I finished my first pass at all 82 songs on Expert guitar in Rock Band 3, and the results were decent enough: I’m sitting at a career score of 13 million, including all 82 songs 5-starred (66 of them gold), good enough for 23rd place overall.
As usual with any music game, there are always a few songs I’d never heard of that become instant favorites. In RB3, “Antibodies” is at the top of that list — it’s a great song and has a fantastic chart on multiple instruments. (Expert bass is an insane workout.) There are some keyboard-heavy songs that have surprisingly fun guitar charts, such as “Centerfold” and “Power of Love,” and of course, “Beast and the Harlot” remains one of the best guitar songs you’ll ever play. Most of the charts are pretty solid, so even if you’re only interested in guitar, you’ll get your money’s worth out of RB3. Â
But of course, that doesn’t mean there are a few clunkers that should have been left on the cutting room floor. “Radar Love” is a 6-minute snoozefest. Phish’s “Llama” is less a guitar chart than an annoying exercise in chord memorization. And if I never have to play through the awful first five minutes of “Freebird” again, I’ll be a happy guy.
Typically, this is where the game would normally begin for me. I’d go through the setlist, look for places where I can make the biggest score improvements, and start what would probably be a slow grind towards 14 million. But with Rock Band 3, that’ll have to wait, because there are other instruments to tackle. Guitar will probably get shelved for a bit as I jump to Expert vocals, and then keyboards after that.
And keyboards are proving to be pretty popular, at least with the expert community. At last look, the in-game Pro guitar leaderboards were a wasteland, with only 60 people having posted a single score (I knew Pro guitar would start slow, but that’s even slower than I thought). But the Pro keyboard leaderboards are hopping, as I have 30 people from my friends list alone who have posted scores. That’s over a quarter of my 100-person friends list playing Pro keyboards. It’s a shame that Score Duel was removed from the game, as it might have been interesting to see some Pro keyboards competitive play.
RB3: Expert Guitar Thoughts
I finished my first pass at all 82 songs on Expert guitar in Rock Band 3, and the results were decent enough: I’m sitting at a career score of 13 million, including all 82 songs 5-starred (66 of them gold), good enough for 23rd place overall.
As usual with any music game, there are always a few songs I’d never heard of that become instant favorites. In RB3, “Antibodies” is at the top of that list — it’s a great song and has a fantastic chart on multiple instruments. (Expert bass is an insane workout.) There are some keyboard-heavy songs that have surprisingly fun guitar charts, such as “Centerfold” and “Power of Love,” and of course, “Beast and the Harlot” remains one of the best guitar songs you’ll ever play. Most of the charts are pretty solid, so even if you’re only interested in guitar, you’ll get your money’s worth out of RB3. Â
But of course, that doesn’t mean there are a few clunkers that should have been left on the cutting room floor. “Radar Love” is a 6-minute snoozefest. Phish’s “Llama” is less a guitar chart than an annoying exercise in chord memorization. And if I never have to play through the awful first five minutes of “Freebird” again, I’ll be a happy guy.
Typically, this is where the game would normally begin for me. I’d go through the setlist, look for places where I can make the biggest score improvements, and start what would probably be a slow grind towards 14 million. But with Rock Band 3, that’ll have to wait, because there are other instruments to tackle. Guitar will probably get shelved for a bit as I jump to Expert vocals, and then keyboards after that.
And keyboards are proving to be pretty popular, at least with the expert community. At last look, the in-game Pro guitar leaderboards were a wasteland, with only 60 people having posted a single score (I knew Pro guitar would start slow, but that’s even slower than I thought). But the Pro keyboard leaderboards are hopping, as I have 30 people from my friends list alone who have posted scores. That’s over a quarter of my 100-person friends list playing Pro keyboards. It’s a shame that Score Duel was removed from the game, as it might have been interesting to see some Pro keyboards competitive play.