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First GH III Video Displays Differences
Joystiq has up one of the first videos of Guitar Hero III , and links to an IGN article discussing the changes. As they point out, there are quite a few differences. The UI has been overhauled in several ways, which may or may not be to your liking. "The HUD has been completely revamped, with lights replacing the Star Power meter and a new chain counter that tells you how many notes you've hit in a row. According to this IGN feature, the timing has also been changed, which may explain the early Wyld Stallyns-level performance in the videos. It's hard to blame the team from Neversoft if the game's playing a little differently at the moment, as they didn't have access to the code (created by Harmonix) from the original two games. Besides, there's still time for tweaking." The changes don't bother me that much, but the twanging butchery of "My Name is Jonas" made my eyebrow twitch.
Real guitar isn't a guarantee of GH2 prowess. :D
You're right on CfH/BatM, though - those are the two killers on GH1. Psychobilly Freakout and Carry Me Home are the two that give me fits on GH2 hard, and I don't have the patience to memorize the intricate solos on expert.
Big! Strong! Wow! Tada-O!
The difficulty curve was certainly rougher on GH2 than on GH1, but it wasn't insurmountable -- and I don't see any reason not to continue including challenging material for veteran players.
After playing GH1 to death, when I got GH2 I blew through Medium and literally got 5 stars on every song on the first try. On Hard I got 4 or 5 stars on the first try on all but a few tracks, and I didn't start running into a real challenge until I got to the upper echelons of Expert. Now I can 5-star almost all of the songs on Expert without much trouble. I even went back and 100%'d all of Medium and most of Hard before I got bored.
Should I want or need a decrease in difficulty? Isn't it the point of the higher difficulties to provide a greater challenge?
I guess I just don't understand how amping up the highest difficulty would wind up hurting anyone, aside from bruising their ego. Maybe it would make everyone happy if they introduced a new difficulty beyond Expert and scaled the original difficulties down a bit...? I don't know.
This is probably because Harmonix, or now MTV, owns the rights to the original code, where as Red Octane, now Activision, owns the rights to the Guitar Hero name and most likely some of the UI aspects. So Harmonix keeps the code which they can use as the basis for the up coming Rock Band game, and Activision can get Neversoft to start over but use the recognized name of Guitar Hero. This happens in the game industry alot.