Official PS2 Guitar Hero Thread (Rock the 80s/Guitar Hero III) - GHIII Out Oct. 29th

I totally forgot GH 80's was coming out so soon.

Just got a call from a buddy of mine who works at TRU, saying they got it in today.

Crap. I don't know if I want to drop $50 right now.
 
So is it available to buy right now? Has anyone seen it in the wild? I'd love to have it for the weekend... even though I swore I was going to hold off for the inevitible 360 version...
 
[quote name='javeryh']So is it available to buy right now? Has anyone seen it in the wild? I'd love to have it for the weekend... even though I swore I was going to hold off for the inevitible 360 version...[/quote]
I doubt you can find it until next week, but at least it's only a few days away.

Good news, got the latest issue of GI and they have a review for the game, an 8.25.
 
[quote name='Ugamer_X']

I didn't even know what the whole set list was when I bought it, hope it's good.[/quote]

BASTARD! where did you pick that up??
 
[quote name='Ugamer_X']It's official, Radar Love is the worst cover song in the GH series.

It's really fucking horrible.[/quote]Apparently, you haven't hit Police Truck yet.
 
Honestly, I really couldn't give a shit about the quality of the Radar Love or Police Truck covers, cause Hellion/Electric Eye is a fucking master track. Seriously, how awesome is that?

Anywho, should I pick this up for $40 at BB on Tuesday? Guitar Hero games don't seem to drop in price, even on the used market, and I do have the $40 to get it. Plus, I really fucking want it.
 
[quote name='evanft']Honestly, I really couldn't give a shit about the quality of the Radar Love or Police Truck covers, cause Hellion/Electric Eye is a fucking master track. Seriously, how awesome is that?

Anywho, should I pick this up for $40 at BB on Tuesday? Guitar Hero games don't seem to drop in price, even on the used market, and I do have the $40 to get it. Plus, I really fucking want it.[/QUOTE]


Is the BB deal online dead? (Buy GH 80's for $40, get a $15 Gift card for free)

http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=145709
 
About GHIII: I assume GHIII for the PS2 won't have downloadable content (I don't know how that would work out for the slim PS2's anyhow)? Oh well... I think I'm going to try to get the complete Rock Band set and get GHIII later. Damn shame I have to ditch my two PS2 guitars.

About the 80's: Maybe it's because I didn't grow up with 80's rock music (just slightly out of the age range), but I know like a few of the songs on the track list. I think I'm going to sell/trade/return my copy as soon as it arrives from Best Buy. I could go for the original Guitar Hero (yeah, I only have GHII right now).
 
Just got Guitar Hero 80's tonight. My TRU had it early. It's good but not as good as Guitar Hero II from what I've played. I've gotten through three stages so far which means I'm in Detroit (I think. Whatever is after Boston). Everything is almost the same minus a few added things here and there to make it look and feel like the 80's. I was thinking we'd get more variety but sure enough the very first stage is the same gym as GHII. There also aren't any songs to purchase and no videos either. Definitely worth the $25 with the BB glitch, possibly worth the full $40, but not worth $50. I'll be picking up my BB one and returning it to TRU tomorrow. Still lots of fun, and Hard is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.
 
Wow. Shows how little I'd been paying attention. 30 songs for $50 MSRP? Glad I jumped on the Best Buy deal then, otherwise I'd never be able to complain about the 360 DLC pricing scheme again. :lol:
 
I made an error, I didn't realize that the Radar Love cover wasn't of the original song. It still sucks major balls though.

I was very disappointed to see that there wasn't any sort of bonus set after completing the 30 main tracks. Activision is really reaming people while they have the chance. I would've never purchased the game for $50 and I probably would've been a bit annoyed with $40 I spent had the Best Buy deal not come along. The game is essentially no different than GHII outside of the new songs. I understand that it's an "expansion" but $50 for 30 songs of varying quality is a stiff price.

Alas, it's Guitar Hero, it's still fun and we'll take new content any way we can get it. That's why people paid $90 for the repackaged 360 verison, 500 points for old songs, and that's why people will buy this one in droves.

I'd write up some more in-depth thoughts, but Gamespot covers my feelings fairly well.

http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/puzzle/guitarhero80s/review.html?sid=6175497
 
OMG guys there are only 30 songs omg!! :roll:

I'm really starting to wonder if a ton of people basically had no idea what this game was before it came out. Some of the reviews, including IGN and GameSpot's, are acting like they were expecting a full-fledged sequel to GH2. I mean, WTF? This thing, from the beginning has been sold as an expansion pack. They've made no bones about the fact that it would only have 30 songs and it was pretty much just going to be GH2 with altered characters and a pastel sheen. But nooooooo....apparently every internet jackass though Harmonix was churning out a 70-song sequel to Guitar Hero 2 with new characters, venues, etc. Jesus Christ, have you people been living in a fucking cave for the last 4 months? There have been videos of most of the songs available for a long-ass time. You could have watched them and seen that the venues and gguitars were pretty much the same.

Seriously... I knew that as soon as I had seen the tracklist and knew it was just GH2 with new songs, that I'd wait until the game was $30 before picking it up. Well, the Best Buy deal pretty much made it $25, as there's almost certainly going to be $15 worth of stuff I'm gonna buy at BB within the next few months (new Common album, new Iced Earth, Guitar Hero 3, etc.), so I'm completely happy with it.
 
[quote name='evanft']OMG guys there are only 30 songs omg!! :roll:

I'm really starting to wonder if a ton of people basically had no idea what this game was before it came out. Some of the reviews, including IGN and GameSpot's, are acting like they were expecting a full-fledged sequel to GH2. I mean, WTF? This thing, from the beginning has been sold as an expansion pack. They've made no bones about the fact that it would only have 30 songs and it was pretty much just going to be GH2 with altered characters and a pastel sheen. But nooooooo....apparently every internet jackass though Harmonix was churning out a 70-song sequel to Guitar Hero 2 with new characters, venues, etc. Jesus Christ, have you people been living in a fucking cave for the last 4 months? There have been videos of most of the songs available for a long-ass time. You could have watched them and seen that the venues and gguitars were pretty much the same.

Seriously... I knew that as soon as I had seen the tracklist and knew it was just GH2 with new songs, that I'd wait until the game was $30 before picking it up. Well, the Best Buy deal pretty much made it $25, as there's almost certainly going to be $15 worth of stuff I'm gonna buy at BB within the next few months (new Common album, new Iced Earth, Guitar Hero 3, etc.), so I'm completely happy with it.[/quote]
I have to agree. If you expected new modes and the big songs for Rock the 80s, you should've just spent your time drooling for GHIII.
 
[quote name='FriskyTanuki']I have to agree. If you expected new modes and the big songs for Rock the 80s, you should've just spent your time drooling for GHIII.[/QUOTE]

Maybe. I got it via Best Buy, so it was $25 after including a $15 gift card. I can't fathom how Activision thought they should charge $50 for this game, and I'd return it if I paid that much.

Reasons why:
1) Very superficial graphical changes. They may not matter to you, but they do to me. At the very least, they could have replaced some of them with GH1 stages. The "80's-ification" of each stage screams "we're lazy as fuck" to me. They spent enough time making the guitar players look like extras on DeGrassi, why drop their work there?

2) The remainder of the game's menus are a straight-up palette swap of GHII. Really, is it *that* difficult to change the various menus and loading screens?

3) Some of the covers make me want to puke. Holy Diver is an abomination, Hold on Loosely is radio diarrhea, and Metal Health (Bang Your Head) pissed me off the most. Having played the hacked GHII demo disc, they took out the entire guitar solo for this song, and replaced it with some dumb-ass rhythm line that doesn't change. It was a fucking awesome solo (about on par with Round and Round in terms of difficulty), and I'm *livid* that they neutered such a great song. What does the song build up to? The biggest 25 seconds of jack fuckin' shit letdown in quite some time. I'm glad I still have that hacked demo on my HDD Loader, so I can play the song as it was meant to be played.

The overall package screams "half-assed" to me. Half-ass is fine (after all, yes, GH is about the songs), *BUT* half-ass for full price? fuck you very much. Thanks to CAG, I'm not angry. I do feel quite sorry for those who paid $50 for this, however.

That said, Round and Round, Nothin' But a Good Time, and Los Angeles are a *blast* to play. There are some top notch songs on the disc, but far too few of them.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']Maybe. I got it via Best Buy, so it was $25 after including a $15 gift card. I can't fathom how Activision thought they should charge $50 for this game, and I'd return it if I paid that much.

Reasons why:
1) Very superficial graphical changes. They may not matter to you, but they do to me. At the very least, they could have replaced some of them with GH1 stages. The "80's-ification" of each stage screams "we're lazy as fuck" to me. They spent enough time making the guitar players look like extras on DeGrassi, why drop their work there?

2) The remainder of the game's menus are a straight-up palette swap of GHII. Really, is it *that* difficult to change the various menus and loading screens?

3) Some of the covers make me want to puke. Holy Diver is an abomination, Hold on Loosely is radio diarrhea, and Metal Health (Bang Your Head) pissed me off the most. Having played the hacked GHII demo disc, they took out the entire guitar solo for this song, and replaced it with some dumb-ass rhythm line that doesn't change. It was a fucking awesome solo (about on par with Round and Round in terms of difficulty), and I'm *livid* that they neutered such a great song. What does the song build up to? The biggest 25 seconds of jack fuckin' shit letdown in quite some time. I'm glad I still have that hacked demo on my HDD Loader, so I can play the song as it was meant to be played.

The overall package screams "half-assed" to me. Half-ass is fine (after all, yes, GH is about the songs), *BUT* half-ass for full price? fuck you very much. Thanks to CAG, I'm not angry. I do feel quite sorry for those who paid $50 for this, however.

That said, Round and Round, Nothin' But a Good Time, and Los Angeles are a *blast* to play. There are some top notch songs on the disc, but far too few of them.[/quote]
I understand the price point being a factor, but the whole point of the game is to just have new songs to play with the GHII engine.

As for the half-assed part, maybe it was a conspiracy by Harmonix to not put much effort into the game when they'd rather work on Rock Band? :lol: I wouldn't blame them for doing it.
 
[quote name='FriskyTanuki']I understand the price point being a factor, but the whole point of the game is to just have new songs to play with the GHII engine.[/QUOTE]

I don't get that; wouldn't any GH game play these songs just fine? What was the purpose of getting this disc out ($$$)? I don't think there's anything unique about the GHII game, except fine-tuning of hammerons and pulloffs.

I don't see why they couldn't have stripped out the "filler" in this game (Flock of Seagulls?) and included many of these songs in GHIII. Except, of course, going back to money.

I haven't read much of the previews for this title, but did Harmonix make this game the way they did the others, or do they get money for the title because their "engine" was used as the foundation? Do you know for a fact that Harmonix recorded these tracks and programmed them?
 
[quote name='mykevermin']I don't get that; wouldn't any GH game play these songs just fine? What was the purpose of getting this disc out ($$$)? I don't think there's anything unique about the GHII game, except fine-tuning of hammerons and pulloffs.

I don't see why they couldn't have stripped out the "filler" in this game (Flock of Seagulls?) and included many of these songs in GHIII. Except, of course, going back to money.

I haven't read much of the previews for this title, but did Harmonix make this game the way they did the others, or do they get money for the title because their "engine" was used as the foundation? Do you know for a fact that Harmonix recorded these tracks and programmed them?[/quote]
Co-op, bass, practice mode, and the fine-tuned gameplay are all a part of GHII and not GHI. Of course money is the reason for releasing this, to do the least amount of work and get money for it.

Yeah, Harmonix made the game and was their last GH before moving on to Rock Band.

[quote name='http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/puzzle/guitarhero80s/news.html?sid=6173810&mode=press']Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s, rated T for Teen by the ESRB, is published by RedOctane and developed by Harmonix.[/QUOTE]

Though Harmonix owns all of the code to the GH games they made, which explains why GHIII looks so different than the previous games.

[quote name='http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/792/792801p1.html']
Since Harmonix is now owned by MTV and hard at work on Rock Band, Neversoft wasn't given access to the code from previous Guitar Hero games. That means Guitar Hero III is being built from the ground up.
[/QUOTE]
 
[quote name='mykevermin']
2) The remainder of the game's menus are a straight-up palette swap of GHII. Really, is it *that* difficult to change the various menus and loading screens?

[/QUOTE]

Why do you care if the menus change? The menus don't matter a lick in this game.

I agree that bad covers are painful, and much moreso for this game than the other two (for me personally) because I am much more familiar with more of these songs and I love 80s music.
 
All the bitching seems to revolve around the $50 price point. If you got the damn game for $25 with the Best Buy deal, you basically paid less than $1 per song, so quit yer belly achin' and try to FC BIM on expert.

Anywho, We Got the Beat and What I Like About You are retarded. They shouldn't have been in the game. Balls to the Wall, while being a surprisingly good cover, is pretty boring, as is Metal Health, especially w/o the aforementioned completely bad-ass solo. There are also a shit-ton of 3-note chords in expert, but then again I thought they were really underused in GH2. Some of the song are also too "chord, chord, chord", like Los Angeles. Other than that, though, I'm surprisingly satisfied. I love Syncronicity II, Eletric Eye, Shakin', Round and Round, Wrathchild, Caught in a Mosh, I Wanna Rock, and even I Ran. Ballroom Blitz and Radar Love were also oddly enjoyable. Some of the solos are absolutely batshit insane, though.
 
I bought this at Best Buy and got my gift card, so it was money well spent to me. I love most of these songs and so far I beat the game on hard last night. Im going for expert soon. I Ran, Shakin', Turning Japanese, Only a Lad, and Theres No One Like You are really fun to play in my opinion. I pretty much 5*'ed everything but Play With Me. Now that was insane. And oh yeah I dont see why the graphics and menus are that big of a deal. I could care less. This never claimed to be a big sequel to GHII in the first place so why was everybody expecting major changes?. With that said, Im glad I bought this. A lot of fun, and it will keep me occupid until GHIII drops.
 
You guys that got the gift cards are lucky because that's a deal! The Best Buy I went to said I had to buy both Rock the 80s and the gh2 bundle. I didn't argue because the ad does word it that way and I had 10$ in rz certificates.

So in short, no gift card for me.
 
[quote name='shaunLEGEND']You guys that got the gift cards are lucky because that's a deal! The Best Buy I went to said I had to buy both Rock the 80s and the gh2 bundle. I didn't argue because the ad does word it that way and I had 10$ in rz certificates.

So in short, no gift card for me.[/quote]

Yeah, when I was there the lady was hesitant about the wording in the ad. But at the time you could get the GC online by only adding the 80's game, and I told her that and she checked it. But now I dont even see the mention of that gift card on the best buy website. So I guess we were lucky! That all spells a cheap GHIII for me though!
 
Bunch of new info on GH III over here http://www.scorehero.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19183

I'm now sold after seeing that the master track for Through the Fire and Flames is in. Make sure to read all of the first page of that thread as well.

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!!!)
Click to expand...
 
Holy crap, master tracks for Maiden and Dragonforce? Yes!

Also, though I like La Grange, it seems like it would be pretty boring to play (like We Got the Beat), but maybe I'm forgetting the non-repetitive parts.
 
My friend got the 80's game and we played through the first couple of sets. This is really, really weak. Almost insulting at $50. I think the only decent song so far was "I ran so far."
 
[quote name='evanft']Holy shit....GH3's tracklist, so far at least, absolutely shits on Rock Bands. I mean, Iron fucking Maiden! C'mon!![/QUOTE]

Number of the Beast is a great addition, but Rock Band pulled a coup with Metallica, and the prospect of The Who's "Who Are You" as DLC is fucking incredible.

Baba O'Reilly is worth the price of admission alone, far more than yet *another* Iron Maiden song, IMO. (I'd be more prone to "Run to the Hills," personally).

I don't see any reason to say one is better than the other, frankly. Both have stellar lineups, and both will find a place on my shelf. I won't buy any Rock Band accessories at first, though.

The only thing that will make me consider one game over the other would be overlapping tracks. If 30-50% of the games' songlists are identical, then it would be foolish to buy both.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']Number of the Beast is a great addition, but Rock Band pulled a coup with Metallica, and the prospect of The Who's "Who Are You" as DLC is fucking incredible.

Baba O'Reilly is worth the price of admission alone, far more than yet *another* Iron Maiden song, IMO. (I'd be more prone to "Run to the Hills," personally).

I don't see any reason to say one is better than the other, frankly. Both have stellar lineups, and both will find a place on my shelf. I won't buy any Rock Band accessories at first, though.

The only thing that will make me consider one game over the other would be overlapping tracks. If 30-50% of the games' songlists are identical, then it would be foolish to buy both.[/QUOTE]

Number of the Beast>>>>>>>>>>>>>Every song announced so far for Rock Band, save for maybe Won't Get Fooled Again

Oh, and I'm really counting the Who's Next DLC as part of the tracklist. It's something extra that you have to buy after purchasing the game, so for me, it's more akin to an expansion pack or something similar. Nice to have, and certainly it will be worthwhile to compare both game's DLC once greater details are released, but when comparing the two games, in order to keep thing fair, one can really only look at the songs that either come with the game, or are, by some act of Odin, free for download.

Basically, RB's tracklist so far looks to have a much more mainstream, wide-audience appeal than GH3's. This somewhat makes it like GH1's tracklist when compared to GH2. GH1's tracklist almost seems quaint, even somewhat hokey, whem compared to the depth and variety present in GH2. I mean, look at the choices of Paranoid and Enter Sandman when there are clearly better Black Sabbath and Metallica songs available (Sympton of the Universe and Ride the Lightning come to mind). But these songs are each the most recognizable and well-known songs from these respective bands, so they get into the game. The same goes for most of the other songs, like Mississippi Queen, Suffragate City, etc.
 
[quote name='evanft']Basically, RB's tracklist so far looks to have a much more mainstream, wide-audience appeal than GH3's.[/QUOTE]

I don't see any songs outside of "mainstream, wide-audience appeal" in the GH3 list thus far. Perhaps (and a small perhaps) for Dragonforce. Everything else, though, could easily be heard on anytown's local FM rock station.

Bring me The Hookers, and we'll talk. As far as "thus fars" are concerned, I'm not seeing anything standing outside of the mainstream.
 
Also, back on the topic of the 80's expansion: I've only played through the first 2 tiers and a little of the third on Hard, but I really enjoyed I Ran and Hold on Loosely. And the cover of 18 and Life was good enough that I missed several notes because I was too busy singing to play well enough :D
 
[quote name='mykevermin']I don't see any songs outside of "mainstream, wide-audience appeal" in the GH3 list thus far. Perhaps (and a small perhaps) for Dragonforce. Everything else, though, could easily be heard on anytown's local FM rock station.

Bring me The Hookers, and we'll talk. As far as "thus fars" are concerned, I'm not seeing anything standing outside of the mainstream.[/QUOTE]

You see how I said "much more"? Yeah. The Rock Band tracklist, is IMO, far more solidly mainstream than GH3's. Guitar Hero 3 has Muse, Dragonforce, Iron Maiden, and Priestess. Even some of the more well-known bands, like the Rolling Stones or ZZ Top, didn't have super-obvious choices as songs (there are many Rolling Stones songs more well-know than Paint it Black, for example).

In Rock Band, however, pretty much all the bands are very mainstream and most of the song choices are the most well-known song by that particular band. I hate to harp on it, but Enter Sandman isn't even one of the top 30 Metallica songs in terms of quality, but it ends up in the game. The same thing can be said for Paranoid.

Basically, if you wanted to do a shoot-out between each tracklist and try to cull the 10 to 15 best from a combined list from both games, most of the songs would, at least in my opinion, come from GH3. Shit, I'll do it right now:

Beastie Boys-Sabotage
Bon Jovi-Wanted Dead or Alive
Dragonforce-Through the Fire and Flames
Foghat-Slow Ride
Heart-Barracuda
Iron Maiden-The Number of the Beast
Muse-Knights of Cydonia
Pearl Jam-Even Flow
Queens of the Stone Age- Go with the Flow
The Rolling Stones-Paint it Black
The Who-Won't Get Fooled Again
Weezer-My Name is Jonas

That's 12 songs, 9 of which come from GH3. Now, that doesn't mean some of GH3's songs are somewhat bad choices (School's Out, WTF?), but at least they didn't completely fuck-up oppurtunities with certain bands. The Iron Maiden, Heart, and Pearl Jam choices are excellent, no question about it. With Rock Band, though, the Black Sabbath, Metallica, Ramones, and Rush choices could have been vastly superior. I mean, I'd take Hole in the Sky, One, Blitzkrieg Bop (it'd be kinda dumb, but oh so fun), and 2112 over any of the choices they made.
 
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