PsycoCheerio’s Profile

So PAX is over again...not a happy night for me since it is the event that I look forward to every year.

First off I have to say that everyone from Harmonix who was there, well they are all amazing people and really friendly, it's really just crazy how awesome they are; makes me wish I lived in Boston honestly.

Now to what I actually did and all that jazz...

First thing I did was go play Rock Band 2 obviously...although by the time I got to the booth it was a good hour and a half wait. The crazy thing was that they had, I think, the whole Rock Band 3 set list playable along with about 100 additional DLC songs. Sadly most people just played the same stuff that they were really familiar with which meant lots of Bon Jovi and Everlong.

I ended up playing Aqualung, which was awesome...The new auto-calibration worked amazingly well, flawless even. Anywho...
The new drums are FANTASTIC they have more bounce are MUCH quieter and overall have a better feel. The guitars also are a pretty big step in the right direction. The buttons are quieter and have a smoother overall feel about them (oh and the whole auto-calibration thing).

The Harmonix panel, which at an hour and a half wasn't nearly enough time, was really awesome to see the evolution of the company. Going from the really early games all the way up through Rock Band.

Let's see...I did go try GH:WT...
I have to say that the drums didn't really feel all that comfortable, it may something that requires getting used to but I personally didn't like how they were set-up. Also I saw a few times when the yellow cymbal actually came unplugged from people playing.

They new GH guitar was also a disappointment for me. They new slide bar works like solo buttons basically, but it is still a small size guitar and that's my big problem with it after using the Rock Band guitar.

I didn't like some of the layout of where they moved the multiplier bar for the instruments (on the side of the track). There was something about the vocals and not tracking how your singing while each phrase is going on that really bugged me also, I can't really judge how well it picked up voices and what-not because the Exhibition Hall at PAX is just ridiculously loud so the little vocal ball is all over the place whether your singing or not. Although I couldn't find a way to change the mic sensitivity or anything (also it was an 8 song demo, so you never know).

Other than those 2 big games I tried some smaller stuff like Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball (which was really fun, but don't know if it's got enough to be a fully fledged game).

Plus the concerts, I did go see Freezepop and JoCo. Both of which were awesome. Especially JoCo, he had to do 2 encores before people would leave the Main Theatre. plus it is really cool to see literally a room full of people all singing along to some crazy song, such as Code Monkeys...

Anywho...I haven't had hardly any sleep so that's what's going on now...

Monday, September 1, 2008

Right...first off RB was infinitely better than i had hoped and playing in front of a audience was amazing!

So played all the instruments and sang so i got opinions on everything...

The first time i waited in a line for an hour to play bass in "Won't Get Fooled Again" it was amazingly fun keyboard solo in the middle then going back to rockin' out felt awesome...Expert was kinda what i expected for difficulty not too hard but not the easiest, for GH vets should be good.

I got to play guitar a number of times, played "Epic" which was an extremely fun song, i honestly think the difficulty was a bit higher than that of an average GH2 song, but it could have just been from the controller. I did try to use the solo buttons, did it for a little while but it was actually quite difficult...but it did feel awesome, even if i didn't do so hot through that solo section.

The controller by the way is AMAZING. After playing bass i went and played some GH2 in a freeplay area and the GH controller really felt like crap by comparison.  It took a bit of getting used to, but it felt so much better once you got it all figured out.

Drums...What to say about the drums...Now, I have never used a drum set before, and I played on Medium, which was a perfect difficulty level to start out on playing "Tom Sawyer" it did take some time to get the hang of it, with the bass pedal and everything, but the sections that i was doing good on, no better feeling...indescribable really...

smidget did play some expert drums in "Epic" which looked crazy hard, but pulled it off...so he probably will have a better feeling of what the drums are like when he gets back home to post his thoughts.

The singing...So i was thinking i wasn't gonna sing...not a big singer.  There was "Mississippi Queen" going on and they needed one more, so i decided to hop up on stage, got stuck singing...The thing is, i didn't know any of the words except for Mississippi Queen.  Up in front of probably 40 odd people and about to sing a song i don't know the lyrics to.  But i honestly think it was my favorite part of the whole day no comparable feeling...i honestly can't describe it. Just, it was awesome...

Yea...I'm really tired so if there is anything i should need to clarify, since I am still overwhelmed by the whole event, let me know...

Overall if I don't have this game on release day, whenever that may be, I'm going to cry myself to sleep every night until i do have it...

Sorry i didn't have a camera...smidget and the HMX folk all did of course and i assume all of those will be up soon if they aren't already.

Night everyone...

Sunday, August 26, 2007