So I went crazy and picked up RockBand, special edition for 360 with the guitar, drums and mic AND... I went and got Guitar Hero 3 and the XPlorer Guitar. This was all mostly for a thanksgiving party. In total that's like $340 basically just for 1 game!
But, I gotta say Rockband is some of the most fun I've ever had playing a video game. We had a blast playing all afternoon and late into the night.
A lotta issues came up though.
#1) I NEED A HOUSE. We tried to play Wednesday night and the neighbors downstairs from my apartment were not too happy. Fortunately they were not home Thanksgiving day and we were able to rock for hours. Still, owning my own place or at least living somewhere were I can be as loud as I want anytime day or night has been a goal of mine since I moved out of the house at 19yrs old. Since then I've never lived somewhere I could be loud 😞 I really need to fix that!
#2) Setting it up is a **PAIN IN THE ASS!!!***. What where they thinking? To play you have to register four players. This takes easily 20 minutes of futsing with the menus, controls, switching between game screens and 360 interface screens. We just wanna rock! We don't want all that BS!
#3) Why the F couldn't EA, Harmonix, Red Octane and Activision get it together and make sure everything is compatible?!?! Rockband supports using the Guitar Hero guitars but the Rockband guitar does not work with Guitar Hero 3, at least right now it doesn't. Seems to me since Harmonix made the Original Guitar Hero they could have made their guitar compatible.
#4) IMO they REALLY need to make Rockband Party edition. The issue is Rockband (and Guitar Hero) both will not let you play all the songs unless you earn them by playing countless hours. Both start with only a few songs available. I think both had around 8 songs to start. Did it ever occur to them there might be a CASUAL audience around that just wants to put the game in at a family gathering and just rock?!
Worse, because saved games are tied to your XBox Profile you can't go download a saved game with all the songs open. We played for a while but after singing Radiohead for the 12th time in the same day we were kind of getting sick of it.
Still, overall we had a blast.