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Thread: Rock Band 4

  1. #11
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    Up for pre-order! http://rockband.com/preorder

  2. #12
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    Got it today. First impressions are decidedly mixed, and a lot of it has to do with the XBox and having to use the stock drum kit.

    First up: The drums.

    I have dealt with the stock drum kits before. All the broken pedals, all the bubbling pads. There's a reason I spent a ton on a Roland TD-9. I'm now back to the stock kit.

    First thing I'm noticing - you have to get almost full extension on the pedal before it'll register the next kick. This is a pedal prone to breaking, in my experience. It's a pedal that discourages a light, quick kick in favor of a long-throw, heavy kick. It is a pedal that wishes to die. My brain doesn't want to kill it, but the game punishes me for this. You have to give it a long, decisive leg movement to get it to register. If those leg movements are coming quickly, they will inevitably be strong as well. Thank god they stuck with the crappy plastic with minor metal reinforcement pedals. Honestly, did MadCatz learn nothing?

    Suffice it to say, expert drums seem like a way to destroy this kit. I'm afraid to use it in a way that would score well. I miss my Roland.

    Drum fill guides are fun, but it's annoying that any missed notes in a fill kill your multiplier. The fills used to be for fun, now they're just a weird part of the song that you also must play correctly.

    Note: This is not an issue on the PS4. The MIDI adapter works just fine with the PS4. I never had a PS3, so I bought all three Rock Bands and all the associated DLC on the XBox, which means my DLC is transferrable to the XBone. I'm seriously considering just rebuying the DLC I really like to move over to the PS4, that's how annoyed I am at the drum situation.

    Guitar: Seems overall good. Soft action on the buttons and strummer. It's got that mushy feeling that all of the RB guitars have had, but seems to work well. In some ways, I really like the freestyle solo because you do get to futz around a bit. In other ways, it feels like a cop out - I no longer have to play the crazy solo, now all I have to do is be able to play in 1/8 or 1/16 timing and I can futz around with the frets all I like and score quite nicely.

    Haven't done vocals yet. Mostly because I can't sing.

    I'm liking the tour mode. I think they did a good job with this, it feels less generic than the last one. The choose your own adventure aspect to it is nice. I went with one manager because she was all into style, she made all my band members dress up like SR-71 pilots. Demanded to know why we'd hire her if we didn't want to do that. Good stuff.

    Auto-calibration seems good audio-wise, shit video-wise. It put me at 135ms for video, I've changed it to 75ms and now feel comfortable with it.

    If you have old DLC, be ready for a shock. It doesn't automatically add itself. You have to go into the DLC menu and request to download every. single. song. On the plus side, this'll make it easy for me to go through the list, decide which purchases I actually enjoy, and tally up how much it'll cost me to ditch the XBox and move to the PS4.

    I love Rock Band and have made it a point to support Harmonix, because I think they're one of the few developers out there that honestly give a shit about their fans. That said, I'm not sure this is worth the upgrade. I might feel *very* different if I was coming from the PS3 to the PS4, but right now I kinda feel like I have to start all over again solely for a nicer tour mode. I'd rather just go play RB3 with all the kit I've collected over the years.

    Also, fuck them for including Imagine Dragons and that fucking "Century" song. WTF, like I don't get enough of that from just random commercials.

  3. #13
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    Well, the good news is that I'm not alone on the drum thing. It sounds like it's a pretty widespread problem, double kicks are nearly impossible to pull off. Saw someone's temporary fix was to roll up a paper towel and tape it down just behind where the magnet and sensor are, preventing the pedal from going as far down. Basically, let it go down just far enough that it triggers the sensor and no farther so it's a shorter throw to trigger a kick. Will try that probably Thursday.

    Looks like a lot of DLC isn't working right now too.

  4. #14
    Member Member 21Kid's Avatar
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    Yeah... I don't think I'm going to buy all of the new gear again. If all of my old stuff worked, and I could use all of my DLC, I'd get it. But, I'm not all that jazzed about the RB4 playlist. Especially since you can't use any of the previous RB songs.

  5. #15
    Director Freude am Fahren's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by 21Kid View Post
    Especially since you can't use any of the previous RB songs.
    Wait...what? At all, or because of current bugs?

  6. #16
    Member Member 21Kid's Avatar
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    I think that it's just not available yet... They might be available some day.

  7. #17
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    You actually can use most of your DLC and it's available now. The things missing appear to be songs that only came as part of a pack, anything that's been delisted (like Metallica, for instance), and there are a few bugged ones. Most of the DLC appears to work.

    The annoying part is that you have to go and download each song individually. The songs you've already bought don't just show up in RB4, which lead me to believe that the legacy DLC stuff wasn't working right. It apparently is, I just didn't know that I had to go track it all down myself.

    Also, so far it looks like any wireless 360 controllers work with the XBox One if you get a "legacy adapter". Wired controllers (like the MIDI one) do not work. From what I gather, on the PS4 everything works.

    For the new songs, they've brought back the "crowd sing along" part, and they did it really well. Adds a lot to the experience.

    It's quite clear, however, that the release was rushed. Lots of rough edges, bugs, unfinished features. I know their plan is basically to use this as a platform and not just keep releasing sequels. I hope that means that we'll get plenty of patches down the road.

  8. #18
    Member Member 21Kid's Avatar
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    I was talking about the songs from RB1, RB2, etc... that you could export and play on subsequent versions. I'm not a big fan of the RB4 playlist and I don't have that much DLC, maybe 15 songs. I was hoping to play the RB1 & 2 songs on 4. I also have the wired controllers...

    So, basically all of my stuff is useless.

  9. #19
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    So, RB1 and RB2 are both supposed to import. Or, more accurately, if you've already imported them previously, then that "purchase" is on your account and you'll get them with RB4. I think RB3 doesn't currently import, though.

  10. #20
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    Tried padding the drum pedal...it helped, but you still can't hit any quick doubles. Also, the pads start dropping things during fast rolls. I haven't updated the firmware, maybe that'll help some, but the drums are just bad as it is. Makes the fact that I can't use my Roland kit with the XBox One version that much worse.

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