Impressions from playing at PAX

[Mileycyrussoulja]

Don't quote me, but I think Spinning Wheel has this too.

Queens of the Stone Age - "No One Knows"
Blood, Sweat, & Tears - "Spinning Wheel"
The Clash - "Death or Glory"
Deep Purple - "Child in Time"
The Doors - "Riders on the Storm"
Janis Joplin - "Me and Bobby McGee"
Lynyrd Skynyrd - "Tuesday's Gone"
Queen - "One Vision"
Santana - "Black Magic Woman"

Those are the only ones that are non-RBN that have instrument solo duets.

[Apples]

I too got some quality time with the Blitz demo, and have posted some thoughts below. The demo was very polished and aside from a crash bug looked like it could have been a retail release game already.

General Comments:

As I tweeted during PAX, Blitz is really going to breathe new life into old RB songs. The demo station had Living on a Prayer, a song I was intimately familiar with from the RB2 disc. Getting to try it under a new style/ruleset really provoked a new interest even though I was relatively tired of hearing it in RB3.

Control wise, I tried 2 different controller layouts... they were both intuitive enough that I could adapt within the span of a song. The only minor annoyance was fast switching across multiple lanes, jumping from the far left to the far right, as I did not see any immediate way to accomplish this. It would be nice if the bumper buttons jumped 1 lane L/R, and the triggers 2 lanes L/R, or something similar to help this.

Two lanes of beatmatching was not as detrimental as I had thought... the note density keeps you engaged for the whole song. Difficulty wise, the hardest song I played was The Trooper, which kicked my ass pretty well, but was passable. Can't comment on the powerups since many were locked, but the ones that were available were fun. (the pinball one, especially)

Art/GUI was very much in the style of RB3. It works, its nice to look at, and looks very polished for just a demonstration version.

The cross-game interoperability is very attractive. At the very very worse, even if you don't like Blitz, (which is hard to believe) it will be a nicely rounded 20 song DLC package for the regular RB3 game.

Other observations: Songs that have non-traditional note charting could be really fun/interesting (Freezepop for example, or the rare Footloose and Fancy Free RBN release, if you own it)

Areas for Improvement:

Having played a few games at pax I agree with OP's criticism #1 regarding playfield legibility in a few areas. The uphill example was a big one. The blur/fastfoward effect powerup was equally disorienting. Also I found dense notefields like Raining Blood's guitar solo to be disorienting. I feel like the cries for a hyperspeed mode are going to be pronounced, as they were in the RB1 era.

Regarding track switching, I was surprised that drums were on the far left. I felt that bass, drums and guitar should have been the middle 3 tracks, since they have the highest note density, with the vocals/keys on the far wings due to their lesser density. The middle 3 are going to get the most attention/play so they should be the 3 most prominent, in my opinion.

Played about 6-8 songs over my demo experience, let me know if you have any questions.

[HMXMister_Game]

The control options are pretty good. I mostly used the strangely-named "Freakish" setting

Strangely named? Really? :-)

[*]Occasionally, the twisty note track will go over a hill in the road. This makes it very hard to read upcoming notes for a few seconds.

Very interesting. This isn't something that has come up in our playtesting. I suspect that you get used to the curvature and can anticipate after playing for a while.

[*]When I had to move way across the board, like from drums (far left) to keys (far right), the display kind of choked up a bit, like it lagged for a second because I switched tracks too fast.

That must have been a glitch. We haven't fully optimized the game yet, but obviously we don't want anything like that in a shipping build!

[*]Perhaps this is an option that I missed or that will be added in the final game, but I didn't see an option to wrap around the tracks (i.e. pressing "move left" when on drums to wrap around to keys).

As has already been stated in the thread, I don't think we are going to ship with Track Wrap.

[*]During an instrument solo, since the non-solo tracks don't have any notes, I think it makes sense to just auto-move to the track that has the solo. But, perhaps this could be an issue when two instruments have simultaneous solos. Anyway, just a minor thing.[/LIST]

How we treat solos is a hot topic right now, this behavior may not be the final one that ships. Stay tuned!

The blur/fastfoward effect powerup was equally disorienting.

I think you'll find after a couple songs you get used to the effect, and it won't trip you up at all.

Thanks for the feedback guys. I heard from a number of people that the game was harder/more strategic/more engaging than they expected, which makes me very happy. Just judging it on the two lane gems doesn't really give it a fair chance.

Fortunately we will have a free trial of the game so people can try it out before they purchase.

[Witticus]

Fortunately we will have a free trial of the game so people can try it out before they purchase.

Great commentary Mister and I'm looking forward to the demo version!

[FairwoodStudios]

Strangely named? Really? :-)

Perhaps "Freqish" would be a little more obvious (assuming that's what you were going for)? :P That was really the more natural of the control schemes, IMO. Sticks make sense for moving, buttons make sense for triggering.

My one random complaint, the tier display needs better contrast. I was like, "no way is Band on the Run tier 5 on everything!" because I couldn't really see the yellowness in the dots.

[onix12345]

Strangely named? Really? :-)

Yeah, I'm gonna try to save some face and file that under "PAX is exhausting and also I'm posting at 1am" :P

[Magnet]

- At the HMX panel on Saturday about RBB, someone asked about wrapping around. The answer was that that option was coded, but is not slated for inclusion in the game at this point. I hope they decide to put it back in though.

That strikes me as odd. It wasn't the end of the world to not have that feature in Frequency/Amplitude, but I do find it strange that it would be introduced in Unplugged and then removed again for another track switching game. Unless the feature is introducing technical issues with the game, I can't say I agree with removing a feature to make track movement more convenient. I guess one concern might be that players who know about it could have an unfair advantage? But if the game has loading screens like the demo seemed to have, then all players could eventually be informed about track wrapping that way.

Having played a few games at pax I agree with OP's criticism #1 regarding playfield legibility in a few areas. The uphill example was a big one. The blur/fastfoward effect powerup was equally disorienting.

There was some similar uphill stuff in Amplitude, and I didn't find that it was difficult to make out the notes or that it negatively affected my playing in that game. There was less of the tracks that could be seen at once in those areas, but I kinda liked that it added to the challenge slightly by spicing things up a bit.

The only thing that I'm seriously concerned about is the effect where "Blitz" is at the top of the screen, it zooms in, and the gameplay gets blurry. I have a lot of trouble seeing the notes in that mode with busier areas (especially on the yellow track). They just blend right into the background too much for me, and it seems like it's something that could essentially cripple my ability to play the game competitively.

I don't know if the problem stems from me being partially color blind, but without some kind of clear contrast between note color and track color, I can't really pick out what's going on in busy areas. Really hoping this gets tweaked before release. Being able to see the notes is sort of a priority in this kind of game.

[LoopyChew]

Does the vocals track read off of the solo vocal line, or off the Harmonies where they exist? It could make playing between legacy versions and RB3 versions slightly more interesting...

[HMXMister_Game]

Does the vocals track read off of the solo vocal line, or off the Harmonies where they exist? It could make playing between legacy versions and RB3 versions slightly more interesting...

The solo vocal line.

[Lowlander2]

How do Big Rock Endings work in the game?