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ScoreHero Invades Neversoft (Exclusive GHIII Info!)
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JCirri  





Joined: 04 Feb 2006
Posts: 4576

PostPosted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 11:46 pm    Post subject: ScoreHero Invades Neversoft (Exclusive GHIII Info!) Reply with quote

This past Monday, a group of ScoreHero members was flown out to visit Neversoft's Southern Calilfornia offices to play/test Guitar Hero III:
Legends Of Rock
. Upon arriving, we were led to Neversoft's spacious mo-cap area, where we each had our own plasma screen and wireless Les Paul setup to demo as much of the x360 version as our hands could take over the span of about 5 hours. Now that we've returned to our respective homes, we're proud to bring back some exclusive info about the game, which is being announced on ScoreHero before anywhere else.

Pictures of the after party at the hotel!

First up: the Grim Ripper will be returning as a playable character along with some old favorites from the Guitar Hero series, and a couple of new characters. The list of characters so far is:

Characters

Axel Steel
Casey Lynch
Grim Ripper
Izzy Sparks
Johnny Napalm
Judy Nails
Lars Umlaut
Xavier Stone
Midori (new)
Slash (legend)

Venues

We also have the list of all-new venues that will be appearing in the game over the 8 tiers, which are:

Backyard Bash
Mitch's Moose Lounge
Video Shoot
Ye Olde Royal Odeon
Shanker's Island
Desert Rock Tour
Kaiju Megadome
Lou's Inferno

Songs

Last, and certainly not least, we have FOUR brand new songs to announce, exclusively to ScoreHero:

- Suck My Kiss - Red Hot Chili Peppers (Master Track!)
- La Grange - ZZ Top
- Number Of The Beast - Iron Maiden (Master Track!!)
- Through The Fire And Flames - Dragonforce (Master Track!!!)


(which is in addition to the already-announced songs:)

Alice Cooper - School's Out
Beastie Boys - Sabotage (Master)
Foghat - Slowride
Guns N' Roses - Welcome to the Jungle (Master)
Heart - Barracuda
Kiss - Rock N Roll All Nite
Living Colour - Cult of Personality (Master)
Muse - Knights of Cydonia (Master)
Pearl Jam - Evenflow (Master)
Priestess - Lay Down (Master)
Rolling Stones - Paint it Black (Master)
Smashing Pumpkins - Cherub Rock (Master)
Tenacious D - The Metal (Master)
The Scorpions - Rock You Like a Hurricane
Weezer - My Name is Jonas (Master)

It should also be noted that over 50% of the main-tier songs are master tracks, and over 70% including the bonus tracks!

Through this post, everyone who attended the session will add their own comments on their playtesting, but before then, some general information on the game:

- One of the biggest gameplay changes was with the system for hammer-ons and pull-offs. Rather than being based solely on the timing of the notes, Neversoft is able to program certain notes to be strummed or hammer-ons. The general guideline is, if a note is strummed on a real guitar, it will probably have to be strummed in-game. When a note is a hammer on for a real guitar, you'll probably be able to do a hammer-on for it in-game. This provides a much more realistic feeling to the charts.

- After our lengthy demo session, we sat down with some of the guys from Neversoft GH3 team in order to provide feedback on how the game was coming along, and what would be nice to see changed before release. We sat in for two hours and were able to discuss all parts of the game from top-to-bottom with the developers. It's an understatement to say that all of us who were out there are very eagerly awaiting the release of the latest game in the Guitar Hero franchise.

- "Through the Fire And Flames" is REALLY hard. We'll leave it to the individual posters to tell you how many times they failed it at 1-3%.
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Echelar  





Joined: 26 Feb 2006
Posts: 1246
Location: Fort Wayne, IN

PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 12:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

This was an unbelievable experience. Many thanks to Neversoft for having us all out to L.A.

The Neversoft guys were all very cool, and very open to all our ideas and suggestions. Some even came back to our hotel rooms afterwards to play GH2/customs with us!

Now, the game itself...

The Guitar is pretty much handed down from heaven. The strum bar felt great (better than previous iterations I dare say), the whammy was perfect (bye-bye, explorer), and the select button was back! All that, and wireless that was pretty much perfect, even from 50+ feet away.

We had access to a full setlist (don't ask about tracks we haven't already talked about--sorry, we can't tell you ), and pretty much every track I played was fun in its own way. There were challenging and new patterns and chord switches, lots of variety in types of song and beat, and the difficulty was a very large scale as well. Let's just say that Dragonforce wasn't the only song that failed most of us.

There were good improvements to the interface from GH2 (something I was going to bring up regardless). For instance, the career screen was tabbed, so you don't have to scroll through a billion songs to get to DLC--just hit a button to switch tabs. Such simple improvements really eliminate stress that would come from just interacting with the game, thus improving the experience by a lot.

I played a decent amount of co-op and pro face-off with emptyset, and all of it was loads of fun. We did manage to pass Dragonforce co-op on our second try (thanks emptyset for being good enough to pass the intro). The song is much more supporting of co-op than Jordan is, since there are parts that the second player actually has enough notes to help out on the lead's solos. The co-op note chart in full? Yeah, it's around 6800 notes. Holy shit.

I think the funniest moment of my few hours of playing was doing Battle Mode against emptyset on Dragonforce. Granted, he had practiced it more than I had, and could pass the intro, so I didn't expect a long fight. However, he managed to get the "Double Note" powerup almost immediately, and use it. The Double Note powerup turns single notes into chords, chords into 3-note chords. So, the HOPO-based intro that I already couldn't pass turned into CHORDS. It was basically like setting off a nuclear weapon on my side of the screen. W-T-F.

At least my death was quick and (mostly) painless.

I'm sure I speak for everyone who attended when I say that we would all do it again in a heartbeat. Because of this event, I'm now looking forward to this iteration of the series way more than any other before it. Bravo to everyone at Neversoft.
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emptyset  





Joined: 30 Apr 2006
Posts: 2254
Location: State College / Elizabethtown, PA

PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 12:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Impressions from the trip:

First of all, much thanks to RedOctane and Neversoft for making this happen. The opportunity to travel and test/demo GH3 and the time we were able to spend with Neversoft's GH3 developers was incredible. If you guys ever had any doubts about how GH3 would be handled, please leave them at the door. You are in for something special.

As for the game itself, we got to play a full-featured GH3. The engine is completely new from the ground up. The graphics are amazing, and the animations are lifelike enough that they can even steal your attention while playing (but in a good way). The guitar is wireless, and is Les Paul-shaped. In terms of feel, the strumbar operates more smoothly and consistently than previous controllers, allowing for faster strumming while retaining control. The frets are softer and more responsive, and *you guessed it* the RETURN of the properly-located Select button! Oh, and did I mention it's the first Microsoft-licensed wireless peripheral for the 360? Mmm, delicious.

As for the songs themselves...they are loads of fun to play. You'll see lots of note patterns you haven't seen before, and many of the sequences are modeled after the actual progressions from a real guitar. The hammer-ons and pulloffs are also modeled to resemble how the actual guitar part is played. It was slightly disorienting at first, but it really grew on me as I felt more like I was playing the part the way it was being heard. This isn't just with the HO/POs, but with the charts in general. Chord progressions, strum sequences, etc. will surprise you at first, but will make sense as you move through.

If I haven't mentioned Battle Mode yet, I'm going to take this time to say "Fun, fun, fun, fun...fun!" I unleashed a powerup on Echelar in TFAF's intro and won within a fraction of a second. I digress...it is a fun mode of faceoff, especially when players of varying skill take each other on. That's all I'll say...I loved it. Phr34k and GetThere1Time battled for almost an hour...all I heard from their end of the room was laughter, shouting and screaming.

Perhaps the best part (aside from playing GH3 for five hours straight) was the time afterward spent with Neversoft's dev team. We were only scheduled to have a roundtable discussion for a little under an hour, but we stayed for nearly 2 1/2 hours, discussing all of the ins and outs of the game, making suggestions, comments, criticisms, and jokes. It's clear that they are very interested in what ScoreHero members have to say about their product, and they value our input as well as the community's. This is clearly a game made by GH fans for die-hard GH fans, but will retain much appeal to the casual player.

I'll have more to add later, but I'll let the other guys have their say.
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elx  





Joined: 17 Feb 2006
Posts: 1656
Location: Redford, MI

PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 12:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Damn!

This was an amazing experience to have a chance to go out to Neversoft to demo GHIII. Many thanks to them for going through all the trouble of getting us out there to play. If anyone had any doubts in Neversoft being able to produce a good Guitar Hero game, leave them behind.

The note charts are amazingly well done, they are a blast to play, emulate real guitar playing really well, and are quite accurate. I enjoyed every single song that I played, and there were no signs of songs that were so easy that you'd FC them and never want to play them again.The gameplay is set up very well, especially considering that the game was built from scratch. The Dragonforce chart is fucking insane, I spent a nice chunk of my time in practice on the intro, and still, my highest failing percent was a whopping 3%.

The new controller was hands down the best controller I have ever used. Any problems you may have had with the Xplorer are taken care of, and even after only playing for about 5 hours, I find myself wanting to switch back to the new controller as I play on my SG. The feel of the buttons and strum bar is wonderful, the whammy activates properly, and we have gotten our beloved select button back.

The new hammer on system, while it is a change, I loved it. As a guitar player, it gave the charts a much more realistic feel. Battle mode turned out to be a lot of fun, and will be great for partying situations.

The guys at Neversoft were awesome to meet and talk to throughout the day. A few of them even brought TVs back to the hotel, where we all raided emptyset's room for some more Guitar Hero action (as if we hadn't played enough during the day). It was awesome to see Barfo nail an exact score run on the first try, wuLFe sightread a FC on my Super Colossal CUSTOM CHART, and emptyset's reaction after getting destroyed by the solo in Because, It's Midnight.


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GetThere1Time  





Joined: 27 Aug 2006
Posts: 550
Location: Pittsburgh, PA

PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 12:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi guys.

I know this is very very very late, but better late then never. I'll do my best to touch a few things other people havent yet in their stories. As expected, I had an absolutely amazing time there.

When we started playing, the very first thing I noticed was that the game looked absolutely beautiful. I mean everything about it. The menus, art, character models, top to bottom it was redone. It's a lot different but believe me, in a good way. I played through the first 3 tiers before the staff unlocked all the songs for us. One thing I noticed about the early tier songs is that though they were still pretty easy, they were atleast interesting to play. There was no Heart Shaped Box or I Love Rock and Roll in the bunch. Every song felt very appropriately placed. You're not going to see any Mother's slipped into tier one either. A few things about gameplay caught my eye right away. The streak counter and pop-ups that everyone was thinking would be a huge distraction really arent at all. In fact, while I was playing I barely noticed them unless I was conciously looking at them. The animations of the band members were very cool. I was in shock to see the singer actually mouthing the words to the song that was playing and to see the drummer going wild. The engine itself felt... different. Not really different good or different bad, just new. That's to be expected since it was built from the ground up. Now I can hold my own at guitar hero but I was missing like crazy for the first hour. It's just a matter of getting broken into everything. A few hours later I was nailing the tough stuff.

I wanna talk a little bit about the sex that is the les paul controller. This thing is awesome. It'll be nice to have a 360 guitar that sits on your leg right for one thing. I'm a sitter and this was a big issue with the X-plorer for me. The whammy bar was still a touch small than the SG and about the size of the X-plorer whammy. The best of all is the return of the select button. Everything felt very natural while I was playing it. The buttons had some grippy stuff on them if I remember correctly. I'm not sure if I like that or not but that can be easily modded for those who dont like it and it's a great addition for those who do. The whammying was dead on and worked beautifully. This is just the thing I was waiting for before I go back to GH2 on my xbox since I hate missing points. The strum bar felt different. It was smoother and had a touch more resistance. It was certainly quieter. You're not gonna get the same click you do with your SGs or early X-plorers. I was really happy with the range of motion. Sometimes it felt like you had to move the X-plorer bar too far. The Les Paul's end points felt very natural and will make those tough alt strumming parts a breeze.

I played some tough stuff too and let me tell you, the tough charts are TOUGH. Even the great players will struggle for FCs. Some songs of note are Cult of Personality which I played once. The solo was amazingly fast and difficult. I failed Raining Blood twice before getting through it and I had to save SP like a pansy to do so. I failed TTFAF 6 times at 1% before finally giving up. You see how fast this thing is but the video really doesnt do it any justice. Bonus songs were amazing. I didn't play all the songs but there was no song I can say I hated. No YWCs. The charts themselves were great. Big ups to the Neversoft note trackers for doing a monster job. There was no note in any song I played where I said, "well this doesnt belong" or "well this is out of sync" This is a pretty big deal to be being a reviewer for customhero and knowing things like this have sliped by in past games. *coughStopcough*

The last and final point I want to make is that the Neversoft staff are really just a great group of guys. I can't stress this enough. I could really tell by talking to everyone of them that they wanted to make the game for us, the players. All of us from ScoreHero were so excited to be there and the Neversoft guys were equally excited to get our input. It would have been really easy for them to just slap a game together and pump it out based on the success of the franchise but Neversoft really has went above and beyond. They really cared about our input. They care what the people want in the game. That really hit home for me. If anything, seeing the mentality of the Neversoft staff made me warm and fuzzy inside just knowing that the Guitar Hero franchise is in very capable hands and assured me that this game and however many games to come will be absolutely top notch. Props to them. I can't wait for this game.
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Phr34k  





Joined: 20 Mar 2006
Posts: 1082
Location: London, Ontario, Canada

PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 12:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I guess I could talk a bit about the trip and such.

First of, as everyone else has said already, much MUCH kudos to Red Octane, Neversoft and Activision for flying us all out there. Easily the best experience of my life

Everyone has already talked about the godly wireless controller of godly. However they forgot to mention that it feels about 2x as heavy as the SG, which is a wonderful thing.

Everyone else has touched on the mechanics of the game, so I will focus mainly on the graphics and such.

The characters are amazing this time around. Not only do their animations look more realistic, but they are much more customizable this time around. I wont go into detail exactly just yet, but each character on average has 2-3 outfit styles with each style having 3-4 colour sets that affected the entire look of the character. So yes, there really is a Pandora style option in the characters

The in-game guitars are absolutely incredible. There are a LOT more non-standard guitars this time around. All are incredibly detailed and all awesome. For each character setup I was using I was finding a special guitar that looked just right for that specific outfit.

Each venue was amazingly well done. Lots of attention to details this time around. The effects and stage animations kept stealing my attention from the note charts, enough to fail a couple of easier charts XD

Knights of Cydonia indeed stole my soul. Amazing chart. My life is complete having played it now.

GetThere1Time sucks absolute balls at Battle Mode. That is all.

ChrisVance enjoys the taste of beer.... many types of beer. The amount of beer that man drank was insane. Though he still sat on the wrong end of the table at dinner.

I wish I could talk about more stuff... but you guys will just have to wait for us to be allowed to hehehe...


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Barfo  





Joined: 10 Oct 2006
Posts: 2596

PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 12:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wow theres so much to say i dont have time ot say it all here right awya, so ill update this more later.

Baiscally this was an incredibly amazing experience. I went in somewhat skeptical because neversoft was an unknown entity (to me) and i havent been happy with some of the recent choices for the franchise and i had nagging worries that the franchise might be about to go downhill. And i left with all those doubts blown out of water and replaced with incredible confidence in Neversoft both from seeing the quality of theiractual product and how carefully and well they lsitened to use, and just from hanging out and talking to them personally.

The most exciting parts for me were the new HOPO system which really felt great, and both remove some of the arbitrary thigns of the onld system and allow for a bit of extra challenge here and there on easy songs where you sometimes have to watch a bit closer to know waht you can HOPO and what you cant (and im eager to play it more and get better at that). Also the Les Paul was amazing, im incredibly devoted to my balck SG, i dont like much my red one or my wireless (and i wont even mention the xplorer which i dont own, but i think we can agree is lacking in some ways), and pretty much the Les Paul felt awesome and maybe it was the adrenaline, but i was acutally rocking out to the songs which i pretty much NEVER do at home, which made me finally see the value of a wireless controller. Most people missed it i think but i saw one of the employees do a test to show off the range of the controller too and he was controlling the game from about 60 feet away or something. Later i moved my controller off the sation i had been using ot play coop some and when i came back to try and use it again fo rmore single player i thougth the game was in demo mode, but it actualyl was vance, like thirty feet away behind me sitting and playing (i almost blocked the screen when goign ot reassign my controller to that console).

Other htan that i was really impressed b the feel of the songs. Evenflow, and suck my kiss were both awesome, as well as a few songs i cant mention right now. It felt simultaneously very much like a GH game, but also fresh, with new combinations and patterns taht im not used ot seeing. Props ot the note guys who really know their stuff and set to rest any doubts i had that HMX was the only people who can make great note charts. They make incredibly good use of three button chords and some challenging switches, which was really neat, and importantly it felt really fresh and FUN.

Lots of subsidiary aspect ot the game were all improved too, in the way that you really like ot see for a sequel to a game which shows that they are takign care of all the little details. Thigns such as incredibly good bandmember animations (they mocapped everybody and they have a huge range o fanimations that they programmed to synch with the charts). The singer mouthign the words to the song was amaazing, and i almost never notice the back up band.

Finally the session at the end was amazing, we really did si tthere for liek almost two hours breaking down everybodys impressions of the game with the lead producer, designer, and programmer and a bunch more team members (and the prez of neversoft for most of it), having a really constructive back and forth of both things that we think could be improved or tweak form what we saw, as well as a laundry list of things we (and you as well) as a community would liek to see for GH franchise regardign improvements over GH2, and other topics. Amazingly many of the bullet points on that list that we brought in were rnedered moot because they were already fixed in the build we saw (not sure i fi can mention specifics). It really felt that this was a focus group and a two way conversation and not jsut htat they brought us in solely for PR reasons, they actually wanted to let us have a small role in developing the game and help them make it better.

Thats all for now ill try and update more when i can, but in closing this was really amazing and i thank everybody involved. At some point ill talk baout all the crazy non GH3 news stuff that happened while there and during the post-party int he hotel room.
_________________
Watching her, these things she said / "Time," she cried "failed to wait, this time"
***
Hush now / Let it go now / I know it's time to go / Time to let this fall / From my hands


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sluggo  





Joined: 07 Nov 2006
Posts: 850

PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 12:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Holy cow, this ended up long.

I'm kind of the one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other in this group. I'm not a moderator like the rest of this crew, but as GameSpy's resident GH guru, I have a pretty good relationship with Red Octane, and since I'm a regular poster here and live pretty close to Neversoft, we'd chatted about the possibility of this event for a while. When they told me they were finally doing it as a special ScoreHero event, I was totally stoked, obviously to see more of the game, but also knowing how excited the SH guys would be to play it for the first time.

It was ridiculously cool to have us set up in the mo-cap area, with everyone getting their own station to test on, complete with plasma screen and new Les Paul wireless, which, as I've said both here and in my official previews, is by far the best guitar I've played for any Guitar Hero game to date.

After a short tour and signing some NDA's, they basically turned us loose on the game, and I was surprised to see that it wasn't just the E3 demo -- it was the entire game from start to finish. So, standing about 20 feet away from Wulfe shredding away at the next station, I started pounding my way through as many tracks as possible. Many of these early tracks have been announced already -- Slow Ride, School's Out, Rock N Roll All Nite, etc -- and I 5-starred everything on my sightread through the first four tiers. But they're not boring songs. There isn't an I Love Rock & Roll or We Got The Beat in the bunch; every song seems to have at least a few tough sections so you won't 100% it in 20 minutes and then never want to play it again.

While playing through the tiers, we got to test out the hero battles. There are currently three of these in the game, including one against Slash. It's been announced that one of the others is a real guitarist, and the other is fictional. Basically, it plays like a single-player version of the new Battle Mode: the other guitarist plays a lick, then you try to repeat it. There are special powerups you can acquire if you successfully hit a phrase, and if you time it right, you can totally screw over the other guy with things like double notes, increased difficulty, broken string (where you need to mash one button repeatedly) or lefty flip (aaack). Honestly, I'm not crazy about the multiplayer version of Battle Mode, but I think having this single-player bit in the tour is a cool addition; I wouldn't mind if they had one in every tier before the encore.

It'll probably be repeated countlessly in this thread: the new Les Paul guitar is awesome in every way imaginable. It's the first third-party wireless controller that Microsoft has allowed for the 360, and the strum bar, fret buttons and whammy bar feel a billion times better than the X-Plorer. There's a lock on the back that allows the neck to be removed for easier portability, and the faceplates can be removed and swapped out as well; there's no word on how many there might be at launch, but it sounds like they'll be at least a few. The only problem with the guitar is an oversensitive Star Power mechanism; it's a known issue and one they're hard at work on fixing. In our post-testing chat, the possibility was raised that there could be a tilt-calibration tool built into the game so you can adjust the tilt to your own preference, but that's yet to be finalized.

About halfway through our testing, former ScoreHero-custom-chart creator-turned-Neversoft-chart-creator Chris Vance gathered everyone up for a special announcement. He was showing off a song from a band people have been begging for in Guitar Hero forever: Dragonforce's "Through the Fire and Flames." As he showed off the song, it became clear this was the new Jordan, as the song starts off with an insane flurry of hammer-ons that caused almost everyone to fail only 1-3% into the song. Even Wulfe, who's ranked #1 on the XBL leaderboards, must have failed the intro twenty times before getting the hang of it. As did Chris, who made the freaking note chart, and he eventually had to use a debug cheat to show us most of the rest of the song (before he eventually failed on one of the later solos).

TTF&F is crazy enough that it's worth spending some time talking about. The intro alone is a mess of hammer-ons (it's even called THEY'RE HAMMER ONS in the "more stats" section) that the fingering is something like: 2131412131415131415141315 at around eight notes a second (Edit: Make that about 13 notes per second.) Eventually, some of us started figuring out we had to told down the green button and strum every other note, but that only started the crazyness.

The rest of the song is like pieces of Misirlou and Jordan solo C and solo F strung together for about 8 minutes. Outside of Wulfe, who was the only person in our group to pass the song in single-player (don't worry -- it's a bonus song and not part of the main campaign), I think I got the farthest, failing at 69%, 70%, 70%, 78%, 81% and 79%. Watching Elx and Echelar play the song on co-op later, it became clear that there were at least three more spots I probably would have failed after that. And as determined as I was to beat the song, I couldn't play it multiple times, as I'd literally be dripping in sweat after a single attempt (the mo-cap area got pretty hot late in the afternoon).

The other songs that were announced were amazing. ZZ Top's "La Grange" has been in need of the Guitar Hero treatment for a while. The Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Suck My Kiss" will be an awesome co-op track. And, oh yeah -- a master track of Iron Maiden's "Number of the Beast"? It's in the final tier, it deserves to be, and it's an absolute blast to play.

The original post mentioned the new hammer-on system, but really, considering Neversoft has rebuilt the entire game engine from scratch, they've done a great job recreating the feel of GH2 -- in some ways, it might even feel better. In my last E3 preview, I mentioned how I felt like it was a little easier to hit crazy phrases, that maybe the timing windows had been relaxed a little. It's not a massive difference, but it was something that other players commented on as well, so at least I know it's not just me.

The bonus songs in GH3 are a different animal than previous games. Whereas Harmonix used a lot of in-house bands to fill out the bonus track list, there are now so many groups eager for exposure via GH that the bonus tracks will predominantly feature songs from somewhat newer bands. I only recognized three bands on the list (I'm not sure if it was complete), but as we've found with previous GH games, there are often a lot of cool little gems on the bonus list. In this case, it seems there are going to be a lot of harder songs jammed into the bonus list (including one song that made my strum arm hurt more than Six).

The one thing I really didn't spend much time with was the Battle Mode. I did play a few matches against Wulfe, who I actually beat a single time on Knights of Cydonia, but then totally destroyed me on every other song we played, including one of my all-time favorite tracks ... and one he'd never heard in his life. Watching Wulfe play is just ... insane.

The post-game chat with the Neversoft guys was, I thought, extremely productive. I seemed we covered a hundred different topics, like the tread rate when your rock meter's in the red or how the lag calibration system could be improved from GH2. I get the vibe that the Neversoft team is both completely thrilled to be working on the Guitar Hero series and understands that there's some big competition coming with Rock Band, and the combination is driving them to make an absolute kickass game.

Overall, I thought it was just awesome of Red Octane / Neversoft / Activision to have the Scorehero guys come out to playtest and offer feedback. I've now met Scorehero guys on 4 or 5 different occasions at various tourneys, and I've yet to meet a single one I don't like. It's like this big, weird happy family spread out everywhere who are always excited on the rare occasion they get to meet up in person, let alone talk directly to the developers and blow their mind like Barfo did talking about the scoring system. I was a little bummed I had to drive home after dinner and couldn't stick around to play in the hotel afterwards, but I had a Rocks the 80s review to finish the next morning. The work never ends.
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wuLFe  





Joined: 18 Aug 2006
Posts: 2679
Location: Richmond, IN

PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 12:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

OK - I'm feeling a little better (stupid flu), so I thought i'd post my thoughts about the event.

Firstly, a big thank you to Neversoft for bringing us all out, and treating us like royalty while we were there - I think we all had a wonderful time, and hopefully we were able to make some constructive suggestions for the final release.

Firstly, I have to let you all know that there are soooo many great tracks in this game (most of which we can't talk about), that it really is (at least for me) a must purchase. I think people are going to get REALLY excited when some of the unannounced tracks are announced, as there are some real gems

The Dragonforce song is a nice "Jordan" style addition to the game - unlike Jordan, it is by no means an easy 5* once you can beat it. I managed to beat it after about 20 attempts, but only got a puny 3* - I think few people will pass it, and even less will 5* it.

The timing window seems to have been made a little more lenient, but this is really quite necessary given the fact that the songs are really a lot trickier than what we've seen before in the other GH games.

Battle mode looks like it could be a lot of fun (I never had a chance to try it, except in the boss battles). Since it is somewhat random, I'm not sure it will ever replace Pro-Faceoff, but it will certainly be a great thing to try out at parties, etc.

Needless to say, the new guitar is awesome. By far the best plastic guitar ever released. The strum bar is smooth as silk, the buttons are really easy to press, AND the wireless is really well done as well - no noticeable lag or anything .

The bonus tracks are also great - some biggish bands (a lot of bands I knew), and the more obscure bands also seemed to be pretty fantastic. In fact, one of the best songs I played the whole day was a bonus song I'd never heard of before, and I fell in love with it. It was something of a weird mix of Gemini and Thunderhorse.

Anyhow - I'm sure I can't add much more that the other participants haven't already said. It was really nice to meet all the other scorehero people (and get to play some faceoff with sluggo, who I met at WSVG in Dallas).

I'll try and keep an eye on this thread and answer any questions that I can, though.


Last edited by wuLFe on Fri Jul 27, 2007 3:16 am; edited 2 times in total
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No1ButU  





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PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 12:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Starpower: The Official ScoreHero Podcast
ScoreHero Invades Neversoft Episode Released!
http://starpower.scorehero.com

First and foremost I want to say it was an amazing experience. Jordan, the PR guy from Red Octane, went the whole nine yards working on this to get us there. (He's very modest though, but we know how hard he worked.)

The guys from Neversoft were all very accomodating and all cool as hell- The Neversoft office is just a dream world, it was truly amazing.

In hindsight, I wish I'd spent my 4-5 hours of on hands time with GH3 a little differently (playing difficulty levels other than expert, playing some boss battles, etc).. As is, I spent the time playing as many songs from the main set list as I could, then Barfo and I played a lot of pro face off and a pile of co-op. Let me tell you, that was a TREAT. Barfo and I are probably as closely matched skill-wise to one another as any two people on Scorehero, which was nice-- since the other 7 people from Scorehero there greatly outmatched either of us.

What I can tell you from the gameplay is that Neversoft really cares about making this game feel the same as previous incarnations. Building the code from the ground up is no easy task, and while what we tested is still technically a beta, it hardly felt like it. Some minor issues, yes, but I can say with no hesitation that the final release of GH3 is going to be absolutely amazing.

The setlist is great- I'm one of those people who knew shit about music before Guitar Hero 2-- and still know shit compared to most people now. But I enjoyed every song I played, and the charts have had a lot of TLC put into them. The Paint it Black chart is AMAZING, and a hell of a lot of fun to play. The Knights of Cydonia chart was challenging and yet a joy to tear through. I'm one of the guys who only got 1% of the way into TtFaF.. I did that about 3 times and decided I needed to better spend my time there, so went back to the main setlist.

I didn't really care for battle mode, I'm not saying it isn't good, just not my cup of tea. I think for your average players at a party, battle mode on easy/medium may wind up being the game of choice. The co-op charts were also spectacular, with a lot of really challenging bass/rythm sides.

The controller is amazing- The Les Paul has about the same size and feel as the original black SG does, but without the 'I'm strumming/fretting so fast I think the guitar is going to fly apart!' It felt solid, much more solid than any controller (3rd party or otherwise) to date. The whammy mechanics were flawless, the fretting buttons were perfectly responsive, and the tilt sensor on my particular prototype (the Les Paul's we used were all prototypes, and not necessarily the finished product) worked perfectly. There was only one very minor complaint we all had about the controller, and since I genuinely feel that having had our input on this, they will work to fix it, I'm not even going to mention it. Needless to say, even with that minor issue, this would be my controller of choice if I had one in my posession right now.

Some of the most favourable memories came from back at the hotel chilling with all the guys from Scorehero (and ChrisVance / orange22 from Neversoft). Barfo asking someone to call out a random score for Red Lottery-- then he NAILS it. (I believe it was 87583)... Wulfe FC'ing the Super Colossal CUSTOM-- on a SIGHT READ. Me beating elx on pro faceoff on the Hotel California custom.. (Ironically enough, in a hotel in California). Granted, his hand was mashed from playing some really difficult customs that night, but I had a pretty wicked run that song to overcome the obvious skill difference. We all crashed at about 4am for a very brief snooze...

We met in the lobby for 9am.. When Phr34k finally came down to meet us (25 minutes late), he looked like a freight train had hit him-- which may not be far from the truth! But we made it to the airport on time and we all lifted off on our way home safe and sound- The memories of the past day flooding my mind all the way back.
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backinblack167  





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PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 12:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

oh my god i cant wait
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silverknight727  





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PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 12:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

<3! <3!! Sweet fucking <3!!!!!!
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Jed  





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PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 12:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Reserved for-- oh wait I didn't go. >_>
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Raften  





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PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 12:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Scorehero > all


DRAGONFORCE WOOO
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Sully  





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PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 12:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

OMG no Pandora?

WHAT WILL I DO??????
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