Official RockBand European Release Date

David Jørgensen — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 13:08:44 GMT

May 23rd 2008

Apparently EA want to milk us europeans by NOT offering a full package, but instead taking the game out, meaning you have to buy both the full pack of instruments as well as the game on the side. This is guestimated to be around €50 for the game and the instruments pack will be around €169. Do a little math and you quickly figure out that EU (in comparison to US pricing) is being arsef*cked by EA. In addition: If you, like me, live in Denmark, you should expect additional costs due to taxes and what not. On May 27th all DLC's previously released in the US will be made available in Europe, and future DLC's will be made public for US/EU at the same time.

Additionally the European version will include the following exclusive songs

"Beetlebum" - Blur
"Rock 'n' Roll Star" - Oasis
"Monsoon" - Tokio Hotel
"Hysteria" - Muse
"Hier Kommt Alex" - Die Toten Hosen
"Perfekte Welle" - Juli
"Countdown to Insanity" - H-Block X
"Manu Chao" - Les Wampas
"New Wave" - Playmo

To make matters worse, it seems that ONLY the x360 version will become available, but not only that, it will only be released in England, France and Germany to begin with completing the total pwnage by EA (it should be possible to buy directly from England though). No word on rest of Europe. PS2/3 and WII owners will have to wait until fall for their version though.

Source: Eurogamer.net

Over and out.

Guitar Hero 2

David Jørgensen — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 19:22:08 GMT

Is "Guitar Hero 2" (GH2) every bit as good as it's predecessor? The short answer is: YES.. and no..

The one thing i was missing in GH1 was the ability to actually BATTLE my opponent (to find out who's the better player) as well as play WITH him. Sure enough, GH1 featured a mode called FACE-OFF where you could play against another player, but doing it like I play a little, he plays a little, and whoever got the highest score won.
GH2 features this AND a PRO FACE-OFF mode, which lets players battle eachother on totally equal basis. Both players play the entire song which i think make the battle much more even.

Then there's the CO-OP mode, where one player plays the lead guitar, and the other player either playing bass- or rythm-guitar. One complaint about GH1 was the fact that very good players playing expert could only play against other players on the same level. Players who usually play expert isn't going to play easy.
This time around the difficulty can be set by both players, meaning player 1 can play expert and player 2 can play easy. This means I can actually play with (or against) my girlfriend and still have fun. THAT is a big plus. :)
Your teamwork is also being scored, which actually was a surprise for me. But a nice surprise.

Other improvements over GH1 includes much improved pull-offs and hammer-ons, and this time around it's actually possible to do a whole line of nodes with just one strum. I cannot tell you how rewarding this feels the first couple of times. But they are really nice and adds a lot to the game.
Then there's the whole new 3-button chords. In GH1 2-button chords was normal. They still are very normal here in GH2, but they have added the 3-button chords. There aren't a lot of them, but perhaps a sign of what's to come in GH3? They are a challenge, but once you get them, they are fairly "easy".

Help needed
Another BIG thing in GH2 is the new PRACTICE mode. Is it too hard to complete a song? Well, of you go to your room to practice. You can practice your lead guitar or even rythm- or bassguitar. It's up to you. The cool thing is, that you can slow down the song, to nail those super fast and super hard sections. You can decide for yourself which part of the songs you want to practice, or even the whole song. It's all up to you. There are 4 different speeds, including full speed, slow, slower and slowest, to really get the fingers adjusted to the song.

The funny thing, that even with this very cool thing, i found myself not using it that much. Perhaps some parts of me wants to do it the old GH1 way? Now, with that said i'm only in the sixth section of songs on expert, so I'm sure I AM going to need it pretty soon.

Added, after every song, is more stats about your performance. The song is split into smaller sections where you can see
how many percentages of nodes you hit, and thus find out which sections you need to practice on. Brilliant.

Small things changed can make a huge impact, and this is one: RESTART. When restarting a song in GH1 you had to wait for the entire intro every time. Although it only took about 5 seconds it was enough to annoy me. This has changed in GH2, where a restart is 0 seconds. It restarts to the fretboard. SUPER NICE!

Crowd control
This time around the CROWD is more loud. You can hear when you do something great and when you do something *not* so great. This really adds to the "realism", as they will boo you if you don't hit that last long node. And cheer you a lot when you are doing great. COOL!
Speaking of the crowd, when you play alone, you usually have to get all 4 songs in a section (3 on easy), and then the fifth and final song in the section is unlocked by the crowd yelling ENCORE!! ENCORE!! Of course you are gonna give them what they want, and rock their socks of. :) This is also a very nice addition.

Songs
Speaking of a game like GH2, you cannot get around without mentioning the songs. The songs make the game, and without great songs, no great game.
I was so fortunate to get a demo of GH2 a month prior to release (europe release), and I was sooo looking forward to playing it. Unfortunately i found myself being complete and utter disappointed about the demo. w000t, this cannot be. Sure, Strutter was nice, but the others were, for a lack of a better word, crap. HOW CAN THIS BE???! NOOOOO!

Well, even because of this, I knew that this was a game I HAD to have. So, when it was finally released i went out and bought it. And once again I was surprised. The final game was NOT disappointing. It's GREAT. And like any VERY VERY good music cd you buy, you need to hear the songs more than once. More than twice, more than 5-6 times before you really like them. But once you do, you'll love them a LOT! This is what happened to me. Granted, there are still songs I prefer over others, but thats how it is. Overall I really enjoy most of the songs on the track.

Below is a list of songs that i REALLY like and enjoy playing: (No bonus songs included)

"Mother" - Danzig
"Strutter" - Kiss
"Message in a bottle" - The Police
"Carry on Wayward son" - Kansas
"Monkey Wrench" - Foo Fighters
"Can't you hear me knocking" - Rolling Stones
"Sweet Child O' Mine" - Guns N' Roses
"Crazy On You" - Heart
"Rock this town" - Stray Cats
"Jessica" - The Allman Brothers Band
"Beast and the Harlot" - Avenged Sevenfold
"Misirlou" - Dick Dale
"Hangar 18" - Megadeth
"FreeBird" - Lynyrd Skynyrd

I haven't played many of the bonus songs enough to even have a list like the one above, however I do wish to say that "Six" by "All that remains" is a masterpiece. And a damn hard masterpiece it is. :) I honestly think it's the hardest song of them ALL, and thats not saying a lot, because Misirlou and Freebird are also pretty tough. Freebird being the longest song running in just under 10 minutes, the first 5 minutes are fairly easy, but then the solo kicks in and takes over the last 5 minutes, waking you up, and testing your stamina to the limit. :) It's GREAT, and i love it.

I'm not completely sure but I believe I have read that two of the songs are the original tracks from the original band, and the rest is covers created by harmonix. The quality in these covers vary a lot, and Axel Rose is one you have to get used to. Noone can sing like Axel but the guy does a very nice job when you get used to his voice. And once you do, you'll LOVE the song like I do. Other songs I cannot tell the difference between the "real" band and Harmonix super group. :) Superb work.

Last, but not least
All in all, I believe, just like I did with GH1, that GH2 will go over and become the best game of the year for the PS2, and I cannot wait to the third installment will arrive. Until then I have lots of unfinished songs to keep me occupied for the time being.

/David

gaming

Official RockBand European Release Date

Guitar Hero 2