OMG This post came from the FUTURE!! How is it again that I'm reading an article dated 11/27 on 11/25?? Personally I favor Rockband at the moment. I'll admit that the difficulty feels a little lower than GH but that's good because now my wife is playing and has already beat Easy and is moving on to Medium :) RB FTW.

I just moved the post back a little bit, it's only about 8 hours in the future now!

Rock Band wins, not just because it adds drums and vocals to the play, and offers an incredible world tour mode that sure to be a hit at any party, but it has a developer that actually knows what the hell they're doing. The additions to the basic gameplay are logical extensions from the GH games and improves on the visual feel of the game to bring it closer to the sort of idealized rock experience, including creating your own rock idol avatars.

Neversoft had no idea how to improve, so they tossed in boss battles, and ruined the visual appeal of the series, where all the guys are Greek rock gods and all the girls are hyper sluts. After RB, it feels rather dull and embarrassing.

Rock Band won when I noticed the bump-mapped nipples and jiggle physics on the girl guitarist in GH3. Come on.

Rock Band wins, looks better, plays better and is just all around more fun.

Neversoft turned Guitar Hero into an exercise in frustration with crazy 3-note chord sequences all over in every song and annoying boss battles. The real strange part is that while they made those hard sequences they loosened up the timing window so much that Hammer-Ons/Pull-Offs which were always tough in GH1/GH2 became exceptionally easy.

GH3 is just a mess. While it has a good soundtrack and a number of songs I liked I just don't like playing it.

WTB GH3 soundtrack for Rock Band. ;)

Why not juxtapose the lyrics from Pride & Joy and Dead on Arrival instead? Cult of Personality and Maps? What an insipid device.

You also appear to have ignored the implication of using Won't Get Fooled Again as a metaphor for Rock Band.

man, i wish this was the future already. then, maybe rock band would be available in canada! its not faiiiir.

*cries you a river*

that said, rock band wins just because GH3 is so crass.

Even more amusingly, the final lyrics of 'Won't Get Fooled Again' are:

'Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss'

So there you go - hardly a guaranteed review mechanism, is it?

GH will be the leader in sales, if solely because its PS2 bundle doesn't cost more than a PS2 system itself. (Yeah, I know RB comes with more stuff but it is a simple price point issue for many people) Also there is a sizable market of people who have no interest in more than 2 player multiplayer or online musical play, which seem to be RB's key points that most people rave about. Also RB seems to be a fair bit harder, which will appeal to the hardcore but will put off less hardcore players.

Now that said, rockband will have very active and motivated (and likely vocal) supporters and I think RB's downloadable content model looks a bit more interesting than GH3's at the moment. So it may be a smaller audience, but they will be motivated and likely very profitable audience.

Both games will do fine for the near term with GH being a more mass audience focus and RB being a more hardcore gamer product.

But I will agree with the others that GH3 definitely took step down to lowest common denominator thinking (my beloved Judy Nails went from sultry to sluty and apparently got a boob job too) and multiplayer with power up battles that trash the other player just sucks and isn't fun at all.

The finally lyrics of "Won't Get Fooled Again" works, if you think of it as saying Rock Band's "boss" is the same as the old Guitar Hero games.

It is only the actual meaning behind the song that is the problem.

"Also RB seems to be a fair bit harder, which will appeal to the hardcore but will put off less hardcore players."

The opposite is true as far as guitar is concerned. Expert level in particular is vastly more difficult in GH3.

Comparing GH3 difficulty to the drums or vocals wouldn't make much sense.

I used to come home after school to an empty house. I'd strap on my garage sale guitar and crank up my second hand amp. For the next couple of hours I was a rock legend, attempting to bang out a my favorite punk and grunge songs of the day. I never got particularly good but it was awesome and I appreciated music and those who could play well a whole lot more. Guitar Hero captures those old feelings of rocking out for me, allowing me to relive those afternoons. I have yet to play Rock Band but I am curious to see if the same feelings I had living out my garage band fantasies with my friends can also be recreated.

I can see many people picking up both games if they are gamers already into the rhythm genre. But for the casual market it will be a tougher sell as the initial investment is very high: $180 for the game and peripherals, a minimum $280 for a system and about $60 for a second guitar.

I haven't even played RB and I have to give it the nod for an immense number of reasons; most of which have already been stated.

RB brings back that feeling of being a rock star and appeals to a wider variety of people with its accessible gameplay. Seriously, who doesn't comprehend the concept of singing into a mic? This is not to mention that Harmonix is a team of developer-musicians, whereas Neversoft is a team of developers. It shows in the two products. GHIII feels like a game, and RB is clearly a hybrid of both game and artform.

Honestly, what bothers me most about the GHIII release is its treatment from the gaming press. I'm appalled to see the undeserving praise heaped at the feet of such a mess. Slowdown in a music game where timing is everything? Not including quick play co-op out of the box and afterwords simply ignoring the (admittedly smaller in userbase) PS2 community? Let's not mention the portrayal of the female gender as it pertains to the game. This is the type of game that alienates whereas RB embraces. This is what happens when companies shuffle IP.

Case in point, RB is moving me into next gen.

Since I mentioned the perversion of GH3, I feel that I should mention RB includes a number of bikini tops as clothing options for the female avatars, though they're of the Lita Ford demensions and not the pornstars of GH3.