Post by Gilvan Blight on Sept 15, 2008 10:53:53 GMT -5
Okay I'm not going to give a full review as of yet, as I just picked this up yesterday and have barely gotten my feet wet.
The reason for posting this so early is to warn people. This game is not complete. It is broken. It was rushed and it shows. I only hope that patches are coming for the 360 version and that the versions for the other systems are fixed by their release date in November.
I personally was surprised when I found out this was coming out yesterday. I thought this was an Xmas release like Guitar Hero World Tour. I was shocked to see it in fliers on Friday night. So I did a bit of digging. Ends up it was due out in November originally but that EA had decided on an Early Xbox 360 exclusive release. Why was not said. I can only guess to beat out Guitar Hero World Tour.
So it's obvious they pushed up the release on this for some marketing reason. What's also obvious is that it was a mistake. You find that out almost as soon as you go to pick the game up. First mistake - only the game is out, not the new instruments. This wouldn't bug me so much, if it wasn't for the instructions in the game (yes amazingly I actually read my instructions before playing my games for the first time), going on and on about how great the new Auto-Calibrate function is on my new guitar. My new guitar that isn't even released yet. It also goes on about the symbol attachments for my drums that again aren't released yet. Okay annoying, but I can overlook this. So next I put the game in and check out a few things...
One of the first things I do is check out the download shop since the back of my game says I get 20 free downloads putting the total number of tracks up to over 100. Sweet I think as I boot my 360. Then I notice there is one free track on the downloads, and nothing else. Huh? Later Pandora notices on the back of the instructions (I never thought to check the back of them) is a key code and it tells you you have to go to www.rockband.com and enter this to get another code you enter into your game that will give you a code that will let you download your 20 free songs. Okay convoluted, but cool enough, or so I thought. Until I put in the web address and get to an under construction page that basically says "Thank you for Purchasing Rock Band 2, check back here soon to receive your free songs".
So not only did they release the game before the instruments are ready, and not only did they release the game before the 20 free DLC songs were ready, they even released the game before the website for the 20 DLC songs was ready. Wow.
Alright so at this point it's blatantly obvious this game was rushed. But still, I have a new Rock Band game, I have 84 new songs, all of my original DLC works, and I was even able to port over 99% of my Rock Band 1 Songs (everything but Black Sabbath and Metallica as it seems they have signed an exclusive deal with Guitar Hero so you can't port them into new editions of rock band. Boo!). So now I'm ready to rock and I do for a couple songs. One thing I notice right away is that the load times are longer. That's Annoying. Not nearly as annoying as what happened next:
So I can't even remember what song it is, but it's in the first 10% of the song. Guitar Notes are streaming down the screen but the vocals haven't started yet. I get ready to strum my fist yellow note and then it happens. The song freezes, the bar freezes, everything locks up. I think crap, this sucks and go to grab the controller to reset the xbox, when everything starts moving again and I miss my note. I grab the guitar but by that time the game has stopped again, but only for a short bit. It stutters a bit, actually jumping back in the song a second. Then it literally starts up going slow. Yes slow. As in not full speed. Then everything stops for a second and seems frozen again, jitters and then plays fine for the rest of the song. WTF was that!!! It was like when the batteries are running low on your portable cd player, or when you go over rail road tracks in your car.
Now I will admit it only happened once, in the two hours we played the game, but once is enough! There is no way a brand new game, scratch free, that is supposed to cache the songs anyway (it's an option you can select at the start, it takes some HD space but makes the songs load faster) should do that.
So there you have it, fair warning that the 360 exclusive version of Rock Band 2 released yesterday was rushed and is literally broken. You may want to hold off on this one. I only hope that this is something that gets resolved and patched quickly.
EDIT: I just checked the site again. Here is exactly what it says "Please check back in a few days for the opportunity to enter your Registration Code and sign up to receive the Bonus Downloadable Tracks." Nice eh?
The reason for posting this so early is to warn people. This game is not complete. It is broken. It was rushed and it shows. I only hope that patches are coming for the 360 version and that the versions for the other systems are fixed by their release date in November.
I personally was surprised when I found out this was coming out yesterday. I thought this was an Xmas release like Guitar Hero World Tour. I was shocked to see it in fliers on Friday night. So I did a bit of digging. Ends up it was due out in November originally but that EA had decided on an Early Xbox 360 exclusive release. Why was not said. I can only guess to beat out Guitar Hero World Tour.
So it's obvious they pushed up the release on this for some marketing reason. What's also obvious is that it was a mistake. You find that out almost as soon as you go to pick the game up. First mistake - only the game is out, not the new instruments. This wouldn't bug me so much, if it wasn't for the instructions in the game (yes amazingly I actually read my instructions before playing my games for the first time), going on and on about how great the new Auto-Calibrate function is on my new guitar. My new guitar that isn't even released yet. It also goes on about the symbol attachments for my drums that again aren't released yet. Okay annoying, but I can overlook this. So next I put the game in and check out a few things...
One of the first things I do is check out the download shop since the back of my game says I get 20 free downloads putting the total number of tracks up to over 100. Sweet I think as I boot my 360. Then I notice there is one free track on the downloads, and nothing else. Huh? Later Pandora notices on the back of the instructions (I never thought to check the back of them) is a key code and it tells you you have to go to www.rockband.com and enter this to get another code you enter into your game that will give you a code that will let you download your 20 free songs. Okay convoluted, but cool enough, or so I thought. Until I put in the web address and get to an under construction page that basically says "Thank you for Purchasing Rock Band 2, check back here soon to receive your free songs".
So not only did they release the game before the instruments are ready, and not only did they release the game before the 20 free DLC songs were ready, they even released the game before the website for the 20 DLC songs was ready. Wow.
Alright so at this point it's blatantly obvious this game was rushed. But still, I have a new Rock Band game, I have 84 new songs, all of my original DLC works, and I was even able to port over 99% of my Rock Band 1 Songs (everything but Black Sabbath and Metallica as it seems they have signed an exclusive deal with Guitar Hero so you can't port them into new editions of rock band. Boo!). So now I'm ready to rock and I do for a couple songs. One thing I notice right away is that the load times are longer. That's Annoying. Not nearly as annoying as what happened next:
So I can't even remember what song it is, but it's in the first 10% of the song. Guitar Notes are streaming down the screen but the vocals haven't started yet. I get ready to strum my fist yellow note and then it happens. The song freezes, the bar freezes, everything locks up. I think crap, this sucks and go to grab the controller to reset the xbox, when everything starts moving again and I miss my note. I grab the guitar but by that time the game has stopped again, but only for a short bit. It stutters a bit, actually jumping back in the song a second. Then it literally starts up going slow. Yes slow. As in not full speed. Then everything stops for a second and seems frozen again, jitters and then plays fine for the rest of the song. WTF was that!!! It was like when the batteries are running low on your portable cd player, or when you go over rail road tracks in your car.
Now I will admit it only happened once, in the two hours we played the game, but once is enough! There is no way a brand new game, scratch free, that is supposed to cache the songs anyway (it's an option you can select at the start, it takes some HD space but makes the songs load faster) should do that.
So there you have it, fair warning that the 360 exclusive version of Rock Band 2 released yesterday was rushed and is literally broken. You may want to hold off on this one. I only hope that this is something that gets resolved and patched quickly.
EDIT: I just checked the site again. Here is exactly what it says "Please check back in a few days for the opportunity to enter your Registration Code and sign up to receive the Bonus Downloadable Tracks." Nice eh?