Just a few days ago, the folks over at the Guitar Hero World Tour community site posted a set of charts.  The charts show which instruments work in which games, for both Activision's offerings, and those of competitor Harmonix.  (It'd be better for gamers if there was no need for such a chart, but I digress.)  Obviously, knowing which instruments to buy for maximum compatibility is important this busy, hit-packed season.

However, there are a few problems and inaccuracies with the charts, as you can read about in Wired's post.  In a somewhat shocking turn of events, the official post from the GH community forums with the charts seems to have disappeared; at the very least, it has been moved and the links are broken.  (If you can find it, please let us know by posting here!)  Curiouser and curiouser, as a certain young lady once said.

In the meantime, if you need to know if that PS3 Rock Band drum kit will work with Guitar Hero World Tour, or if your old reliable X-Plorer will allow shredding with your buddies in Rock Band 2, we suggest Joystiq's Instrument Compatibility Matrix.  It's quite an impressive piece of work, and goes to show you sometimes the fans know better than the publishers!

If you don't feel like dropping 180 large on the swanky new Rock Band 2 instruments and bundle, perhaps a $99 (Wii, PS2) or $119 (360, PS3) price tag suits you better?  Online retailer Amazon.com has dropped the prices on these bundles which includes the Guitar, Microphone, Drums and a copy of Rock Band 1; which of course is fully importable into your Rock Band 2 experience on the 360 and PS3.

All told you could have Rock Band 1, all the instruments and Rock Band 2 for less than the full price of the Rock Band 2 bundle.  Score!

The music studio feature was one of the most highly anticipated things about recently released Guitar Hero World Tour.  If you read our review, you know that we found the studio a bit lacking, to say the least.  It may not be quite what we were promised, but hey, the competition doesn't have it at all right?  Videogamer recently spoke to Rock Band 2 lead designer Dan Teasdale about GH WT's music creation tools.  What did he have to say?

"We've dabbled around with stuff like that before, with Frequency and Amplitude, and we learned a lot of lessons from it," he said. "The main one is that you can't do it half-arsed. If you want to do a way to let players create and distribute music, you have to go all-in - not just do it as a bullet on the back of a box."

He added: "We actually want to find a way to for people to create music and express themselves, but when we do we want to make sure that people can sing, or the songs can be longer than three minutes, or that you can have more than 1200 notes, or that you're not tied to some dodgy sample somewhere. We want to make sure it's an authentic experience and it fits on the platform."

File this quote under brutal, but correct.  It may be that a solid music creation tool just isn't feasible, given the sue-happy world in which we live in.  I'd love to see Harmonix take a stab at it, for sure; maybe they could come up with something whole-arsed!

36 days ago, we informed you that a free pack of twenty tracks would be available, and that you could pre-register via RockBand.com.

The anticipated date of release came and went, and this morning we updated you in hopes that the track pack would be available soon.

Finally, we have word that redemption codes are being sent to your e-mail address over the next 24 hours. (Just in time to steal you back from that other guitar and band game!)

Unfortunately, it appears that these codes are for the Xbox 360 version only. No word on the Playstation 3 content yet.

Click the "Read More" link to see the entire track list.

Read More...

November 4 has come and gone, and yet, the free twenty song Rock Band 2 DLC hasn't been made available yet.  Rock Band 2 has been out a couple of months now; perhaps you've beaten World Tour mode, and are looking for more cool stuff to play beyond the weekly DLC offerings.  So what's with the delay?  Harmonix community manager Sean Baptiste gives you the 411:

We have hit an unexpected delay with getting the content online with Microsoft and are working diligently with them to get that resolved. We have suspended sending out the token codes until the content becomes available. Sending out the codes before the content is live will just result in more confusion. We hope to have this resolved in the next 24 hours and apologize profusely for the delay.

He's referring to the Xbox 360 version, of course, and the PS3 versions of the free DLC are, rather imprecisely, "coming soon".  Perhaps we shouldn't be looking a gift horse in the mouth, but the delay certainly isn't helping the Rock Band cause.  In case you haven't read the manual (I'd be shocked if you did), you can find instructions for getting your free DLC code in our previous story right here.  In the meantime, keep on rockin'.

Aerosmith?  AC/DC?  Metallica?  These are big bands, for sure, but it appears the biggest band of all is coming to a video game console near you.  Harmonix and MTV Games, of Rock Band fame, are making an all new game based on the Beatles.  This is no mere Track Pack, though; instead, it's an entirely new game, described as "a musical and visual journey through the Beatles' entire career."  (Yellow Submarine minigames, perhaps?) 

Very few details are available as of yet, but we do know that the game is planned for a Holiday 2009 release.  Also, this is an exclusive arrangement, so no Beatles tracks for Guitar Hero, though they remain mum on whether Beatles content will become available for Rock Band.  This is quite a coup for Harmonix/MTV Games, for sure; I suspect many Beatles fans will purchase systems just for the game.  And you thought Nintendo was the only one printing money.  I can see it now: we'll all be helping our mothers buy an Xbox 360 or a PS3 a year from now...

For those about to rock, I suggest the AC/DC Track Pack available exclusively from Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart.com.

The game is actually a stand alone version of Rock Band that is fully compatible with both the Rock Band 1 and Rock Band 2 songs on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.   Of course the game holds the same 4 player co-op experience that we love so much around here.

The game is available for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2 and Wii.

Looking for the tracks?  Read on.

Read More...

When the Guitar Hero World Tour track list was revealed, there were several surprises, both good and bad.  Falling into that latter category were the large number of songs that are already represented in the Rock Band franchise.  Now that both games have launched, how do the two games stack up against each other?  If only there was some way to make a direct comparison between them, say, on a song included in both games...

Thanks to the power of YouTube, you can watch exactly that.  User Gurra100 has compiled several videos, directly comparing the note tracks for each game for most, if not all of the songs they have in common.  The entire list of these vs. videos can be found here. 

I chose to embed "The Middle" by Jimmy Eat World after the break.  I feel it is a good representation of the differences between the two games.  Things to notice on the GH:WT side are the harder difficulty, including triple notes, and some notes that just aren't there in the music, such as those shortly before the first chorus.  You can also see one of the purple sections, using the guitar's new touch slider, at the end of the solo.  As for Rock Band, while it isn't as difficult, it seems to follow the music more closely, and the band animations look, for lack of a better term, more authentic than those in GH:WT, particularly the drummer.  Of course, these are just my opinions, but why not check this video, as well as the others, out for yourself, and tell us what you think!

Read More...

It's like an echo through time of one year ago.  A major rhythm game with cool new hardware is released, and angry gamers find that their expensive plastic instruments aren't working properly.  This time, it's Guitar Hero: World Tour, though, and not Rock Band that's the culprit.  Joystiq reports that the most common problem seems to be broken cymbals, followed by drum heads and then the new guitar controller.  Unfortunately for GH fans, the Activision warranty isn't quite up to par with Rock Band's: players must ship back controllers at their own expense.  Hopefully, if the problem is indeed as widespread as Rock Band's were last year, they will change their customer service policies.  In the meantime, you might try your luck returning your gear to your local retailer.

We picked up the entire band bundle for 360 yesterday, which is no surprise since my love of the fake instruments is well documented.  My initial impression is overwhelmingly postive.  The drum controller is superior to my original Rock Band set in almost every way.  The construction is sturdier, the pads are quieter, and it's far easier to adjust to your comfort.  The drums work flawlessly in Rock Band 2, as well.  The guitar controller for GH:WT is very, very nice.  The major addition is the touch sensitive neck area, which you can actually use for strumming.  Additionally, you can slide your finger on certain parts of songs, for that Eddie Van Halen feel.  My son was quite enraptured by this feature, but I found it a bit fiddly, though still fun. 

You can expect our full review of the game and peripherals soon.  In the meantime, is anyone else having problems with their GH:WT hardware? 

You may recall the news of a free Rock Band 2 track pack, which we reported on here.  The track list is available now, and you can download your free goodies starting November 4.  Seems like there's something else going on then... hmmm...

* The 88 - "Sons and Daughters"
* Authority Zero - "No Regrets"
* Between the Buried and Me - "Prequel To The Sequel"
* The Cab - "Bounce"
* The Chevelles - "Get It On"
* The Cocktail Slippers - "Give It To Me"
* Dealership - "Database Corrupted"
* Endeverafter - "I Wanna Be Your Man"
* The Ghost Hounds - "Ashes To Fire"
* Hollywood Undead - "Young"
* Kutless - "The Feeling"
* The Len Price 3 - "If I Ain't Got You"
* Lesley Roy - "I'm Gone, I'm Going"
* Opiate for the Masses - "Burn You Down"
* Semi-Precious Weapons - "Magnetic Baby"
* Shaimus - "Like a Fool"
* Thenewno2" - Crazy Tuesday"
* Tickle Me Pink - "The Time Is Wrong"
* Underoath - "Desperate Times, Desperate Measures"
* X Japan - "I.V."

I made a few predictions about the track pack in our original news item: first, that the pack would be made available the week of Guitar Hero: World Tour's launch (I was off by a week or so), and second, that it would include one song from GH:WT (BZZZZT thanks for playing, we have some nice parting gifts for you).  How do you get these free tracks?  We've got the 411 for you right here.  

Oh yeah, now I remember why November 4 is important.  That's when Left 4 Dead was originally going to be released, and it's likely when LittleBigPlanet will be released, as well.  It really IS an important day!