Gaming Weekend: Showdown Edition
Some people have tried to identify the division that exists between Rock Band and Guitar Hero. More than identify, really, it’s like a deliberate enumeration of the subtle variances in design philosophy that drive each game. Somehow these people are mostly trying to apologize for Guitar Hero III in a world where Rock Band exists by pointing out the ways in which Guitar Hero shouldn’t be compared.
But frankly the games are going to get compared, even without the insider history of Red Octane and Harmonix nor the press-based quasi-feud that has each sniping at the other. The similarities are too great to ignore and with that level of ready comparison, gamers and gaming enthusiast press alike are going to engage that debate. The funny thing is, the debate is hardly worth having because in nearly every respect, Rock Band emerges as the victor.
I played quite a bit of both games this weekend, and a couple of the things that I noticed:
- There are a handful of songs that appear in both games, like The Killers’ “When You Were Young” and Mountain’s “Mississippi Queen.” It’s interesting to see how each developer handled the songs differently because it really makes you appreciate the value that the note tracking design has on the enjoyment of the game.
- One of the things GH apologists try to claim is that their game has a different focus on being all about casting the player as a guitar virtuoso so they tend to favor single-note strings over chord progressions. I guess the idea is that it looks more impressive to play a bunch of individual notes really fast than it does to play a handful of chords in a specific pattern. The end result is that Rock Band’s approach to making note tracks is superior both in realism and, interestingly, the part where it really counts: Fun.
- Another side effect of Guitar Hero’s approach is that the difficulty of the game is more harsh and ramps up faster than Rock Band and even earlier GH games. Some of the earliest songs on medium contain the kinds of triplets, quick hammer-on trills and heavy blue-button use normally reserved for more difficult setlists later in the progression.
- This difficulty, shockingly enough, does not translate into “more fun.” Like playing on Expert in Guitar Hero II, it becomes an exercise in testing your will more than in enjoying the fantasy of playing music.
- The limited customization of the characters, the limited number of characters to begin with and the ho-hum presentation of the concert footage is really disappointing in Guitar Hero. I know they have a new developer but considering this is ostensibly a sequel and Rock Band is a new product, being outpaced on customization options by a n00b franchise is pretty inexcusable.
- Whomever though the mandatory boss battles should be a part of the solo tour mode in GH should be fired with predjudice. They aren’t fun, they don’t add anything to the game, they serve as unnecessary roadblocks to the basic gameplay (which is the reason for entry to begin with) and other than the final “Devil Went Down to Georgia” adaptation, the battle parts aren’t familiar enough or even good enough to want to play to begin with. I don’t mind the idea of competitive battling this way, but it’s such a fundamental departure from the main game mechanic that it should have been left to it’s own mode and excised from the main game entirely.
- The one thing Guitar Hero really has going for it is the controller. It’s still not ideal; I’d like the detachable neck piece to sit more tightly in its connector so it has zero wobble room and I wish it was a little bit bigger. Plus the smaller buttons higher on the neck in the Rock Band guitar are a really welcome feature. But Rock Band’s guitar has other problems like a toggle switch that gets in the way, a whammy bar that feels too loose and an unreliable strum bar. The problems with the RB controller far outweigh GH’s minor annoyances where it matters most: During the game, so the ideal solution is to play RB with the GH guitar.
The end result of all this is that even if you left out the wonderful drum modes, the engaging multiplayer modes and the singing element, on a guitar-game versus guitar-game merit, Rock Band still wins because Harmonix seems to have made fun their utmost priority and that’s something Neversoft forgot when they were trying to ape the magic of the earlier GH games.
The Rest of the Games
- Assassin’s Creed – Despite finishing the game already, I decided to go back and try to earn a few of the achievements I missed the first time through. I earned a bunch of the “Perform X Task Y Times” achievements and then found a couple of really excellent guides for locating the hidden flags so I began the process of collecting those one by one. I suppose the fact that I’m revisiting it indicates that I enjoyed the game, and that’s entirely true. What I didn’t expect was that the “chore” of flag collecting could become a sort of fun made-game in itself. Even when using the guides, the mapping is so imprecise that it’s almost like a puzzle game to match the environment shown in the screenshot to what you can actually see using only an imprecise marker to denote a general area it should be. Strangely compelling for what was supposed to be an odious process.
- Silent Hill Origins – I can’t seem to take this game out of the PSP despite the fact that it’s sprawling and deliberate and really not very conducive to play on-the-go (odd for a portable title). Still, it’s a phenomenal Silent Hill game, so I have no problem just playing it like the PSP were any other console.
- Tomb Raider Anniversary – I have to give the developers of TRA appropriate credit for creating an impressive sense of scale out of a game that originally didn’t have much. The T-Rex fight plays out much more enjoyably than it originally did and it isn’t because of the graphical facelift, the sense of grandeur is just cranked up to something that better approximates what is fitting of a big, epic capital-A Adventure.
- Puzzle Quest – I finally played an online game and finished up the last 10 achievement points, but more significantly I found that I put all that time into PQ and I missed a whole side of the game that’s almost as enjoyable as the quest mode. I started a new character since my partner/opponent Doctor Mac noted that the handicapping wasn’t quite working (simply adding HP does not even out a match when one player has hyper-powerful spells). What I find delightful is how you can level up your multiplayer character the same way you can in the regular quest.