The spirit of competition between Activision and Harmonix's respective rhythm franchises is still very much alive and well -- shortly after Activision announced that a trio of tunes from post-punk darlings The Killers would be making their way onto Guitar Hero: World Tour as DLC, MTV let it slip to Wired that they would be adding their own Killers triple-pack to the Rock Band Music Store on the very same day (Nov. 25). Man, what a bizarre coincidence!
Two of the three songs which are about to be thrust into Harmonix's already intimidating music library are relative oldies: "Mr. Brightside" and "Smile Like You Mean It" -- but a title from the Killers' new album, Day & Age, will also make an appearance: "Spaceman". The article on Wired mentioned nothing of pricing details -- though it's probably safe to assume they'll match the $2.00 (160) per song/ $5.50 (440) per pack price point we've all come to know and love over the past year.
TheGamer Writes "Harmonix has proven plenty of times it can make Rock Band work without instruments."
I mean, yeah, but was anyone saying otherwise? The fact is people liked the plastic instruments rather than pressing buttons on a controller. They enjoyed the simulated experience.
"Work"? No, but to be good? It's absolutely necessary. Not having the accessories is like playing a lightgun shooter with an analog stick sure it works, but one experience is completely unique and fun as hell, and other is torture trying to make do playing in a way it was never meant to be played
I think CHEAP plastic instruments is THE reason why the instrument-genre ‘died’.
People invested in buying the game AND the peripherals, so the guitar, the dj-set, the drum, whatever, and the experience was absolutely fantastic. Great fun, great music, etc.
But then the instruments would break. A button would stop working, or your hits wouldn’t register, and that kind of hardware failure would end in you not being able to play the game as intended, and thus you not getting the scores you deserve.
So, now you had a great game, but a broken instrument, and nobody is gonna buy a new plastic instrument every 3-6 months in order to keep playing the game.
A solution would have been to release better quality instruments (obviously), at a slightly higher price, so you could have kept the new games coming and the genre alive, but sadly, that didn’t happen.
Bust a Groove, Gitaroo Man and Parrapa the Rappa were such good games. Neither needed any extra peripherals
Dave writes: "Hopefully time will be kind to Rock Band 3. It’s the equivalent of a Blade Runner or Van Gogh, unappreciated and undersold in its own time, but something that has undeniable quality. We may never see another Rock Band, no encore to this great series, but in Rock Band 3 and Rock Band 4, we got some pretty awesome final tracks."
Player 2's long-form feature about kids and video games continues with a look at introducing toddlers to games for the first time.