In OTHER news, I managed to get some play time with Rock Revolution for the Nintendo DS. Does it suck less than it's console predecessor?
Nope.
First off, it looks bad (image courtest of VGChartz):
No, it's not due to poor image capture, THAT'S HOW THE GAME ACTUALLY LOOKS. Animation? What's that? No, what you get here is a bunch of still images with no transition to suggest movement. Even the friggin' Alvin and the Chipmunks game had 3D animation.
The songlist... pretty good. Granted, you'll have some overused stuff like "Blitzkreig Bop","Are You Gonna Be My Girl?" and "Sk8r Boi", but then you'll have something awesome like "Heading Out To The Highway" and "Spirit Of The Radio". That last song alone makes it worth a try.
All the songs are covers, which isn't SO bad when you consider that the original Guitar Hero was all covers, but they sound horrible and are poorly mixed. First off, the bass doesn't sound natural, like an actual bass. For some reason, it's the thing you'll hear the most. The rest of the instruments sound OK. But the biggest offense is that sometimes, the music will go out of sync, like they weren't aware of things like "measures" or "timing". I know it's hard, but really, the music department should have noticed these things.
As far as gameplay goes, it's a mixed bag. The singing is OK, but unresponsive. It doesn't matter, because apparently it give you "GOOD"s regardless. The guitar is boring (all you do is strum up and down), and at times ridiculously broken (sometimes you have to draw a circle, and sometimes it works). Bass is really hard, as you not only have to hit the right string, but in the right position as well, and on expert difficulty, it becomes a clusterfuck. Drums is OK, but the sound is so poorly mixed, you have no idea what to hit, and the pads are scattered around randomly.
BOTTOM LINE: Skip, and try the console version, which is only $20. It at least had more work put into it.
