Kalamaf Drackonsbane » Rock Band

Rock Band Network

kalamaf — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 02:42:53 +0000

The Rock Band Network finally launched a couple weeks ago and already has over 150 songs available from artists both popular and obscure. It seems to be a great service for smaller bands and artists but there’s some pretty big names putting out songs via RBN as well. The biggest news I heard this week,big enough to drag me away from reading fat burner reviews (what? that shit’s pretty funny usually.) is that The Tragically Hip have at least 2 songs coming to Rock Band, finally, I can’t figure out why they never had songs in the game before. But, soon I’ll be able to jam to Blow at High Dough and New Orleans is Sinking. I’ll get both as soon as they’re up for sale and will buy pretty much any Hip song from their first 3 or 4 albums. I’m not much of a fan of their more recent work, but their older stuff is great and I can wait to play it. Now we need some Def Leppard! And Weird Al!

Sore Neck from Playing Rock Band

kalamaf — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 03:25:17 +0000

I hadn’t played any music games for a couple of weeks and then 2 nights ago I spent a couple hours on Rock Band. The first hour on drums and then another hour on guitar. Was fun, got my ass kicked by the new Megadeth songs. I did OK on some but then for others I couldn’t pass ‘em even by dropping down to hard difficulty. Then the next morning when I woke up the left side of my neck was so stiff and sore I could barely turn my head. What the hell? I thought to myself, but the only thing I did different the day before was playing rock band. Very weird, I can see it maybe help to build muscles when drumming, especially in the right leg, but to give me a sore neck? I can’t figure that out. Maybe I need to adjust the guitar strap to be a bit shorter or something, cause the sore part does seem to be where the strap hangs around my neck.

Broke 25k GamerScore

kalamaf — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 05:19:30 +0000

I just broke 25000 GS tonight on the ol’ Xbox 360. Actually it was 26k but 1k of that almost feels like cheating and went by so fast I forgot about it for a minute there. Someone traded in that Avatar at my store the other day, the one where you can get all 1000 points in less than 5 minutes by just standing by the wall and doing your range attack. I promptly ejected the disc as soon as I got my 1000 points cause frankly, the game sucks huge donkey balls. It’s like someone made a dip machine, pressed the dip button, and out popped this dip of a game. It’s horrible. I guess maybe fans of the “anime” might like it, but boy does it suck.

The actually breaking of the 25k was a result of finishing the story in Lego Rock Band!

Lego Rock Band

kalamaf — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:45:22 +0000

When I first heard about this game many months ago I figured it must be a joke. Even though it was April Fools day it just seemed too silly to be real. But as time went on and more information became available it was very apparent that the game was in fact real.

I’ve been checking out vids of it on youtube and it looks to be very well done. Typical smooth Rock Band action, lots of good songs to play and it’s compatible with a pretty good chunk of the existing downloadable content. It’s designed to be family friendly, so existing songs with a more mature theme/language aren’t playable in the Lego version. To make it even better, all the songs can be exported for use with Rock Band 1 & 2. Exporting will cost you $10 though, but this is offset by the fact that the game retails for $10 less than most new games. So put away the Kettlebell, grab yer fake plastic instrument of choice and get rocking Lego style, tear down buildings and bust ghosts with the power of rock.

Rock Band at Work

kalamaf — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 13:44:41 +0000

Since we have a few used consoles for sale at work now and a couple sets of Rock Band I decided to hook one up so customers can give it a try. Most people try guitar but a few decide to bang on the drums for a bit. I cringe every time I see someone stomping on the kick pedal with their Dansko boots on, I’ve read a lot on the ‘net about how easy it is to break those pedals but so far this one is holding up well.

It seems to be working though, I’ve sold most of the used guitars and copies of RB & GH in the last week, but there’s still some left. With Rock Band 2 out now I expect to be flooded with RB1 stuff over the next couple of months.

Take THAT, Reaper!

kalamaf — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:44:41 +0000

I had a decent night on Rock Band drums last night. I 5 starred my last song that was giving me problems on medium, Enter Sandman, I could pass the song without any trouble but I just couldn’t seem to 5 star the bitch. Oh well, it’s done now and I have 5 stars on all my current 91 songs (I don’t buy a lot of DLC, obviously). I cracked back on to hard mode and finally got through Don’t Fear the Reaper! Of course I’m still stuck on Cherub Rock and that nasty nasty Foreplay/Longtime, I can only get to about 9% on that one, it’s going to be rough.

Rock Band 2 soon!

kalamaf — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 02:18:23 +0000

With Rock Band 2 coming out next month for the Xbox 360 I’m already looking to get rid of my current instruments. The ones that will come bundled with RB2 will be better quality and with improved features, so along with shopping around for the best buy on the new bundle I also have to find someone willing to buy my old stuff to help pay for the new ones.

I’ve been playing Rock Band quite a bit again lately, working on improving my scores on expert songs. I finally put down Flirtin’ With Disaster but I still can’t make it through Green Grass and High Tides. Best I’ve managed so far is around 74%, but since the last half the song is one long solo it doesn’t look like I’ll be through it any time soon either. My career score was around 4.9 million but now I’ve got it up to around 6.1m, some good increases! I improved most of my songs by at least 1 star rating.

Still Banging the Drum…

kalamaf — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 23:55:46 +0000

… in Rock Band that is. After finishing the solo tour on medium I had started working on hard but quickly found I couldn’t get very far. I went back to medium to work on getting 5 stars on all the songs, this went pretty smoothly and I’ve now 5 starred all but 4 songs in the main tour. Cool, I’m improving, so I though. So I jumped back over to hard after a while and loaded up Mississippi Queen and promptly failed. Those alternating beats mess me up, but I got it on the second try and then went on to clear a bunch more songs with little problem. When I started having trouble with alternating beats and double bass kicks I started cheesing my way through the songs by simply ignoring the stuff that was messing me up. I was able to get to tier 7 and I think it’s Go With the Flow I’m stuck on because there are simply too many bass kicks to cheese through it.

Drummer not a Singer

kalamaf — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:55:14 +0000

I’m much better at drumming than singing apparently, I borrowed a set from a friend of mine who currently has no time to play. Since I had played a few songs on medium back in January I decided to continue on from there. It still takes some getting used to, and my leg still gets tired pretty quickly, but I’ve done the first 3 sets so far and gotten 80 to 85% on each song. I haven’t gotten 5 stars on any yet but I’m sure I could on a second run through after knowing what beats to expect.

I Can’t Sing

kalamaf — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:46:35 +0000

It’s official, I can’t sing. I decided to give Rock Band vocals a try last night and it was.. uhmm.. well, I did pass about 14 songs on easy. I tried one on medium and failed less than halfway through. I found out something new too, you can actually pass a song with 2 stars. I’ve never seen anyone anywhere get 2 stars before and even all the songs that I’ve just scraped by on expert guitar have earned me 3 stars. I suck at vocals!

Slow Month for New Songs

kalamaf — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 23:25:30 +0000

The Rock Band DLC so far this month has been pretty disappointing. On April 1st all we got was one song, Still Alive, from the game ‘Portal’. Granted, this was a free download so that’s a good thing, but then this week all we get is the Harmonix track pack, the same 3 songs that were released a couple months back with the OXM magazine. I, and a lot of other rockers, already have those songs, making this a dry week as well. I’ve been waiting for that new metal pack that I saw listed for the end of March, with Supernaut and Fuel as part of the package, why the delay?!

Rock Band Tournament

kalamaf — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 19:40:49 +0000

Looks like there’s going to be a little Rock Band Tournament happening in the next few days at Neoseeker.com and you won’t even need travel supplies because it’s going to be held online. Most likely it will mainly consist of single instrument face offs and not full bands. Hard and expert difficulty only so newbs need not apply. I’m not a member of their forums and probably will be at work when it happens so I’m not signing up myself.

Rock Band/GH3/Burnout Updates

kalamaf — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 03:50:45 +0000

I’m still spending most of my gaming time on Rock Band, Guitar Hero 3 and Burnout Paradise and gradually improving in all three. For Rock Band I’ve beaten every song I have on hard and only have around 10 left to beat on expert, those are going to take a while though. The last 5 in the main game are all pretty rough with fast solos and chord changes, I just can’t keep up. I’ve been practicing a bit with the actual rock band guitar and the extra set of fret buttons do make the solos easier since you don’t need to strum those parts.

In the meantime I went back to Guitar Hero 3 and started up a couple new bands so I can rack up more cash to finish buying all the Store items. My best value is by playing on hard since I can 5 star most of the first 20 songs, that gets me $1200 per song. On expert I rarely get 5 stars even on the first few songs and 4 star expert only pays $1050. I bought all the available guitars and almost have enough to finish buying the characters, will probably just start a 4th band to make the last bit go faster. There’s also an achievement for earning a crazy amount of money, $350k or so, but that would probably require making a crap load of new bands just to earn money with. I’ll have to grab a pen & paper to see just how close I am to unlocking that one.

In Burnout Paradise I’ve found most of the smashes, billboards and super jumps but I haven’t done many of the events yet. I currently only have the class B license and have unlocked 16 of the 75 cars. Lots more to do in this one since I’m only 36% finished over all. Lots of challenges remain to be completed in the Freeburn online mode too, I’ve done 64/350, so if yer a Burnout fan on XBox Live look me up, gamertag Kalamaf.

Drums are Easier with Proper Seating

kalamaf — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 01:03:13 +0000

I gave the Rock Band drums another shot the other day at a buddy’s house and had a slightly easier time of it than when I first tried them. Part of it has to do with the seating. I don’t have a proper stool to sit on and instead was just using an armless computer chair. My friend doesn’t have a real drummer stool either, but what he has is a big improvement over a computer chair. It looks kind of like these shower chairs but a little taller. Being on wheels while slamming a bass pedal doesn’t quite cut it.