Posts tagged Rock Band 3
The Backlog: This is Why We Play edition
May 17th
We’re celebrating the joy of gaming this week. Sometimes, it takes a little time away to appreciate how great gaming is; sometimes, it just strikes you after coming back to a recent classic. Other times, it’ll sink in despite frustrations.
Doug has hit the track again, Tyler has wound through the Mass Effect 2 DLC, and Nick has finally settled down in the great state of Texas and has time to play lots of games again. So without further ado, on to the Backlog!
Backlog: Spring Forward edition
Mar 5th
This image is .05% related to the title. You can see that there's a Slinky, and Slinkys "spring." Also, this creature's stuck in it and can't move "forward." It's ironically genius, when you think about it.
Welcome to this week’s Backlog! I’m your typist-guide — my name’s Aaron, but you can call me Aaron — and it’s my job to introduce our content. So let me do that.
Today is a good day, and not just because I’m totally fond of our latest contributions about games we’ve all played during the past seven days. No, that’s all fine and dandy. What I mean in calling today a good day is that the atmosphere is different — finally. I can feel the air warming. I can see the daylight growing longer. My roommates are busy cleaning their rooms, watering their plants and putting on airs for guests who are showing up this weekend. People are emerging from winter’s woolen grasp and it’s visible on the faces around me. Spring is fuckin’ here.
How nice.
Backlog: Clever Unifying Theme Goes Here edition
Feb 5th
Okay, fine: So maybe we didn’t put our thinking caps on this morning to figure out what ties all three of our Backlog entries together. It’s possible that we didn’t get enough sleep because some jerk woodpecker just had to poke the hell out of a dying fir tree about five feet from a certain editor’s bed for roughly three hours. Maybe that same editor grew frustrated in hunting down a hilarious .jpg and drew a crude comic to vent his frustration instead.
Who knows? It is a mystery. So why don’t we just file it away for now and move on to more pressing matters?
Lovely.
Here’s the skinny: Nick is up to his old tricks, Doug is off the friggin’ deep end of football-induced insanity, and Aaron just really, really hates free stuff.
You’re the Piano, Man! Part Deux
Jan 27th
Still here? Good. It’s been a couple months since we last talked shop about the keyboard; I hope you’ve been practicing. You have been practicing, haven’t you? Because you know what happens if you don’t practice.
If you don’t practice, you don’t get a lolly.
On this second installment of our keyboard study, we’ll be talking about strategies for aspiring pianists — no snickering! —who are just now getting to know their way around the ivories.
The Backlog: That’s What She Said edition
Nov 19th
Our wondrous Backlog returns this week, and it’s massive; really, a two-for-one sort of deal.
For those out there who read these posts, I bet it’s easy to tell when pre-break introductions do a terrible job of framing our editors’ gaming experiences over the past seven or more days. In case you were wondering, this is one of those bad introductions. I’m not sure where I’m going with the Michael Scott joke and woefully overused phrase in the title, but I promise to make you just as confused as I am.
However, Nick kindly bombards us with — and I haven’t checked this to be certain — the largest block of text to ever appear in a Backlog entry. It sort of justifies my attempts at referencing size and such an immature joke. But his thing is just really huge.
That’s what she said.
You’re the Piano, Man! Taking up Pro Keys in Rock Band 3
Nov 15th
As a child, there was nothing I dreaded more than my weekly piano lessons. My teacher, a doting, grandmotherly old lady who smelled like candy and cried whenever I said “thank you,” did her best to impress upon me the importance of mastering scales and the beauty of perfecting a large-note, simplified Chopin piece, but I would have none of it.
I dabbled in piano lessons again in my early teens, but the routine was only more tedious than before. When I came home from a day at high school, I wanted to put on a Linkin Park CD and feel sorry for myself, dammit, not familiarize myself with the sustain pedal while trudging through my teacher’s favorite new-age song of the week.
Generic teenage angst aside, there’s a very good reason why kids don’t want to practice their instruments: It’s just not very much fun.
Enter Rock Band 3. Combining the tried-and-true gameplay the series is renowned for with a set of real-world instruments, Rock Band 3 might be the first videogame that can actually teach a person how to play an instrument. But just how much of a commitment will that take from the average person? And just how much can you learn from a game?
Well, that’s where I come in. I put up the money to get Rock Band 3 on October 26th along with the keyboard peripheral, and I’ll be chronicling my progression through Rock Band 3′s Pro Keys mode.
The Backlog: That Old Familiar Feeling edition
Oct 29th
The definition of familiarity.
We’ve all been playing games long enough to know what we like. Regardless of whatever revolutionary new series or unusual indie gems might come along, there’s always going to be room for those games that we know we’ll love specifically because they feel like home. So whether we find that comfort in the villages of Albion, behind the wheel of a Formula 1 car or in the heft of a plastic instrument, we all recognize that sometimes it’s best to stick to what you know.
Our Most Anticipated Games (for the rest of 2010)
Sep 16th
Another year is nearing its inevitable end, and we couldn’t be any happier about it. Although 2010 has already played host to a plethora of amazing and potentially award-winning video games, it’s not quite time to start hedging bets for the game of the year. Read on for our staff’s own list of noteworthy releases that you should be excited for.
Revitalizing World Tour in Rock Band
May 19th
It’s no secret that I’m a die-hard Rock Band fan. Ever since Frequency came out nearly a decade ago, I’ve avidly followed Harmonix’s rise from a small studio building relatively niche rhythm games into what is now the undisputed leader in high-quality music gaming. From the time Rock Band first arrived in 2007, I don’t think a week has gone by where I haven’t picked up a guitar or banged on the drums for at least a few minutes. It doesn’t hurt that I’ve amassed a pretty substantial collection of songs, either.
But years have passed, achievements have been earned, and world tours have been demolished. With more than a year and a half having passed between Rock Band 2′s release and now, it’s highly unlikely that many players are still regularly hitting up the World Tour mode; instead, most people are probably opting for the pick-up-and-play simplicity of quickplay. That’s not a bad thing, necessarily, but what if World Tour could be reworked to be more robust, more engaging, and more enduring?
I’ve done my best to compile all my thoughts and suggestions into a relatively ordered list below. While it looks like we’ll be getting some new insight directly from the Harmonix design team based on this short article Lead Designer Dan Teasdale posted today, I figured I’d post my own impressions of what the series’ strengths and weaknesses are, and what can be done to specifically improve the World Tour experience in Rock Band 3.
Just bear in mind that this is only speculation from a guy who maybe loves his music games a little too much, and as a result it’s best if it’s not taken too seriously.