Quote from Droosies on the Rock Band Forums

I see a lot of people once again freaking out over petty things that GHWT is offering. To me it's ridiculous. If the new features mean that much to you, then just BUY BOTH GAMES! If you have to mow a couple extra lawns, so be it, get the exercise in before you get the games and we never see you again. But just to be fair, I'll go into them...

1.) Ozzy Osbourne and Jimi Hendrix. OMFG! THEY'RE PLAYABLE CHARACTERS! WTF?! Just shut up already. Seriously, who cares? For one, you're not watching them most of the time, so the fact they're in the game means little to nothing. Second, if it really means that much to you....CREATE THEM YOURSELF! You do realize that Rock Band has a character creator right? And RB2's will probably be a bit more in depth than in the original. If playable characters are really that important to you, make them yourself.

2.) The songs. So far these are what's official for GHWT.

"Are You Gonna Go My Way" Lenny Kravitz
"Beat It" Michael Jackson
"Bullet with Butterfly Wings" Smashing Pumpkins
"B.Y.O.B." System of a Down
"Crazy Train" Ozzy Osbourne
"Dammit" Blink-182
"Everlong" Foo Fighters
"Eye of the Tiger" Survivor
"Feel the Pain" Dinosaur Jr.
"Hollywood Nights" Bob Seger
"Hot for Teacher" Van Halen
"Hotel California" The Eagles
"In the End" Linkin Park
"Joker" Steve Miller Band
"Lazy Eye" Silversun Pickups
"Light My Fire" The Doors
"Love Me Two Times" The Doors
"Low" (Travis Barker Remix) Flo Rida featuring T-Pain
"Misery Business" Paramore
"Mr. Crowley" Ozzy Osbourne
"Never Too Late" Answer
"Obstacle 1" Interpol
"One Armed Scissor" At the Drive-In
"Purple Haze" (Live) Jimi Hendrix
"Rebel Yell" Billy Idol
"Santeria" Sublime
"Stillborn" Black Label Society
"Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast" Airbourne
"Trapped Under Ice" Metallica
"Weapon of Choice" Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
"What I've Done" Linkin Park
"Wind Cries Mary" Jimi Hendrix

So far, I'm not too impressed. The only ones I'd really like out of this are Hotel California and Hot For Teacher. Maybe some of the Doors stuff. But as we see, we already have BYOB, and Eye of the Tiger, Everlong and Feel The Pain have already been announced for RB2. One thing I don't really like about the GHWT setlist is multiple songs from one artist. To me that spells out "We don't care about DLC, so here are your 3-packs." Another thing that means is less bands in the game. RB2 has at least 84 different artists (Not counting the 20 free DLC they're releasing too) Will GHWT have that? But most important out of all the factors that go into rhythm games...

3.) Gameplay

This by far represents where I will be spending my money. And let me just tell you right now, I have seen nothing that leads me to believe that Activision has fixed their overcharting problems. Seriously, GHWT could bring out Stairway To Heaven, Eruption, and Highway To Hell, but with the serious overcharting they do, they would be absolutely no fun to play. What I like about Harmonix' charts is that they're believeable. Yes, there are some like Snow and Thrasher which are insane, but it's believeable in thier complexity. Charting the synth sections in Through the Fire and Flames just proves that Activision really doesn't care about gameplay and that they just want to make things as difficult as they possibly can. What's the fun in that?

4.) New features.

GHWT is throwing us a "Song Editor". Whoop-de-do. Due to copyright enfringement, they can't have vocals on them. So...in the long run, who really cares? The worst part is we all know it'll just be a "DragonForce editor" because 90% of the songs will just be random unintelligble notes that don't even make a song. I think this is a huge selling point for a lot of people that they will end up being sorely disappointed in.

Meanwhile, I like that RB2 will have solos for every instrument now. As well as a Bass Career Mode. The Battle of the Bands competitions should be a nice touch too, if they can pull it off successfully. Let's also not forget ONLINE BAND WORLD TOUR! I can't wait to finally go after the Endless Setlist. The Drum Trainer is a nice addition, especially to people like me who have never played the drums before and suck balls doing it. Also, people who actually know how to drum will geek out over the Freestyle Editor which lets them actually drum over MP3's.


5.) Downloadable content

Honestly, is this one even close? RB launched with 58 songs. That total is now at 244. It'll reach 250 on Tuesday. (Thursday for me ) If you had GH3 only, you'd have a maximum of 56 new songs to be able to play. That number will jump to 66 when Death Magnetic comes out, but it's still nowhere close to the 192 that Harmonix has already given us. Another thing to consider...on RB2's launch date, we're getting 20 free DLC. This represents about 30% of GH3's TOTAL OFFERING! Not to mention the fact that right now GH3 tracks are $6.25 for a 3-pack, as opposed to us getting a 3-pack for $5.99. Why is this .26 such a big deal? Simple. GH3 songs are only a guitar chord. At most you're looking at 8 sets of charts. That comes out to 79 cents a chart. RB on the other hand has 4 sets of guitar, bass, drum and vocal charts. That's 16. That comes out to 37 cents a song. That's a much bigger difference. Will Activision increase their DLC for GHWT? We'll see, but as of right now, I like the fact that we're getting weekly DLC from some big bands for less. Harmonix has yet to let me down. Activision has.

Summary

All in all, GHWT is not doing much to entice me to plop down an additional $200 for their game. It's already been priced as more expensive than RB was. And considering there are only a couple of songs that are really enticing me to get GHWT, I can't justify spending $100 a song to do so. The groups listed so far are similar to RB, and in some cases like Metallica, Paramore, Linkin Park and SOAD, the RB song is better than the GHWT song. (Honestly, anyone who would rather play Trapped Under Ice than Battery needs help). I'll probably play the demo or the actual game at Best Buy if they set it up like they did GH:Aerosmith and give it a shot, but if the gameplay doesn't improve drastically, there's no chance at all of me getting GHWT.

Quote from Mr. Pinkus

Since Rock Band already has BYOB and there's too many joke songs/double bands in Guitar Hero, then Rock Band 2 wins for me. Oh, and BYOB is DLC for Rock Band, not being included with Rock Band 2. Both BYOB and Toxicity are available to download now. Chop Suey is the System song for RB2.

Plus, all original songs from the first one can go into RB2, and all downloaded songs

Cash cows at Activision want you to spend more money to restock on download songs... again... for the 3rd time I believe.

The only thing Guitar Hero had going for it was the pressure-sensitive drums. But, well, Rock Band 2 has this now too.

Quote from LN3uq

Yeah, it's nice to have the extra challenge in GH, but for how good I am at the game, I think towards the end of the list on RB will be hard enough for me.

Quote from Exilement

see, for me, I like GH's complexity because it actually gives people like me a challenge. I gold 5 starred every single song in Rock Band on guitar in less than 3 tries for every song. It took me a very long time to be able to 5 star Jordan and TtFaF.

Personally I don't see why people are comparing them. It's all preference and with GHWT, it's kind of early to be saying it's not a good game.

Quote from Exilement

see, for me, I like GH's complexity because it actually gives people like me a challenge. I gold 5 starred every single song in Rock Band on guitar in less than 3 tries for every song. It took me a very long time to be able to 5 star Jordan and TtFaF.

Personally I don't see why people are comparing them. It's all preference and with GHWT, it's kind of early to be saying it's not a good game.

Quote from LN3uq

Excuse me, the fingering?

There are five buttons, they're in the same order, and they're in the same places.

or do you mean the chords or something, I really don't understand :/

Quote from LN3uq

Excuse me, the fingering?

There are five buttons, they're in the same order, and they're in the same places.

or do you mean the chords or something, I really don't understand :/

Quote from MadHatter

I personally like GH more. RB isn't enough of a challenge. I got used to the "overcharted" songs on GH, and whenever I played RB at someones house I always breeze through the "hardest" songs in the game. The only reason that people were even attracted to RB in the first place was because of the drums, and anyone that says otherwise is kidding themselves. I am in no way saying that RB doesn't have some very nice features (the DLC being one of them). It is just that the one feature that really attracted everyone to RB in the first place is now being used by GH.