Certainly seems that way. And maybe even a look at a new interface for choosing songs (looks like the Rock Band 1 music store), which is fine by me cause it looks nice. Anyways, during a little preview on G4 someone over at ScoreHero took a quick screenshot and now we have (what looks like) our first songs on Rock Band 2. Nice work!

• “Panic Attack” by Dream Theater or Finger Eleven
• “Chop Suey” by System of a Down
• “Give It Away” by Red Hot Chili Peppers
• “Everlong” by Foo Fighters
• “Kids In America” by Kim Wilde
• “Ace of Spades” by Motörhead
• “Hello There” by Cheap Trick
• “Anyway You Want It” by Journey
• “Pinball Wizard” by The Who

It’s officially official — Rock Band 2 is on the way. And while most of the gaming community is falling all over themselves with excitement, I can’t help but feel that it’s a little too soon. Let’s just take a quick peek at what we know so far;

• September release date
• DLC will work with both RB1 and RB2
• improved instruments (including wireless guitar for 360)
• improved character and band customization
• gameplay mode specific for those who want to sing and play guitar

IGN broke the new this morning and the article is well worth a read for any living room rock’n'rollers out there. The point Harmonix seems to be trying to get across is “we listened, we fixed, now it’s yours.” And while I appreciate the sentiment and look forward to the improvements, doesn’t this just feel like Rock Band 1.5 to you? Something Harmonix had to bang out to contend with Guitar Hero World Tour?

Whether you agree or disagree with me on this one, I’m sure we can all agree on this: the new guitar is fucking sweet.

What say you?

When I was growing up music got into my veins early. I’d thumb through all my family’s various 8 Tracks and Albums looking for the ones with cool covers and finding songs that I liked. Soon MTV was born and I would spend all day watching waiting for them to finally play the video for “Thriller”. It was a little later into grade school that I first fell in love with the guitar (not that I more than a few chords outside of Rock Band or Guitar Hero) which lead to my love of hair metal. I listened to it all: Dokken, Skid Row, Poison, Slaughter, Ratt, Cinderella and especially Mötley Crüe. Those guys were fucking EVIL when I was nine, and I loved it.

You’re not here to read about these minute details of my adolescence so I’ll get on with it.

Hot on the heals of Def Leppard announcing their intention to debut a new single via Guitar Hero The Crüe come out of nowhere and announce that they intend to be the first band to do this and release their new single “Saints Of Los Angeles” via Rock Band starting TODAY (for 360 owners, Thursday for PS3 as usual). I have yet to hear it, as I’ve grown a little wary of post-Dr. Feelgood Mötley Crüe but I might spend the 80 points to support this new marketing scheme.

If you’re a fan of something like Behind The Music and you don’t care who it’s about I highly suggest picking up the band’s autobiography The Dirt, it’s a great read.

Hit the jump for the full press release. Continue Reading »

Rock Band is great. Everyone says so. Great in almost every way, except for those damned instruments. Putting aside the defect issues surrounding the first batch of instruments – as I glance at the email from Jimmy describing his seventh plastic guitar – the main thing about the drums* is that they are just kinda loud.

You might ask yourself, what can I do about this? You’ve already woken the baby with your incessant banging, and furthermore you cannot seem to drown her out with the limited volume available on your stereo. Conundrum!

Drumshhh is the answer! Yes, Drumshhh. A product name so bad that it’s actually good, because it’s impossible to say without sounding like a drunken idiot. That tends to stick in the memory. Somewhere out there, there is a product manager who giggles every time they make someone in the world say it. They probably hang out with that other product manager that is responsible for making us all say “Grande” at Starbucks, laughing all day in their underground Product Manager lairs.

Continue Reading »

Harmonix designed their Fender Stratocaster to feel more “real” and I think this mod more than completes that illusion . If you are brave enough to mod your guitar , You can head over to eBay to pick up a kit. I wonder how well it would work with a guitar pick…

[Cnet Crave Blog]

This is a public service announcement:

The box is a lie. You may encounter a product that looks like Rock Band for Wii, sometime in June. It is a thoroughly convincing doppleganger. However, do not be fooled: this is not Rock Band, but rather some sort of cruel and unusual hoax, as reported in several sources. This particular version, if you can even use that term, is missing a few key things. Like:

• online play
• downloadable songs
• customizable characters
• any realtime 3d going on in the background (digitized video instead)
• Band World Tour mode
• compatibility with Guitar Hero 3 controllers (for Wii)

Now, at a certain point, you just aren’t even looking at the same game. It’s a twisted shadow of it’s former self, like Calibos from Clash of the Titans; unrecognizable, monstrous, scaly, little horns, bad frizzy monster ‘fro. The sort of thing you tell children about to frighten them into being good. It’s obvious this is a port of the PS2 game, which was an outsourced, gimpy affair to begin with.

Continue Reading »

It was a feature that seemed bizarrely lacking when Rock Band launched, a way to buy the downloadable songs in-game. It felt clunky having to quit the game to buy songs, I mean you want to make it as easy as possible… right?

Well, thanks to a patch releasing today, now we’ll be able to do just that. But that’s not all, we’ll also be able to listen to a preview of the song before buying it! This will not only boost impulse buys but it’ll keep me from going to iTunes to listen to the track ahead of time. In addition to all that there’s also going to be info about the song/artist as well as the difficulties of the individual parts.

While they’re at it they’re patching a few other issues here and there, and it’s all good stuff. I’m no fan of these post release patches, but this one definitely adds some much needed features. Kudos.

[Game|Life]