Now these drums were a little tricky until I discovered that the orange and yellow cymbals were labeled left and right and I switched them. Now, it works much better.
So I quickly jumped it from Hard to Expert, and found that while pretty much any song will work all right on guitar, some songs should not be used for drums. Since I can do the expert level, I like to think I'm a pretty capable player, and when it comes to some of the easier tunes, I can nail them to the wall. Such was the case with the first song of this particular set. I got five stars on it.
The second song was called "Some Might Say" and it's by Oasis. I don't know what it was about this song, but I could not get the beat at all. The pattern on screen was very, very easy, but I couldn't lock that beat for anything. I would get in a groove, and then the beat would go away. I have one suspicion here: the drummer on Oasis wasn't consistent. They were able to map the song easily enough, but I imagine I would have to pay almost deadly attention to the little dots on the screen to get it down, just because the tempo is inconsistent enough to not let me zone out and play. It's just not good for us human metronomes.
Admittedly, I did kick into that one after playing Rock Band for an hour and a half, but for the encore song of that set (after I narrowly got through Some Might Say), I got 99% and five stars, so I'm pretty sure it isn't me.
So at this time, I have two guitars, drums and mic for Rock Band, and one guitar, drums, and mic (which is the same Rock Band mic) for Guitar Hero. My second GH guitar gave up the ghost. Well, actually pieces of both guitars died -- the strum bar on one and the green and red buttons on the other. So I took the neck of one and the body of the other and put them together. All I need is another GH guitar and I'll have two complete rhythm games.
To top it off, the Rock Band drum pedal works as the second bass pedal for Guitar Hero. Unfortunately, it won't work as the primary pedal for some reason. Can't figure out why. I woudl use it as the primary if I could thought. The GH pedal sucks. It feels flimsy, and it's really easy for it to accidentally slip on some of the harder songs and register an unintended bass hit, which spoils the streaks. On the bright side, it appears to be a cheap midi drum pedal, so it is possible that a better constructed electronic drum kick pedal will work on it. In addition, the cymbals just plug in to the kit using 1/8" jacks, just like a electronic drum kit does, so it's also possible that you could get some real electric cymbals to use with it. The red, blue, and green drums are fixed, though, so they aren't going anywhere.
The most interesting aspect of the GH drums is the MIDI port in the back. Yeah, a MIDI port. I suspect that you could hook this toy up to a MIDI sound generator and use it as a simple drum kit apart from the video game. It's not a bad little set. The cymbals are raised, and the drums have a more durable pad to them than the clickety-clack construction of the Rock Band drums. Where RB clicks, GH thuds.
That being said, they're still both equally fun, and the extra drum and different layout is taking some getting used to. The most significant change is that on RB, the crash cymbal is usually the green, but on GH, it's the raised orange - green is just another tom. Hence "Enter Sandman" is a totally different experience on GH than on RB.
It's too much fun, and I ended up playing for about 3 hours last night, so I got nothing done that I actually wanted to, like practicing the real guitar. I played a little piano and a little guitar, but I recalled that I hadn't checked the music stores this month for new stuff. I was going to do that "real quick," and ended up playing for a while on RB. Well, an hour and a half later, I thought I'd see if GH had any new stuff "real quick," and once I reviewed the store, I played another hour and a half. Oh well.
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