck. That set list ROCKS. Reserve my copy now, I guess….
We knew it was coming, and it’s here. Rock Band 2 will be out in September for the Xbox 360 and somewhat later for the PS3. Rock Band DLC will work with Rock Band 2, and vice versa. The old instruments will work, but the new ones will be better (it will be tough to be worse than the original guitar, at least for the 360). Having abandoned my Xbox 360 Rock Band to my son, I’d love to pick up the stuff again anew for the PS3. Problem is, the drum set for Guitar Hero World Tour looks better and they have a generally nicer feature set. ...
Because my son’s domination of the television and, indeed, the entire living room by his 24/7, non-stop playing of Call of Duty 4, and his loud, loud, continual swearing, homophobia and racially-tinged epithets which is, of course, your standard Xbox Live experience really made it impossible to get anything done that required thought, I consigned him, the 360 and the TV to his bedroom, where he could belittle strangers with some doors between him and I. ...
Rock Band’s first complete album download is not… Nevermind or Who’s Next, as we’d been told. It’s Boston’s first album, Boston, which has pretty damn near all the best songs they ever did (I like “Cool the Engines” and “Amanda” off their third…) Did I buy it? Um yeah kinda immediately. Back in high school, I loved Boston with a passion matched only by my severe, unrequited longing for Mike Oldfield. But unlike Mike, I never got to see Boston live. ...
I haven’t done even a tenth of the gaming I usually do in a given week. Between my sister Hillary getting hitched in Boston; my sister Genjer and niece Jazzmin coming up from NYC to spend Easter weekend here in Connecticut; and the siren’s call of Rock Band demanding the return of the (in)famous Buzzkillaz, well, that was pretty much it. But though I didn’t get much gaming done, I did get a lot of writing done. I am absolutely delighted to announce that I’ve been hired on at Massively to do what I can to make Massively the number one destination for hot news and features about every single game in existence. I’ve patched Test and re-installed EQ1 because I can think immediately of three or four games which could use a lot more coverage, and I aim to see they get it. ...
Wanderlust’s “I Walked” comes on the MP3 player and I think how wonderful that song would be with Rock Band. I should Audiosurf it. Last night, I strapped a microphone to a broom handle with hair ties, took up plastic guitar and was a one-woman band for awhile; singing and playing guitar at the same time. It definitely helps if you know the words to the song in advance. ALL the words. Trying to read lyrics as they sped past, keep my pitch correct AND keep the guitar going was a little harder than I expected, but it felt so good to finish a verse, lean back from the mike and go into a blistering guitar solo for a few moments… it was 10x more fun than either singing or guitar alone. ...
Cyanbane challenged me and other Rock Band-enabled bloggers to come up with our “Top 10” songs we’d like to see on Rock Band. I have way more than ten songs I’d like to play on rock band, but I came up with ten that all are built around guitar-bass-drum-vocals, should be challenging enough to be interesting but not so hard they can’t be played or sung, and cover a fairly wide range of years. I couldn’t find a lot of the newer things in my collection on “imeem”, but then, most of the newer stuff I listen to wouldn’t be interesting on Rock Band. ...