Guitar Hero Developer Announces Rock Band

figgen writes "Gamers and music fans have been waiting on details for the next Harmonix project, now that the company has been purchased. The development team behind Guitar Hero announced Rock Band via USA Today. The title is coming to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and will expand on the concept by adding singing and drumming into the mix. 'With MTV as a partner, Harmonix was able to sign deals with the major forces in the music publishing industry and has access to the master recordings of music from popular artists. Electronics Arts is also involved, and will use its global reach to help distribute the game.' GameSpot had a chance to sit down with Harmonix's Alex Rigopulos and EA Partners' David DeMartini to talk about the upcoming title."

Comments

Drummania comparison

[bugbeak]

I find it a bit sad that Konami's own GuitarFreaks and Drummania series hasn't seen much coverage at all. I haven't played Guitar Hero, but to those who have, how do they compare?

Re:Drummania comparison

[Mattintosh]

1) I'm a non-PS2 player that heard about Guitar Hero and knew it was highly regarded without ever playing it. I had never heard of Guitar Freaks until after I had played Guitar Hero. So there's a marketing issue, at the very least.

2) Apparently, other guitar games lack the over-the-top stereotyping of the characters presented in the game that GH has. I've not played any of the others, but I would assume that the "fun level" just isn't the same without the atmosphere GH builds.

3) Guitar Freaks uses a different control scheme (and from what I gathered from the description, IMHO, it's probably "clunky").

Re:Drummania comparison

[MDiehr]

The three big differences are: 1. Setlist - GH has Western Rock and Metal, I'm not sure how to describe Guitar Freak's setlist. 2. Number of frets - Guitar Freaks has 3, and Guitar Hero has 5. Guitar Hero emphasizes scales and chords a lot more. 3. How forgiving the timing is - Guitar Freaks requires a lot more precision to hit notes. Also, GH has a whammy bar.

Re:Drummania comparison

[p0tat03]

Having played both, here's why I prefer GH to GF:

1 - Actual songs. Guitar Hero is only 50% about the game, the other 50% is the sheer fun factor of playing some great songs. I was never able to get into Guitar Freak's pseudo-electronica... It just didn't fit with the guitar thing.
2 - 3 vs. 5 frets. This is huge. Guitar Freaks was sometimes too easy because of the fact that your fingers never truly move.
3 - Better interface. The bottom-to-top scrolling lines got confusing when the game was going real fast. Guitar Hero's top-to-bottom scrolling with bigger icons and a "fade in" made the notes much easier to hit and less confusing to play.
4 - C'mon, who doesn't want to play Free Bird?

Re:Drummania comparison

[NeilTheStupidHead]

I agree. The GH controller is far more intuitive to pick up and play. My neighbour and I both have a copy and we get the multiplayer mode going at most of our parties. Everyone loves it. GH definity has the humour factor too; for those who have never seen some of the unlockables, there is a 'fish' guitar with the following description: "This is a highly practical and effecient guitar. Because it looks like a fish."

Whew

[travdaddy]

For a second there, I thought he had announced he was creating his own rock band. I can only imagine him playing a song hitting only five buttons while the fans all put out mats and step on them.

Excellent Idea

[onkelonkel]

If you're going to dream, dream big. Imagine if you applied that standard (play your own instruments, write your own songs), to popular music. The Billboard top 100 would have about 2 dozen songs left.

Single player mode?

[Daetrin]

I can't read TFA from work, but does it mention what the single player options are? The coverage on GamesAreFun.com indicated that the proposed solution to not having enough people locally to form a band on a regular basis is to do so online. That's good and all for those people who like online play, but all the friends i have who might be interested in playing a game like this are local, and when they're not available i'm not really interested in trying to find random strangers on the net to play with. So is there a single player option or are you just out of luck in that case?

It's known as a "game."

[Rob T Firefly]

I'm gonna produce a Playstation game that just flashes up some scrolling text, stating the following:
Learn to play REAL instruments, and write your OWN fucking songs.

Will that come before or after the ones that scroll "drive your OWN fucking NASCAR vehicle," "join your OWN fucking Major League Baseball team," or "get your OWN fucking BFG 9000 to blow up REAL demons from Hell?"

Genius way to develop this game.

[kinglink]

First they release Karaoke revolution, a game that's popular in Japan and now in America.

Karaoke revolution 2 introduces Duets for Americans.

Then they release Guitar hero, a game that explodes in popularity.

Then they release Guitar hero 2, introducing the cooperative guitar players.

And now they release Rock band, a game which takes everything they learned and adds drums into it. Plus working with EA probably helps them get online working which can only improve the game.

Hell I could even mention frequency and amplitude for timing and visualization but the point is that they essentially made every part of this game into it's own game except for drumming. Very cool Harmonix.

Oh, dear...

[Rob T Firefly]

I'm worried about the singing aspect. While it's lots of fun to use a simple row of controller buttons to trigger pre-recorded power chords and sound like a pro, there's really no way to amateur-proof singing. I am not a fan of "Karaoke Revolution," or just plain Karaoke for that matter.

Hope it hits the WII

[mheddings]

I read a quote from one of the developers on Kotaku so I'm hoping this gets done.

Absolutely, we will at some time bring Rock Band to every console of significance and in doing so we will customize and tailor the play experience to take into account the weakness of the console and the strengths of the consoles," he said. "I think (the Wii) is something that holds enormous potential for music games.

http://kotaku.com/gaming/wii/wii-rock-band-likely- 248882.php

Re:FIST SPORT!

[Aladrin]

You're trolling, but I'm gonna bite anyhow.

Yeah, the music lessons and years of practice don't enter into the equation at all, eh? Not everyone is a musical god and can just look at an instrument and play it. The non-musicians of the world sometimes actually enjoy to pretend to make music in a game environment.

Games are for having fun, and Guitar Hero really hit a chord (haha) with some people. They obviously expect that Rock Band will, too.

Drat

[aarku]

Drumming with the Wii remote and nunchuck ala Rayman Raving Rabbids would have been fun. Is the Wii not beefy enough for their intentions or something?

GF

[Ydbhon]

GuitarFreaks? Easier even with 3 frets? GF is leagues harder than Guitar Hero. Go look up tatsujins for that game. Search "Concertino in Blue" in YouTube and then tell me that's not easier than the hardest of what GH offers.

Re:As insightful as jello brand gelitan.

[starwed]

You do realize that many real life rockstars play GH, right? And that trained drummers are often better than guitarists at it? :)

Re:As insightful as jello brand gelitan.

[SlamMan]

You can pick up a guitar, and learn to play in a few years of actual practice or you can have fun with Guitar Hero after 2 or 3 minutes of figuring out the controller.

Guitar Hero = PaRappa the Rappa

[illeism]

Playing guitar is entirely different than playing guitar hero. Guitar hero is rhythm based, and has nothing in common with real guitar playing other than the rough shape of the instrument. Comparing guitar hero to actually playing is like (insert OMG bad car analogy about hot grits on nat portman with a pony overlord named c.neil in soviet russia)
That would be why drummers do better... all they have to do is hit something...

Re:In a Dream World....

[RCSInfo]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who took issue with the singing in GH2. While I understand the great reviews for such a fun game, I couldn't believe how many reviewers actually liked the singing. For as much money as this series brings in, you think they could bring in the original artist for a few tracks. How much does Zack de la Rocha fetch for a performance these days? Matthew Sweet? The lead singer of Warrant?

Of course this doesn't work for Nirvana or Lynyrd Skynyrd. But at least they could do a little better covers.

How will this even work?

[EvilCabbage]

Serious question. How do they expect to make this work?

I'm a fan of the Guitar Hero series, my wife loves it too and her girlfriends really enjoy the Singstar series of games. We were discussing a 'Band Hero' style game a few nights ago while they belted out some crap pop songs, but how is this going to work, honestly?

Two people playing Guitar Hero takes up a whole lot of screen real estate, as does a pair of people singing together. How are they going to combine the two and somehow add drums to the mix?

I'd love it to happen, but honestly I don't see how this is going to work terribly well. Even on our gaming display (not massive, but 42") it would get very crowded, very quickly with instructions, guides, scoring, etc..etc...etc..