Was playing more Rock Band tonight (big surprise, I know), and started thinking about what they might do if when they release the sequel to it. There wasn’t a whole lot in the way of innovation between the Guitar Heroes; just a ton more difficulty piled on to keep their “subscriber” base happy with more and more challenges. Sure, they added a few new chord finger positions, but mostly, it was more of what you already loved. Just harder.
So I’m wondering what kind of innovations one could cram into a sequel for Rock Band. While giving the singer a lot more control over their star power (seriously, the face buttons on the controller are still live, let us use them) would be welcome, I don’t know what else you could do with the fret pattern. This is the 3rd generation sequel, and little has actually changed (if anything) from the original modern fret pattern.
I began to wonder if actually innovating on the hardware wouldn’t be a welcome addition to the series.
Looking back at (specifically) the guitar peripheral history over the last ten years, there hasn’t really been a whole lot of updating in the controller itself. Guitar Freaks gave you, what, three buttons, the strum bar, and a whammy bar? Guitar Hero gave you five fret buttons, and the rest was the same, except for the star power (was that in Guitar Freaks? I didn’t really get into it at the time). Pretty much the same game with a couple of additional finger positions (which admittedly makes a world of difference).
Rock Band evidently listened to a fan in their forums and added the shred button mod he was talking about, and gave us a switch to change what the instrument sounds like (which I largely ignore because it ruins the song for the most part). All told, some welcome additions to the gaming guitar controller legacy.
But what I’d love to see enabled for Rock Band 2 on that controller are two small innovations that would give the Expert players something to write home about:
- An analog sensitive strum bar.
- Analog sensitive fret buttons.
The strum bar could sense how hard you’re strumming (up or down) and that could control your instrument’s volume. So on songs like “Here it Goes Again” which start off quiet and quickly build up volume, you could control that by how hard you were hitting that strum bar. I know, I know, electric guitars’ volume isn’t controlled by how hard you hit the strings, overall, but it still applies in a smaller range, for the most part.
The analog fret buttons are what I’d really love to see, though. One of my biggest beefs about rhythm games is that I don’t have any real freestyle control over what I’m doing. Yeah, I have to hit the notes/beats/steps as they drop, but a guitar is analog by its very nature, being that it’s a stringed instrument.
I love using the whammy bar “artfully” to pitch bend notes, or bend them rhythmically to a beat. I like having whatever sized window I can get to make a song my performance as much as possible. But the problem is, a whammy bar only allows you to pitch bend a note down. I hope you like flat notes, because that’s all you’re going to get when you use it. Analog fret buttons, however, would allow players to pitch bend the notes up. And when you’re jamming on solos and hitting the high notes, you almost always want to instinctively bend notes to the sharp range, not flat. Pressing the button down at any normal sensitivity would yield the note you expected, but pushing down harder on the button (similar to pushing a string up on a fretboard) would pitch bend the note higher. I’d love to see a button that pushes down and slides up, but I have no doubt that would break and be a large tech investment for a small return.
I’d just love to see a guitar controller (and software to match) that doesn’t penalize the beginner player, but rewards the higher caliber players, and I think analog buttons are the way to get there.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I can barely do guitar on hard in Rock Band or Guitar Hero, so the current way things of how things are done in the game are fine for me.
I would, however, like more control over star power during singing. I also would like the choice of which parts of a song to sing. An example would be Temple of the Dog’s Hunger Strike. If that song ever comes out for Rock Band, I’d like to be able to choose whether to sing Chris Cornell’s or Eddie Vedder’s part on the fly. I’d also love to see support for 2 or more people to sing. They might have to make you choose to leave out another instrument for that since the 360 only allows 4 controllers, but I think that would be fun and a nice addition for Rock Band 2.
More singers would be a great addition. It doesn’t necessarily get you into controller trouble either — just allow any instrument with a headset plugged in to optionally select a vocal track. It would also be great to allow the rest of the band to chime in on a chorus now and again.
And it would require Rock Band to ditch the stupid concept of having one rocker per instrument. So that’s another point in favor ;)
Some sort of keyboard would be welcome, though admittedly unlikely. (Anything to get The Doors in-game is good by my count, but I’m not holding my breath; too many songs with nary a keyboard in sight.)
The guitar has pretty much got to change if they want to increase difficulty without leaping boldly into absurdity (e.g. GH3 expert).
My first thought is to split each fret into 3 ‘string’ buttons. On easy and medium, the game plays much as it does today; it wouldn’t matter which ‘string’ you hit. On hard and expert, the note patterns would change to be more like, well, a guitar. (the more I think about that idea, the more I wonder whether Rock Band gains anything by making the guitar more difficult on the top end.)
In any case, I don’t know the first thing about playing real guitar, so it would have to be prototyped and sanity checked by people who do have a clue.
But what I do know, is that the high frets in RB are a bust and GH3′s difficulty has nose dived into arbitrariness.
I think you guys are spot on on the more singers and choose which singer track requests. Currently in game “Gimme Shelter” drives my wife nuts, because she doesn’t know if she’s supposed to sing Mick Jagger’s part or the female singer’s part. Even if they’re an octave apart (technically the same notes), having to tune your ear to one or the other of them (and I think the song has you switch roles mid-song as only one of them is singing at that point, and it’s not the person who you normally sing for) can really knock you off your game.
Also, being a HUGE fan of R.E.M. from way back when Green was originally released, I was shocked when I wasn’t singing the chorus to Orange Crush, but doing the talky part about ”
“the roofs tonight” or whatever the line is. I’ve listnened to that song for almost 20 years now, and never knew Stipe was actually saying/singing something in that part. I’d rather just harmonize the chorus, as that’s what you hear in all of the radio mixes.
Here are a couple of simpler ideas I had for the guitar:
-palm muting: have a long button sitting to the side of the strumbar
-open notes: this would actually just be a matter of software support to recognize strumming the bar without a fret held down as another note entirely (and, of course, representing it in the game appropriately)
I also had the exact same string-bending idea – where the controller could have fret buttons that depress and slide – but I have to agree that the return on investement seems pretty low.
I also remember rumors from before RB’s release about there being effects pedals for the guitars – but at that point, I think you’d be better off investing the money in the real thing. :p