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After Warriors of Rock sank on launch, I heard a lot of muttering about RB3 going the same way. Obviously I'm hardly a benchmark for market taste (lol) but RB3 adds a lot of new stuff, improves the engine, and makes the game a lot easier to play and better structured.

The art style is maintained (and most of the clothing items) but is pretty significantly improved. There seems to be a lot more band/song scripting going on, as well. The new UI is better - even more streamlined - but I kinda wish they'd stolen GH's fretboard customisation.

The play flow improvements are worth the money by themselves. Making setlists, organising music and playing in groups is way easier and involves a lot less fucking around with profiles and instruments. You can even play 3 singers + 4 instruments, which is pretty outrageous. The quick-play options are there from Band Hero, but I haven't seen the in-song song-change option, which is a shame. The whole band world tour idea is toast - or at least spread over the whole game, so there's no modes to go in and out of. In short, flow from grouping to getting into a song you actually like is easier, which is a big success.

Importing (at least for RB1) was totally seamless, but RB2 doesn't seem to have the export option yet. Not being able to get the RBN songs in Australia continues to be fucking annoying. Hilariously I'm #37 in the world at Godzilla at the moment...

RB3?

Ryan Thunder wrote:RB3?

Rock Band 3

Jesus...

The lack of RBN in Australia is deeply annoying. Fucking XNA. It's about 40% of the song library we can't get for... some reason.

Shit like this usually happens for licensing reasons. Australia isn't a big enough market for them to care about in many cases, it's not like the product isn't going to sell because you can't import RB2 songs.

Nah, it's just that MS can't be fucked dealing with the OFLC over XNA content (which is 3rd party/independent shit) so they just said 'no XNA in AU'. The RBN uses XNA, so no RBN. Which means no 600 songs.

RB2 export ought to work now. The Harmonix songs and a few others are missing, though the Harmonix songs will be released as free DLC later on (no idea why). Unlike the other games' export functions, you do it from the Redeem Code section in RB3. Use the code from your RB2 manual. If it's too long, just use the first 16 characters.

If only my hand wasn't broken so I could play pro keys above medium. Are all future DLC going to have keys support, or is that extra like pro guitar?

So to those who have played it, is the pro mode worthwhile? It sounds cool, but is it more than just a gimmick?

And how does that work with backwards compatibility? Can I load up Painkiller from RB2 and fail it play it on pro expert?

Pro Guitar controllers aren't widely available yet.

Pro Drums are pretty sweet, but I've been playing with a kit with cymbals for a while now so the jump isn't as drastic as it might be for some people - do want to get a hi-hat pedal and Y-splitter when they become available though, as some songs are just unnecessarily hard with the normal charting method of putting the open hi-hat on blue.

Pro Keys is fantastic, from all accounts, though I've yet to be able to try them personally.

Pro keys is awesome and frnakly not that much 'harder' than regular keys (one-hnaded, anyway) but is a way better experience. It's like drums; people thought it was hard, got used to it, and really like it.

There's no backwards except on pro drums (I think). Hopefully they'll add keys to the old songs with keys, at least.

What's up with pro guitars anyway? They didn't come out here when the keys did and now EB denies knowledge of it altogether?

Pro Mode is badass as hell, but the only backwards compatibility for it are the drums, which work in every non-RBN song. Any song that has a keyboard track in the future will include a Keys part, along with Pro Keys and Drums. It's just the Pro Guitar and Bass that are an extra dollar, since they take about as much effort to chart as the rest of the tracks combined.

As for adding keys to old songs, they're still working on deciding how they'll implement it. They probably won't do all of them, just the most popular ones (Final Countdown and Don't Stop Believin, for example), and they're not sure if they'll charge for the upgrade or not.

Anyway, Pro keys is awesome. The lessons are pretty damn good, although you'll need at least a basic introduction to music theory first. I've just been going through them trying to relearn the piano and as long as you actually practice you'll definitely make some progress.

Edit: The Pro Guitar controllers are a bit hard to find. Currently the only one out is the Mustang, which is the one with the buttons instead of actual strings. The Squier doesn't have a release date yet other than "by the end of 2010", and is honestly what I'd recommend you guys get, partly because the Mustang is 17 frets while the Squier is the whole 21. That and the fact that it's a real guitar. The only downside is that the Squier can't be used on non-Pro tracks for some reason or another. That and it's $250, compared to the Mustang's $150.

I wasn't aware the Squier strat's approximate release date or pricing were made official. I was under the impression we wouldn't see the Squier until Feb or March and that it would be at least $300, if not $350 (which I would still pay as it is a lot cheaper than music lessons and I've discovered over the last 9 years of guitar ownership that I don't have the discipline to learn on my own).

Sorry, should have prefaced it that I'm not going by official statements, just stuff that I've gotten from reading various interviews and press releases, along with talking with a couple people on the development team.

I've been playing drums "Pro-Mode" for over a year now. In Rock Band 2, a color could mean either a tom or cymbal but I've been forcing myself to listen to the song and hit the right cymbals or the right toms. So switching to "Pro-Mode" in Rock Band 3 hasn't been a real jump in difficulty for me. In some ways, it's easier because now I don't have to remember whether the next upcoming note is a cymbal or a tom.

The Squier's been officially priced and dated. $279 for March 2011. Looks like I'll be picking up RB3 sometime in March then since I'm mainly interested in the pro mode.