Well, Christmas has come and gone once more. I had a lot of fun yesterday and none of it involved my PC or the internet—OMG, like, I know, right? My two oldest brothers are up from the Bay Area for Christmas so all four of us have been hanging out.
Anyway, I'm guessing people will skim the post looking for the list of loot before reading the rest of it (or is that just me? >_>;) so, without farther ado, here it is:
• Rock Band 2 Special Edition bundle for the Wii
• Component video cable for the Wii (for hooking it up to the huge HDTV out in the living room)
• Digital converter box (for the crappy old analog TV in my room)
• $50
• A bunch of candy
Not a huge list but I'm happy with it. RB2 was my one big present that most of my family went together to buy me since it cost a little over $200 after tax. But, considering how I got Guitar Hero II shortly after Christmas last year and was playing it off and on until a few days ago, I think RB2 will last me a long time to come.
Speaking of RB2, we had to go on a small adventure to find one of the bundles. See, Harmonix put out a press release saying that the bundle would ship out to retailers on Dec. 18 and that it wouldn't arrive for 5-7 days. That is, retailers wouldn't get it until a couple days before Christmas. So, me and my mom happening to be up bright and early on Dec. 23, we decided to go look for one. (Yes, I went with her to buy my own Christmas present. She knows by now to bring someone along who knows what they're talking about so that she doesn't accidentally buy the 360 version or RB1 for the Wii or something by mistake.) It turned out they had actually shipped earlier than announced and retailers had gotten them the previous week, with the result being that everywhere in town was already sold out. ... Thanks, Harmonix, you guys did a great job on not saying anything about that.
When we checked at one of the GameStop stores in town they said there was, however, a bundle available at a GameStop in a city about 40 miles away. After checking one more place in town and coming up empty, I was surprised when my mom said she'd drive all the way out there to get it. I hadn't said anything about it and had just resigned myself to waiting until a bit after Christmas to find a copy, but she said it was fine when I asked if she was sure she wanted to bother. So we had the girl at GameStop call the other store and hold the bundle for us and off we went. A couple hours later we were back home with a shiney new Rock Band 2 bundle in hand—which then promptly disappeared for two days until I unwrapped it yesterday. :p
I seriously was not expecting her to go through that much trouble, though, so it gave me that warm fuzzy feeling inside when she did. My parents can be pretty cool at times. ^_^
So, anyway, I haven't played it much yet but I'm already loving the drums in RB2. I have pretty good rhythm so I jumped in and immediately did excellent on easy. Medium was a bit more tricky 'cause I haven't developed any muscle memory whatsoever for drumming yet, but I can definitely see myself rocking out on expert eventually. Also, having the green notes swapped from the left to the right side of the note chart was screwing me up because I'd be wanting to hit the yellow pad for blue notes since I'm used to blue being farther to the right on the chart; I cannot see any reason for swapping green's position other than to screw people over and it annoys me.
The new guitar is going to take a bit of getting used to as well. I like that the fret buttons don't stick up and that they're a little closer together than on the GHII guitar so that I don't have to move my hand as far when sliding to reach green and orange notes. But I don't like that they feel squishy, without any click to them whatsoever; it's harder to tell when exactly the button gets pressed and it was screwing with my timing for hammer-ons/pull-offs. That will take some adjustment.
The strum bar is also a lot looser and kind of squishy feeling. So far I like it more for double strumming since it takes less strength to move it (and its shape is just easier to grip between the thumb and index finger), which translates to more accurate timing for longer periods of fast double strumming. But it seems a little harder to do fast single strumming with it since it doesn't spring back to center as fast after a strum as the GHII guitar. I think it should still be possible, it will just require some adjustment to the strumming motion to take into account the lack of springiness.
And now I am going to go pwn the game's solo guitar career on hard to unlock more tracks.
