Lord Madmunki

I have had my Xbox 360 for a few weeks now and have the following “guitar” games:

Guitar Hero II, Guitar Hero III, Guitar Hero World Tour, Guitar Hero Aerosmith, and Rockband 2.

I have to say that Rockband 2 is a much better game than the Guitar Hero. The progression of the Guitar Hero tour is very linear, you have to play predetermined song list gig in order to progress to the next gig. So if a gig has a stupid song like (Muse - Knights of Cydonia) you have to complete it in order to advance to the next gig. Rockband is different. When you start the game you have a choice of 3-4 cities you can play in. Each city has a couple of gigs you can play. Each gig will have two or three preset songs (that you can play in any order, or not at all) and you can choose weather to play your own songlist, and/or a random songlist. Playing songs gives you stars for that gig (depending on how well you do) and you gain fans. The amount of fans and stars you have determine the unlocks. For example to unlock a certain gig or city, you need xx fans and xx stars. Instead of just unlocking gigs and songs, there is a story behind the unlocks on Rockband. I started in California (I made it my bands hometown), and only able to play in a couple cities in Cali, like San Fransisco, Los Angeles, etc. As you play the gigs in those cities and increase your star and fan count, you unlock a Bus. The Bus allows you to travel outside California (aka unlocking Boston, Dallas, Seattle, etc). Touring the United States and building fans/Stars you unlock the plane (giving you international travel?? haven’t unlocked it yet). So the game play of Rock Band 2 rocks! I am very impressed. Guitar Hero has a much better song list (imho). Guitar Hero’s song list is much more metal rock, while Rock Band is more new age alternative, which my wife likes better.

From the outside this looks like a pretty stupid game, slightly above playing air guitar.

Several months ago, a good friend of mine was talking about it one day, and I expressed my opinion about how stupid the game looks. He was going on and on how the game is really fun and he plans on buying Guitar Hero III for the Nintendo Wii next week. So the next time I was over (next week) he wanted to break out the Nintendo Wii and show me the game. He played a few songs and was showed me the song list. Being a rock/metal head there was a few songs I liked (SLAYER!), and so decided to give the “stupid game” a try… well, I was hooked… I called the wife on the way home that day telling her I GOTTA GET ONE and that weekend I picked up the Nintendo Wii and Guitar Hero III.

I started the game on easy difficulty, but easy is just too easy, medium is kinda easy, and there is a big difficulty gap between medium and hard. I managed to complete an entire “tour” on medium difficulty in about a week. Since then I have completed most of the Tour on hard difficulty, but there is just a few I cant do…

I looked into playing the other “guitar” games while I waited on Guitar Hero World Tour, but it seems the only other game I could play without having instrument compatibility issues is Guitar Hero 2. I could play the Rockband games (Rockband 1 & 2), but I would have to buy new controller(s) since the Guitar Hero controllers were not compatible. My buddy who got me into the game didn’t seem to mind the instrument compatibility issues and purchased Rockband games with new controllers. His living room now looks like a recording studio with 5 guitars & 2 drum sets.

So before buying anymore games, I waited until the latest Guitar Hero and Rockband were out and the instrument compatibility reports started coming in. After reading the reports, it seems that of all the platforms (Playstation 2/3, Wii & Xbox 360) the Microsoft Xbox 360 has the fewest issues. The Xbox 360 instruments (Guitar, Drums, Mic) for Guitar Hero are compatible with all the games; Rockband 1 & 2, Guitar Hero II, III, and Guitar Hero World Tour, and not to mention all the “add-on” packs (Aerosmith, AC/DC, etc). So if your a fan of these games, the Xbox 360 is the way to go. I ended up buying a Xbox 360 with the Guitar Hero World Tour Band Kit. This is the perfect setup, as now I just need to buy the other games (not instruments) to play them.