Breaking Out The Band

A typical day at Casa Del Geek with a visit to the neighbor’s apartment, PS3 and Rock Band 2 in tow when a visiting friend of his had the audacity to enjoy Guitar Hero World Tour without having ever played a Rock Band game.  When I found out about this, I realized This Simply Will Not Do and first went on an impassioned, evangelist speech about the vulgar history of Harmonix, Neversoft and Activision to give him proper historical perspective, then made him play Rock Band 2 (with my Starpex, yes, I was totally cheating this) while at the same time pointing out the differences in play mechanics and the far more efficient–and elegant–interface and heads up display choices of Harmonix’s RB game over the ham-fisted and not very intuitive GHWT design choices.

By the end of the evening my non-stop venom about everything from Activision’s blocking of instrument compatibility to the simple fact that you can rescue players in Rock Band but not in Guitar Hero World Tour had done their magic and I had another convert who was not terribly impressed with either Activision or their hasty panicked reaction to Rock Band’s success.

If I can save even just one more person from supporting the evil that is Activision and the Guitar Hero franchise and spare them the suffering of a kluged together, hasty cash grab attempt versus a sincere, well thought out attempt to make sure people enjoy interacting with music, I consider my time on this Earth well spent.