Dynafire has 132 chronicles

1. A Rock Revolution review that doesn't denounce it for no good reason :)
   

   Player Chronicle -- Posted on Jan 03 2009

   As some of you saw, I bought this game a few weeks ago since the price tag was right where I wanted it, I had no new games to play, and I'm a sucker for games that let me use the fake guitar to play them. I've read many a review (or like 3 :P) that seem to give the game absurdly low ratings simply for the fact that the game is almost all cover songs.
   
   First of all, that's stupid. I don't know how they can let reviews like those get published. Reviewers are supposed to be non-biased (as much as humanly possible, anyway), and seem to dock points just because "Guitar Hero and Rock Band have masters and this should too". Says who? Guitar Hero 1 and 2 were mostly covers, and they got great ratings! ...but I digress. This issue just bugs the hell out of me.
   
   That being said, I sort of knew what I was getting into when I bought this game. I had heard that there were bad covers, but I really don't care. Music is music. I don't care that Holy Wars, one of my favorite songs of all time is a cover, I'm just glad someone put it in the game. Sure, the RR vocalist hardly sounds like Megadeth's vocalist, but it's still enjoyable to listen to. The same is true for the majority of the songs.
   
   All opinions in this review are based on expert guitar. this is also different than the initial impressions chronicle I wrote, since I have now played the game to completion.
   
   LIKED:
   
   The song selection. Had this game come out at the same time as Guitar Hero 1, there would have been some tremendous competition between them. The setlist is one of the best I've come across from any rhythm game, and its kind of sad that hardly anyone has given it a chance. Overall, I feel they did a pretty good job with making song covers, and though there are a few bad apples in the bunch, all of them are enjoyable to play (even Sk8r Boi, and song that I have long despised). On top of that, there are quite a few note charts that are incredibly fun to play (I absolutely love Stone Cold Crazy, Magic Man, Walk, and Pull Me Under).
   
   I also really like the scoring system in this game. Instead of getting starpower or overdrive and having it stay active for a while, you get a one-shot burst of energy that (I think) builds up while keeping a combo and/or hitting "perfects". It probably explains this in the tutorial, but I haven't messed with that yet. When you use it, your atmosphere (rock) meter will fill up, and excess energy is converted into points. I like this because 1.) I don't have to worry about following starpower/overdrive paths for maximum points, and 2.) You don't have to worry about hitting sp/od phrases to get it. Just keep hitting notes and it builds up until you can use it.
   
   DISLIKES:
   
   There are a TON of 3 note chords on expert. I'd be so bold to say that it has more of these than Guitar Hero 3 does, and that's saying something. They seem to sort of drop off as soon as you hit the final tiers, thankfully. They don't necessarily make the gameplay suffer, they just infuse the game with a level of artificial difficulty. Look at the GH/RB counterparts for an example of what I mean. Bad Reputation in particular.
   
   The game is also pretty bland-looking. I'm not normally one to complain about graphics, but the game just doesn't have a whole lot going on. The one exception to this is the casino venue. There are a ton of people in it, and it actually does have sort of an "epic" quality to it. The menus on the other hand, are really drab. The options menu is nothing but an assortment of gray boxes in which to choose your settings. Again, this doesn't really effect gameplay, but if you're going to compete with GH/RB, you'd probably want your game to stand out as much as possible.
   
   MEH:
   
   The miscellaneous challenges are something that I'm torn right down the middle about. On one hand, I like the fact that they mix it up a bit in career. On the other hand, some of these challenges are ridiculously tough. You have 5 different challenges besides the regular "try to pass the song" objective in the career. I forget the specific names of these challenges, but I'll describe all of them here.
   
   1.) Poison notes - These are actually really easy once you get the hang of the game engine and learn to differentiate the poison notes from regular ones. Basically, you will be asked to play a song, but the chart will have extra black notes in it that you are not supposed to hit. If you hit 5 of these, you fail instantly. It doesn't seem too hard, but they also make you achieve a target score to advance past the challenge. I actually failed once because I missed the cutoff by less than 2k points, and that annoyed me, to say the least.
   
   2.) The "hyperspeed" challenge - I actually love these. As your multiplier increases, the notes scroll faster, until you have maybe a second to respond to them. As you miss though, it slows down again. My only complaint with this mode is that when you increase the scrolling speed, the fretboard flashes white. During this brief flash, the notes are practically invisible and it's easy to miss them.
   
   3) "FC a section" challenge - You're given a song section and you have to hit all the notes in it to pass. 'Nuff said.
   
   4) The "Performance Mode" challenge - these are hard. You get to play a song section like normal a couple times, then have to play it again without a note chart. You get 3 to 5 misses depending on what song you're playing. These are next to impossible to complete without some form of cheating. I resorted to recording the note chart with my EasyCap, then playing it back on the real runs. These challenges really shouldn't be in the career.
   
   5) The "Increased difficulty" challenge - You're given a song, and you start out on medium. After a while, the note chart switches to hard, then again to expert. These might be pretty hard to newer players, but since I already play on expert, they were cake.
   
   In conclusion, you can't really go wrong with this game, given the $20 price tag. The one major problem that may disuade you from buying this is that there is never anyone online playing this game. I tried to find a match on 4 different days, at different times of the day, and nothing. Even choosing quick match yielded no results, so consider this game a single player experience. (Unless you want to play with me of course.)
   
   Overall Rating : 7.0

   
   

   ---

   Send To A Friend

Dynafire has 1 comment on this chronicle.

1. BEN
   Posted On Jan 03 2009

   What a complete look at a game a lot of people overlooked because of those bias reviews you mention. I especially likes the three categories of LIKED, DISLIKED, and MEH
   
   Thanks for a clean look at Rock Revolution Dynafire! 10/10 rank from me.