Rock Band (XBOX 360)

- nice faq:
http://www.rockband.com/index.php?q=faq
- Pre-ordered way in advance from gamestop. Picked it up launch day for $170. Includes game, drums, guitar, and microphone.
- Solo play takes kind of a back seat to multiplayer especially the world tour mode.
- Online works fine but the omission of world tour over live is just stupid.
- Having characters tied to a gamertag, which are tied to an instrument, and bands having band leaders that must always be present (and you can't change leaders) is just again really stupid and inflexible.
- If you want to play over live, everybody local MUST have a live gold account, again stupid.
UPDATE: Thanks to Corby for the tip. The way it works is that non gold members should NOT sign in with their gamer tag instead need to be guests under the gold gamer tag. Once you do it that way then all local players can play over live under a single gold live account.
- The guitar is pretty much crap: flaky tilt sensor (I tried two different ones that had the exact same issue), mushy strum, down strum breaks easily (had this happen on one of the guitars after about 4 hrs of use) though here is a fix:
http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=40188
- Guitar difficulty is overall easier and ramps up better than Guitar Hero 3. I think I like circles more than rectangles for the notes. Also I thought the shorter rectangle indicator for hammer downs/pull offs are a bit harder to spot.
- GH 3 and 2 guitars work with rock band but the rock band guitar doesn't work with guitar hero.
- Earn while you burn star power is nice. Ability to save band members is great.
- Microphone is nice and made by logitech. Plays pretty much like karaoke revolution.
- The drums are the best and work great. This is by far my favorite instrument. There is quite a steep learning curve. It took me 6 hrs before I got comfortable with medium. Once you feel and "get" it, it's loads of fun.
- Set list is better than GH3.
- Graphics are better too. I really like the character creation with tons of options to customize.
- Very extensive calibration options for those who have hdtv lag.
- Getting a full band together is a blast. This is the best party game ever. We had lots of friends and family over thanksgiving and everybody loved it. You need at minimum 2 players to create a band and do the main world tour mode.

Highly recommended if you can get at least 2 players. If you are buying this for single player then maybe wait until they sell the drums individually.