Beasty Boys for the win. :D

Actually, I paid extra close attention to all Rock Band and Guitar Hero 3 stuff I could possibly uncover with the sole purpose of determining what the key differentials will be. I mean Neversoft/Activision must've known where Rock Band was heading so I thought that they'd obviously be making an effort to sort of let GH3 shoot off in another direction, a more "pure" direction.

I thought a bit about how Saint's Row managed with only cars as opposed to all the helicopters and bikes and.. you know whatever in GTA, and I realised that the increased focus on the cars, the increased handling and the customization sorted it so you didn't really miss those other things as much.

And I gotta say, while I'm not sure it's enough, it seems that the two player modes and increased emphasis on the career/story mode complete with boss fights will be the main strengths of GH3. The battle modes especially employ thes sort of Tetrisnet like powerups that lets you mess stuff up for your opponent. Things like shaking the field or temporarily disabling one of his stings and stuff like that.

I actually asked a pretty elaborate question on the Gamespot live show, but it didn't quite go through in its original shape so I got a more vague answer than I would've liked, but there seems to be something of a story for the career mode this time. Maybe there's an actual sense of growing as a band and becoming more popular, who knows.

And who knows if it's even gonna matter a whole lot right? Well I think it's still important that Neversoft think of ways to not just be a tiny part of Rock Band on a separate disc. They will have a difficult time to compete with the track lists too, so the difference must be on a gameplay level.

I hope they succeed anyway, because I'm positive that Rock Band will and I can't think of anything better than to have two competing music games keeping eachother on edge.

What? This is Expert? No way! :O

I thought Amplitude had way too much MTV chart stuff shoehorned in by Sony. If we're looking at tracks I HATED but was FORCED to *master* then Guitar Hero is doing a way better job. Even if "Laid to Rest" and stuff is a bit too.. you know.. yeah. For me.

Anyway, the producer (I think it was, or lead designer) said on the Gamespot segment that they're conducting the more insanely demanding stuff in the unlock songs bit of the game, and that those will truly drive people nuts. Maybe this is a career mode song that's deliberately doable.

I'm not saying I didn't like the game. I have both Frequency and Amplitude, but they both have tons of stuff I wish I didn't have to learn inside out to progress. Pink for instance, gah. :(