ThePaska commented on somebody's profile...
ThePaska commented on somebody's profile...
Nirvana 7 Song Pack announced today. I'm ecstatic! Can't wait for Tuesday, and I'll be locked up in my room for hours on end playing an replaying the majority of the Nevermind album!
ThePaska commented on somebody's profile...
Rock Band 2 has finally been purchased. Xbox was suffering from the Red Ring Of Death about two weeks from the actual launch date. But no more, I have hardly had time to put the game down yet, solo world tour mode is shaping up nicely. Can't wait to test it out online and also get my friends involved. Rock Band 2 ROCKS!
ThePaska said...
Finally back home from school.
I basically have all the time in the world to play games now, so when I'm not playing GTA IV and Mario Kart I'm playing Rock Band. Thanks to DLC and my new found interest in online play I think I'll be playing a hell of a lot more of it.
Just reflecting on the online phenomenon that has come about over the past few years, especially for the consoles. Online play has truly revolutionized gaming as a whole. The ability to play and compete with others around the world, as well as have a chance to add content to the game adds so much replay value to the game. I'm loving this addition to the rhythm rock star gaming world. I couldn't possibly ever grow tired with Rock Band.
I'll be looking forward to hopefully seeing all the people of the forums online...
ThePaska said...
I came home from college a few days ago, Rock Band in tow, happy to have a nice winter break. I'd finally get a chance to take up the drums and hopefully make my way up to expert.
I assumed I would be on my own for the most part, maybe my friends would play with me from time to time, but I figured Rock Band time would mean alone time (Which seems kind of ironic). My family had never really enjoyed guitar hero, probably because they just thought of it as a silly guitar game, and could barely tackle easy for the most part.
To my surprise upon bringing home Rock Band, my family has become infatuated with it. The lure of the drums and the microphone have really hooked them all in. My 360 has barely been off since I have been home, the house is filled with the voices of my family, the beating of the drums and loud guitar. They love the game, I can't tear them away from it. It is really pretty awesome.
I love that Rock Band has the ability to do that. I haven't had as much fun playing Rock Band as I have when I was sitting there with my brothers on my right, and my mom and dad on my left all singing and playing along. It was a pretty cool experience to say the least.
Proof positive that Rock Band is here to stay. It's formula works so well. The band aspect is so much fun, everyone who sees you playing it needs to try it at least once. Very awesome, props to Harmonix for making yet another great music game.
ThePaska said...
One of the best things imaginable just happened, and well I figured it was Blog worthy. I'll start this off with a little back story.
Over the last few weeks I have been dealing with an annoying Amazon.com order, which has been telling me that my Rock Band order wont ship until the 26th for some reason. After a chat with custormer service it seemed there was nothing I could do about it. I had made the order long before most people. The problem was I had first taken up their offer on free shipping, but in my desire to have Rock Band I decided to change it to next day shipping, not a real biggie, whats $15? What this did however was bump me to the back of the "line" and basically since they were back ordered, I would not get it shipped until next week.
Taking action I called my local stores asking about Rock Band. From what I gathered unless I wanted to camp out or had a pre-order with the stores I wasn't getting one on launch. I had basically accepted my fate at that point. I'll spend break doing work, so that I can play Rock Band next week.
Alas, the Rock Gods have answered my prayers. I recieved an Amazon.com email, my game has shipped, next day shipping, I'll be getting it tomorrow, and be Rocking out like there is no tomorrow!
I am extremely excited. It seems the steps went something like this:
Anger
Denial
Sadness
Depression
Acceptance
Surprise
and finally Extreme Joy! 
That is all, I'll be playing Rock Band all week, plus family time, I can't wait to return next week to see how the community gets changed
ThePaska said...
The last few months have flown by, and during that time my interest in Rock Band has never really faltered. Although it was never really the same as that first time I got a look at Rock Band in action, via the Welcome to the Jungle video. Seeing people play as if they were actually a real band, and just imagining myself getting to try out the drums, I wanted the game that very second. I quickly tried to find out as much info about the game as I could, and have been doing so ever since. That was back in July.
Now months later, it has finally hit me again, I cannot wait to play this game! I've been sitting here watching gameplay videos for almost two whole hours, and with everyone I watch my excitement grows.
I have become extremely eager to play the drums. Not only is it a nice change of pace from guitar, it is also a new challenge. One of the reasons I liked the experiences I got from the first Guitar Hero was that I couldn't jump right into expert and beat it in a day. I loved the challenge of starting off on easy and trudging my way all the way up to expert.
I expect drums to be the same exact way, I'll start off on easy or medium and learn the drums as I go. Learning to use a fourth finger and move the hand to the orange button will be replaced by things like learning how to use your foot separate from your hands. The more I think about banging on the drums, the happier I get. It's only FOUR days away!
Back to playing along with gameplay videos... 
ThePaska said...
Over the weekend I was fortunate enough to find a Best Buy near me that had the Rock Band demo set up.
The first day I went there it was just me and my one other friend, the demo had GH III right next to it, which was very annoying, and it had the mic, drums and guitar. The mic did not work because there was no controller to go with it. So we stuck mainly to drums and guitar, and had a really good time doing it. Lag issues of Best Buy aside, it was everything I could hope it to be and more.
For the guitar, it was extremely enjoyable to play, I personally like the new strumbar, although its thinner, it makes absolutely no clicking from what I could hear, and I like it that way. The guitar itself is slightly bigger, which only factors in to two things. One is that it wont fit in my sweet Guitar Hero III gig bag, so I can't pack those two guitars up together. The other is that it was easy to lose my spot when trying to get all the way to the solo buttons and back. I did get a chance to try out the solo buttons which I was dying to do, and it was really cool, once I get the hang of going between the two sets of buttons it will be awesome. I lost my place when I did it the first time and failed at the end of Say It Ain't So.
The drums were also so good to play. I really want to try it with the pedal though to get the full sense of how it feels. I played on medium and could easily get through it, but when my leg comes into play that will probably change. Pads sound good as long as you hit them in the center and not on the sides they aren't too noisy or anything. The kid that played before me was banging the hell out of them and they held up just fine.
Day two was a different story all together, I put a big plan into motion and gave Best Buy a sweet concert they would never forget 
Not really, but I do have a great idea for the next time I go there. As for my 2nd time playing, it was a lot more crowded so I didn't get to play as much, but me and a bunch of my friends went and played a bunch of songs, it was a lot of fun, but I only got to play guitar because they hogged the drums.
As for my great plan, I really want to bring my own controller so we can use the microphone. In addition to that we'll borrow the GH III controller from right next to it for the bass and BAM thats a 4 person band right there, and we'll rock out Best Buy for hours!
I'll keep everyone updated if I play again, I have to say though, Rock Band is turning out amazing, I'm excited to get to play it to its fullest!
ThePaska said...
This is my first ever blog, I've been planning on writing one for some time, but I couldn't think of a topic. I figure I'll be writing more and more as I play GH III and Rock Band and I'll shed some light on them.
GH III finally arrived on my doorstep yesterday. After which I proceeded to rip it out of its box and begin playing right away. I had to admit I was a bit worried because of all the bad things about the Les Paul I had heard, I didn't know what to expect the first time I put the game in.
So with the disc in I got ready to rock out as much as GH III would allow. In my first attempt the disc didn't load and refused to eject. After a few tries and resettings of the system I managed to get the disc out, and put it back in and with a big sigh of relief the game started up.
I started off on hard just to get the hang of the songs, with my past experiences from GH I and II I assumed I'd basically 5* my way through and move on to expert by the end of the day. I played for hours, only breaking to do homework and eat.
After playing countless hours I have come to the final boss, and I have to say, hard is a lot tougher than I expected. At least the final tier is, I'm not the best Guitar Hero player out there but I have been able to 5* all of hard on the other games and most of expert as well.
The one thing that is truly hindering my advancement into expert is my wammy bar. It came broken, which makes battling near impossible. Anytime I get hit with a wammy attack it is basically lights out, needless to say it has become quite frustrating. Also I'm having trouble calibrating the lag, I just can't seem to get it right, which also isn't helping.
I can't really add to what I've already read other people say about GH III, but I will agree for the most part.
A lot of the note charts are weird, and they sacrifice fun and common sense for difficulty.
The difficulty has definately been amped up, those final tier songs of Hard could easily be expert.
The amount of broken Les Pauls (including MINE!) is really annoying and makes me wonder if they have any idea what they were doing when making them.
The fact that you cannot play any boss battles in quickplay is silly.
The fact that there is no offline co-op quickplay is equally silly.
Speaking of which the songs that you must unlock through co-op is annoying as well, I'm going to have to play through it with my friend using a normal controller, the co-op songs are some of the best ones to unlock.
In conclusion, after one day with the game, I figure it can only improve from here, once I figure out how to get this wammy fixed I'll see how I do. Also I want to sync my game to guitarhero.com and star doing some tournaments, playing online and other stuff. That part really has me excited about this game as well as the possibilities for Rock Band.
Ok I've rambled on enough, thats it for my first blog. I'm sure its riddled with grammatical errors.
Just did the endless set list. Completed it, in about 6 hours or so. Tried for the bladder achievement, but sadly did not get it. I think it is because I failed one song, 3rd song from the end. It was either that or when I accidentally hit the Xbox button on my controller, or the two times my controller became unplugged. Either way I'll have to do it again eventually and hopefully get the achievement.
Was still really fun, although I'm completely worn out. Time to sleep!
Sunday, October 19, 2008