Posts Tagged ‘rock band’

Beatles Rock Band Game Is Great For Improving Singing & Drumming

January 3rd, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Playstation 2 Games, Playstation 3 Games, Playstation Games
copy PS games

If you are anything like I am then you do not really care about video games. In fact, I hate video games. In my opinon they are a complete waste of time. So then why am I writing about this video game? Because in my opinion Beatles Rock Band is something well beyond just a game, it’s a real interactive musical experience.

I am not really talking about the guitar thing. In fact, in my opinion the guitar part of the game is lame because it has nothing to do with playing a real guitar and little to do with the music. It has zilch to do with guitar playing because playing a real six string is about 100 times more complex than simply pressing a few buttons and it has very little to do with the music because I have found that the changes in the game rarely change in time with any chord changes in the music.

The drumming and the singing parts of the game are what I find really interesting and important. These aspects are directly related to doing these things “in real life” and they are also both obviously related to the music that you’re performing

If you sing a song in key and in time then you will do well. No you don’t have to sing the lyrics (you can just hum) but I don’t think that’s a big deal. Musically what is essential is hitting the right notes at the right time. I think Beatles Rock Band is really a really great way to to work on your ability to sing. This is even more true with The Beatles Rock Band than with other Rock Band games because it includes harmony singing too.

When you do the drumming on the highest level you are really hitting every single drum hit that is in the actual recording! I won’t claim it’s just like playing real drums, but it’s close enough to be very effective for practicing. In fact, I’ve heard of people moving quite smoothly from playing Rock Band drums into playing real drums.

I definitely recomend The Beatles Rock Band as a great purchase for any big Beatles fan along with (obviously) The Beatles Remastered Box Sets & The Beatles USB.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Tags: , , ,

Guitar Hero vs Rock Band 2

February 10th, 2009 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Playstation 2 Games, Playstation 3 Games, Playstation Games

Since the very first Guitar Hero game in 2005, Activision and RedOctane have been the leaders of the music game industry, until, 2 years after the Guitar Hero release, Rock Band was released into America.

The developers of the original Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero 2 games were Harmonix, but after they completed their second Guitar Hero game, they moved onto a new publisher, MTV Games and EA. After Harmonix moved on, Neversoft took their place and the first thing they did was release a new game, Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock which was released in the later part of 2007. The game proved to be a great success, until later that year Harmonix came back into the business with Rock Band. This game featured a whole set of instruments, guitar, drums, bass and mic.

After a good year of Rock Band being released, the competition is back on because in November 2008, both publishers, Activision and EA released a new music game. Guitar Hero World Tour from Activision and Rock Band 2 from EA, let battle commence.

From Guitar Hero’s view, it was a whole new game for them, they had to create a whole new range of instruments, but once they were done, it was clear that they hadn’t cut any corners. Their new guitar has a touch sensitive bar to allow finger tapping during song sections, their drums feature 5 pads and a foot peddle, one more than Rock Bands. Aswell as a whole range of shiny new instruments, their game featured a music maker where you could create and share your own songs.

On the other side, Rock Band’s new instruments don’t seem to have changed much. Harmonix only made 2 changes to the drums, they made the peddle metal instead of plastic to make it stronger, they also changed the drums to velocity sensitive, basically, the harder you hit on the pads, the louder the sound you get in the game. Except for a few minor changes, their instrument range has stayed the same.

On the actual game side of things, they haven’t got a music maker, however, they do have one great thing that Guitar Hero does not; a huge selection of downloadable songs on top of their 80+ song set list. This also gets better, any songs that you have already downloaded for Rock Band 1, are still compatible with Rock Band 2 and appear on the set list when you load up the game. Another advantage is that for a small fee, under $5, you can transfer almost all of the 70+ Rock Band 1 songs onto Rock Band 2, giving you a minimum of 160 songs on Rock Band 2.

Now that the advantages to each game have been said, now comes the difficult part, deciding which one to get. With Christmas closing in, many people will just be choosing one game rather than both, plus many people will lack the space for 2 sets of instruments.

As both instrument sets are compatible with both games, many people will have to choose whether they want the larger and more expandable set list of Rock Band, or the new features and suited up instruments of Guitar Hero.

Even though Harmonix have more experiance in this type of game, the stage is clearly open and we’ll have to see which game will come out on top.

Caribbean Holidays and All Inclusive Holidays are perfect for a Winter getaway.

Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

Tags: , , , , ,