stv2049's Quick n' Dirty GH2 E3 report

**stv2049** · Joined: 15 Mar 2006 Posts: 32

Please visit my PutFile page to see the pics:
http://www.putfile.com/stv2049

There are 10 of them. Sorry about the poor quality; my hands were extra shaky because of the anticipation to play GH2!

EDIT: added Judy Nails Poster, buttons, T-Shirt

First day of E3 down. Two more to go.

Luckily, Kentia hall opened two hours before the other main halls. Unluckily, traffic in LA sucks, so what Yahoo Maps said would take 17 minutes took over an hour.

When I got to the RO booth, there were mad lines for four games (two guitars each) There was a stage where bands were scheduled to perform (Drist, I think, was one) but I didn't stick around to hear 'em. A big projection screen was on a wall above the stage - It looked out of focus - and played an attract video of spliced gameplay. At one point, where the splices were coming real fast, I could have sworn I saw some weird kaleidoscope colored light effect. Maybe I was simply tired.

The Features:
- two new venues: The Blackout Bar and some Graveyard (see pics) sponsored by Vans I overheard one marketing dude.

- two new characters: only one appeared at the show: a kind of 50's rockabilly dude (see pics)

- the only modes at the show were E3 singleplayer and E3 multiplayer. I would've liked to look at Practice mode.

- Yes, triple-chords are in. I did manage to hit a G+R+Y STAR triple sustain (All of the triples I saw were sustained) Ahh, the Power!

- Yes, both players need to activate Star Power simultaneously. It seemed like there was a pretty generous window to hit. Usually, one player would call it, "Star Power!", and the other player would follow. Works great! Additionally, a new text message popped up, "Unleash Your Star Power NOW!" I think I saw this once as a warning when our Rock meter dipped into the red AND we had Star Power available. Another time I wasn't paying attention to the Rock Meter and saw it near the end of the song, so maybe its encouraging you to use it before the end so that it doesn't go to waste.

- Yes, in Co-op, you have:
1. A shared score, (didn't check the math to see if it was combined from Single player scores)

2. A shared Rock Meter. I think that if the first player hits a good percentage, he can carry the second player through if he is missing.

3. A shared percentage on the results screen (darnit! didn't get a screen of this!)

The Songs:
All songs I played were in Co-op mode. The instrument you played was determined by which controller port you chose so Lead guitar was always player 1. Player 2 got Bass or Rhythm, dependent on the song. I thought that this was Lame (note capital 'L') and mentioned it to a RO employee, but I could see the logic behind it for recordkeeping.

Black Sabbath - "War Pigs" EIGHT MINUTES LONG I played this on Lead on Expert - failed probably 3/4 of the way through. It seemed to take a long time to build up the difficulty; lots of G+Y to R+B chords followed by a long pause while the singer delivered the verse...

Butthole Surfers - "Who Was in My Room Last Night"
Didn't play

EDIT: Played Friday at the RO booth. Kinda repetitive.

Drist - "Arterial Black"
I played Expert Bass/Rhythm. It was the most enjoyable (not difficult) of the songs I played because it featured by repetitive double-strummed chords all throughout the song.

EDIT: Played Expert - Bass for the stunned crowd at the Sony booth.

KISS - "Strutter"
Here I chose Lead - Expert and finished with ease. The Bass/Rhythm player seemed to get the lion's share of the notes and difficulty, while I waited around between Lead guitar phrases. The Bass track looked and sounded cool but fell into a kind of 'Behind The Mask' repetitiveness.

EDIT: Played Expert - Bass. Lotsa fun and a sure crowd-pleaser due to its three different triple Y+B+O chord runs!

Primus - "John the Fisherman"
Played this on Lead - Expert. Couldn't hear if there were any lyrics. The note chart featured some nifty (albeit repetitive, again) switching chord runs; if I remember correctly, G+Y, R+Y, Y+B as eighth notes.

Reverend Horton Heat -"Psychobilly Freakout"
Ick. I played (and failed) this on Lead - Expert, and passed it on Rhythm/Bass - Expert. It felt and sounded reminiscent of 'Cheat On The Church'. I thought the Bass line (watch the video on YouTube) was super-boring and nowhere close to an Expert rating. I wished RO had made a custom slap-double Bass just for this song and track; I would've been twirling it around like the musician in the video!

EDIT: Limped through this on Lead - Expert with another guy playing Bass - Expert 'Asian style' (like blind Jeff Healey; left-hand fingers over the TOP of the guitar neck) I'm pretty sure at times it was just as, if not more difficult than BaTM. I recall runs of G+Y+O+Y+G+Y+O... really tough...or maybe I'm thinking YYZ Lead. they both were incredibly tough.

Rush - "YYZ"
Played on Lead - Expert. With my limited knowledge of the song, but slightly less limited knowledge of the band, I thought, 'Uh oh, Rush = Geddy Lee = lotsa crazy Bass. It seemed, however, that the Bass and Lead tracks mimicked each other, at least in the (wacky off-beat) intro and first few bars.

Van Halen - "You Really Got Me"
This was the first song I played Bass - Expert before I realized that P2 always gets Bass. Someone picked this song and now I know why nobody knows the Bass player's name. The Expert note chart was, again, nowhere near Expert difficulty! I DARE Harmonix to keep Higher Ground in the game! I wants me some Flea-style slappin!

Gripes:
- Volume! E3 being the sensory overload environment that it is, it was IMPOSSIBLE to enjoy the song and perform to my peak with another GH kiosk blasting right next to me. Throw in the turmoil of chatter from the gaping fans and passersby, and you can just barely hear Rev. Horton Heat scream "Its a Psychobilly Freakout!"

I would have gladly risked getting someone's ear and head sweat on mine to wear a pair of headphones! Luckily, they had their volume control knob within easy reach. I promptly turned it up to 11.

This was in the Red Octane booth. The conditions at the Sony booth were even more horrible: not only were the games on the corners of the booth right next to the wide pedestrian traffic paths, but the volume was turned way down.

- Inconsistent difficulty ratings. I think that the 4 levels that GH uses is too coarse a grain; some of the Expert tracks I played seemed like Opening Licks - Hard songs. Perhaps an additional difficulty rating should accompany the 4 levels (like a volume knob that displays numbers 1 to 11 to give you some comparison of different songs of the same difficulty)

- One-sided Co-op. This one bit me several times where I purposefully chose Lead guitar (thinking it would be challenging with more notes) and the Bass/Rhythm player was workin like a madman to keep up with his Expert notes! Shame on me for not listening to each song before E3!

Overall, I believe that Red Octane will do well with their sequel. But if a GH3 is in the works, I'll be disappointed if it doesn't bring new features to the table (online anyone?) One of the booth employees also diplomatically answered questions regarding Next-gen or other platforms (hey, Gitaroo Man Lives! was there on the PSP), saying 'There has been no official announcement' and a somewhat leading statement of fact, 'There are Next Generation systems out there...'

Congratulations Harmonix and Red Octane!
You Rock![/b]
_________________

--
Steve Riesenberger
Game Designer

**discgolferpro** · Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 861 Location: Kansas City, Mo

Excellent reporting!!!!!

<grumble>
...you lucky bastard...
<grumble>
_________________

DiscGolferPro
Soon to be an author! (maybe, hopefully... watch this space...)
http://www.amazonwarriorbook.com

**Audhumla** · Joined: 30 Apr 2006 Posts: 11

Sweet, Primus.

**Genga** · Joined: 19 Apr 2006 Posts: 2474 Location: Glasgow, Scotland

i love it ;D
_________________

ScoreHero's First Ever Mascot!

**bilrot** · Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 129 Location: Midland MI

Nice report..answered a lot of questions I had about GHII. I was kinda hoping they would release a few more song titles at the expo but oh well.....

I'm so freakin' jealous of you! Have fun the next few days!
_________________

**eachann** · Joined: 09 May 2006 Posts: 1340 Location: Michigan

Can you confirm that in multiplayer mode , the two players can choose different difficulty settings?

**rabies** · Posted: Thu May 11, 2006 5:37 pm Post subject:

triple chords! Swweeet!

You are indeed a lucky man. Thanks for this report.
_________________

**MaximusDM** · Posted: Thu May 11, 2006 8:18 pm Post subject:

**stv2049** · Joined: 15 Mar 2006 Posts: 32

**Jed** · Joined: 14 Feb 2006 Posts: 656 Location: Texas

Including the full War Pigs song = win.

Steal me a demo of the game... purely for archival purposes... >_>

**krimsunmunkeys** · Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 1:36 am Post subject:

**Kwyjibo** · Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 11

Played GH2 today too at both corners of the Sony booth. My impressions:

Arterial Black - I agree with stv2049; this song is really fun. Reminds me of Decontrol's double-strummed chords at Ace of Spades speed during the main part, and the solo reminded me of Infected. There's a cool little double-strummed chord degression (is that a word?) at the end too, which I butchered. Bass / rhythm seems to get more notes on this one.

Rockabilly Freakout - Made it about 16 notes in before failing on lead. Intro looked like the middle of the *Trippolette solo to me.

Who Was in My Room Last Night - Interesting main part. There's a video out there showing it (1+3 ... 1+3, 2, 3, 2, 1, 1+3 ...). Seems a little too fast to single-strum for a long time, but the 2, 3, 2, 1 part makes it tough (for me) to double-strum. I'm sure it'll be better with practice. Unfortunately, my partner and I failed it around 25% of the way through.

One (small) complaint. Though the game will be fun to play in multi, currently, the fretboard goes at the speed of the easier difficulty, so if the players pick medium and expert, both fretboards will go at medium speed, and expert fretboard will just have more notes. It would be nice if the medium fretboard could go at medium speed and the expert fretboard at expert speed, though I don't know if this is possible or what it would look like.

stv2049, it would've been nice to meet up with you and play a couple times since we're about the same skill level. Maybe next year when they announce the 12 expansions.

**JCirri** · Joined: 04 Feb 2006 Posts: 4576

**stv2049** · Joined: 15 Mar 2006 Posts: 32

I'll edit the first topic to reflect some more song details from Friday's play.

I added a Judy Nails Poster, three more GH buttons, and the T-Shirt to my putfile page.
_________________

--
Steve Riesenberger
Game Designer