beenabadbunny

#18: Bark At The Moon's harder in GH than it is on a real guitar. :)

Fire-poi lady doesn't seem to be wearing an awful lot. I presume she was exempt from the booth-babe rule because she was there as a performer?

With regard to the payment model, I'm somewhat surprised that there aren't more games with two tiers, ?a RuneScape.

That is, completely free (ad-supported) to register and play - one need never pay any money at all - but with much more content and faster customer support for those who do choose to pay.

I'll concede that supporting free players with ads isn't ideal, and would possibly be more difficult to integrate into a non-browser-based game, but it still makes the game more accessible, particularly for a younger audience.

Supporting player Jon here.

Just to clarify; I thoroughly enjoyed the game and was THIS close to laying out the cash for it on the spot (Jennie had a second copy on sale-or-return so I could have bought it from her there and then.)

Something stopped me, though. I just couldn't QUITE justify paying fifty pounds for it. The spare copy stayed in its wrapper and duly went back to the shop.

I've since given a bit more thought to just what it was that kept me from falling completely in love. Jennie's already mentioned that I believe they should have implemented open strings - essentially giving six 'notes' to choose from instead of five - but for the most part, that's less of a problem than I anticipated before playing the game. (It ruins 'Smoke On The Water', though.)

The main thing, I think, is that the difficulty isn't graded right between the rhythm and lead sections. This cartoon, whilst probably not intended too seriously, (inadvertently?) says it all:

http://www.xkcd.com/comics/guitar_hero.jpg

The problem I was having was that, on the lower difficulty levels, a good 90% of each song would be FAR too easy to play, to the point where it was just boring. Hitting one or two notes per measure just doesn't capture the feeling of the real songs, especially on numbers with chuggy, chunky rhythms like Pantera's 'Cowboys From Hell' or White Zombie's 'Thunder Kiss 65'.

So of course, I immediately stuck it on Expert mode. "This is more like it!" I thought. Suddenly, the buttons it was asking me to press actually started to correspond to the notes coming out. It felt ten times better. I was ROCKING.

And then the guitar solo dropped, and I was booed off the stage within eight measures.

It's my own fault, of course. I shouldn't have tried to run before I could walk, as it were. But that's my tuppence-worth.

It's not a game-ruiner. I know that with practice, I'd learn to read the patterns, just like in any rhythm-action game, and the more intricate passages would come. I only had it for an evening, however, so there wasn't really time to put in the required hours.

Moreover, I'm aware that it's only a problem for someone like me, who can already play most of these songs on the real guitar. The game pretty much nails the 'feel' of playing rhythm guitar (on Expert mode, anyway) but as a lead guitar simulator, it's nothing short of dreadful.

The two-player mode was interesting but ultimately a wasted opportunity. I was disappointed that there was no way to choose a different difficulty level for the two players - which is even more of a problem when there's only one guitar controller. On a Dual Shock 2, it's the world's least intuitive rhythm action game and is consequently a good 30-40% harder straight off the bat.

I'm delighted to see that for the sequel, the two players will take on different instruments within the band, as opposed to the simple call-and-response on offer here.

In all, though I may have sounded somewhat harsh above, this game is great fun and I would love to own it. As a long-time rhythm-action fan and metalhead, I had been resigned to the 'fact' that the two interests were mutually exclusive*. I never thought I'd see the day when Megadeth would make it into a rhythm-action game - and yet the geniuses at Harmonix managed to carry it off.

I don't see myself buying it, though. Not at full price, anyway. Perhaps when the sequel comes out, I'll see if I can pick up a copy of the original at a more sensible price...





* (Yes, I know that Fear Factory showed up in Frequency and Slipknot in Amplitude - but those were very much the hard-rocking exceptions amongst tracklistings heavily biased toward dance and hip-hop.)