Time to go Pro!

Yesterday's Rock Band 3 Press Release was a monumental event in rhythm game history. It will be remembered as one of the most important announcements ever, after the unveiling of "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band". Harmonix proves once again that they are the master innovators of this genre.

The most exciting part of the press release is the addition of Pro modes for all instruments except vocals. It pretty much gives us the ability to learn some real instruments (ex: 3 independent cymbals on drums, 6 strings + all fret positions on guitar). After getting comfortable playing Expert on all instruments over the last 3 years, it is truly a chance to rediscover rhythm games all over again. It will be lots of fun to slowly master each difficulty level like I did back in Guitar Hero for guitar and Rock Band for drums (Pro Easy -> Pro Medium -> Pro Hard -> Pro Expert).

If this wasn't enough, Harmonix is also adding a 2-octave keyboard, with a Pro mode that features all 25 keys! This adds an exciting new dimension to the gameplay, bringing the total # of simultaneous players to an amazing 7! Pro mode is seamlessly integrated into all the game modes, so we don't have to all make the transition at the same time, but I can see us eventually being an all-Pro band.

OK, enough salivating about the future... :) This week, after getting up-to-date on the new DLC, we played some "Green Day: Rock Band". Phoenix bought a 2nd mic stand so we were able to try the harmonies, which are lots of fun like in "The Beatles: Rock Band". We'll definitely get a 3rd mic stand before Rock Band 3 comes out so that Phoenix can join in as well.

We gained 18M points from the 20 songs we played in RB2, enough to move us up to 11th place in the "All Songs" Leaderboards. After we finish the Green Day songs in RB2, we'll improve on our old scores to increase our average points per song (currently 988K).

Highlights:
- Stars breakdown for the 20 songs: Gold stars (1), 5 stars (13), 4 stars (6, for "The Great Southern Trendkill", "Suicide Note Pt. II" and "Living Through Me (Hell's Wrath)", "Cherry Waves", "Collapsing" and "The Mob Goes Wild")
- Raikan was the "Top Performer" for the most songs (11), followed by Bongoo (7) and Phoenix (6)
- Bongoo was the "Worst Performer" for the most songs (17), followed by Phoenix (3) and Raikan (1)
- Raikan had the only FC of the night
- Raikan's funniest wah-wah bass moments were during "The Great Southern Trendkill", "War Nerve", "13 Steps to Nowhere", "Collapsing" and "Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse"
- The toughest songs for Bongoo to sightread voxtar were the "Deftones" ones due to the constantly changing vocals
- It looked like we were doomed when we failed during the crazy solo section of "Suicide Note Pt. II", only to be saved at the very last second as Phil yelled "Descending down"... :)