by Malethoth Kazyanenko
CCC 15 - How Else Do You Explain It?
Rock Band is tits. It has its flaws--hardware reliability is the crusher (my microphone doesn't work at all, and I swear that the Stratocaster isn't as reliable as the Gibson), and the visuals of the notechart aren't as smooth as Guitar Hero, but that's all minors. The game itself is phenomenal, and I've only even been playing it solo or with at most one other person. My pants bulge with the prospect of a four-person band.
That said, the drum mechanic is odd. The guitar hero mechanic is very dissimilar to actually playing a guitar, which any guitar player can tell you. There's a shortage of about a hundred seventy possible frets to play, and there's much less shifting and fine motor skill required to play it. The distinction between Guitar Hero and guitar is very much so that of the distinction between a video game and real life, as it should be.
The drums in Rock Band are different. It is, in essence, a five-piece drumkit with a kick, snare, crash, and two toms. It's very much a starter set, with no cymbals or rides or anything, but all the same it is very much an electronic drum set, and Rock Band for drums is not so much a video game as a new and clever form of tablature. As Alex Navarro put it, "When you are playing on expert, you are playing the drums." It's interesting, and it's rad, but it's... not quite Drum Hero, is it?
~Malethoth K.
Canine Coprothrustive Conundrum is hosted on ComicGenesis, a free webhosting and site automation service for webcomics.