Since I don't have a second guitar (yet), how does co-op evaluate your star rating if the two players are set at two different difficulties? Or are you forced to play on the same difficulty?

Also - kudos to my wife, who finished 5*'ing all the songs on easy and has graduated to medium. The blue button is giving her problems.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that certain co-op combinations on certain songs are impossible to 5*, actually.

That is true. Star rankings for coop are based entirely off score and having nothing to do with note streak, % hit or difficulty. I forget the formula they use but I think it's based off the 5* medium score. Playing on Easy will make it difficult to get 5*s on coop.

For co-op, there is a fixed set of points for each co-op song. Unlike Face-Off, where if one person is playing on Easy and the other on Expert, the person on Easy will get more points per correct strum.

On co-op, every base point is worth 50 points. Therefore, you wouldn't be able to five-star a song on Easy/Easy, even with 100% completion, because there wouldn't be enough notes to yield a five-star rating. In order to five-star a song on co-op, it would probably have to be expert/expert, expert/hard, or maybe even hard/hard for some songs.

I looked it up:

Cooperative Mode
2 * combined_medium_base_score = the 4-star cutoff
2 * combined_expert_base_score = the 5-star cutoff

Where combined_medium_base_score is the sum of the base scores for lead and either rhythm or bass on medium, and similarly for expert. Base score is the score you would get for hitting every note but only receiving a 1x multiplier the entire time (i.e. every note was hit and worth 50 pts).

That may sound very difficult to 5* but most songs played well on medium/medium can probably be 5 starred. Playing on hard/hard if you can both 4* the song, chances are you will get 5* on coop.

Well, I've had the 360 version long enough to go through all of the songs on expert. I must say, the guitar is horrible compared to the old SG's. It just doesn't work with how I rest my arm while I play. Songs I could easily 5* before I'm struggling with. The select button annoys me. The square buttons annoy me. blah blah blah. Topping it all of my whammy bar decided to break last night. I've had it for maybe a week. My original SG probably has 300+ hours of play time on between my friends and I, it and still works fine. I exchanged the game for a new one, but I think I'm just going to sell it and see if they change the design of the guitar. I'm very unimpressed. Funny thing is I bought a 360 just to play this...

A guy from GameSpy posted a handful of "Rocks the 80's" videos.

http://media.ps2.gamespy.com/media/8...70/vids_1.html

The game is supposedly more about the fun of the songs (rock-out factor) than the difficulty, although Play With Me is clearly insane. I also read a preview that said while it hasn't been announced yet, there is one that may be the most fun of any song on the series yet.

Plus, I Want Candy has apparently been pulled from the game with no specific reason given. No word on whether that drops the song count or if one replaces it, but since it is in the version currently being used for previews (and there are no extra or bonus songs), I'm guessing we just get the rest of the 29.

Nice. I was gonna say Play With Me seemed a little on the easy side, but the solo certainly looks fun. I think they dumbed the song down a little bit from the original version, but Bettencourts stuff might be too hard for thier studio guy It's an acceptable cover though so I'm satisfied.

Yeah, I just watched all of those. I need this game to come out...NOW! Looks like fun. I guess this seals the deal for me about selling my 360 version and sticking with the ps2 until they release a different guitar.

The adapter they made to play the PS2 games on the PS3 are still worthless junk right? I can see myself getting this game for the PS3 if a proper adapter is out by then. I had heard the current excuse for an adapter is pretty difficult and a real pain in the ass. I love me some 80s music and I am pretty pumped for this. If I knew it was going to be 360 downloadable content later on I could talk myself into waiting but the PS2 exclusive deal really has me wanting to buy the controller all over again for the PS2.

White Lion's version of Radar Love is apparently going to be in it according to a worthplaying.com preview.

Sweet! While I can think of probably 10 White Lion songs I'd rather see on there before Radar Love it's still a cool song and should be relatively fun to play even if it is pretty long.

I went ahead and started a new thread for GH Encore:

Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s - PS2 - July 24th

Hope that's cool with everybody. . .

White Lion had 10 songs? Other than Wait and The Children Cry, I can't remember any others.

They didn't have any that were huge hits like that but they were a great band. Vito Bratta is one of my favorite guitarists... very similar in style and skill to Eddie Van Halen. He's also one of the few guitarists I like who can play cool hard rock/metal songs in a major key. White Lion is happy fun music most of the time which makes them stand out for me.

If you're interested in hearing more check out:
"Don't Give Up", "Lady of the Valley", "Tell Me", "Goin' Home Tonight", "Little Fighter", "Broken Home", "Don't Say It's Over", "Broken Heart", "War Song" or "Farewell To You". Thats 10 great songs that aren't "Wait" or "When The Children Cry"

I'm just messin' I had Pride but I didn't fall in love with Big Game. I was a drummer back then so my limited knowledge of guitarists was more about Satriani, Malmsteen, Schenker, Vai, Gilbert, and Van Halen.

Question about Hush on expert - has it been confirmed that there are two blue notes in the song that are displayed as HO but actually need to be strummed?

I thought I was going to be done with this game after 5*'ing all the songs but now I'm trying to climb up the leaderboards. It's like a sickness. So now I'm trying to gold star songs with some easy solos, like Hush, and then I kept failing at this one note - and I verified in practice that this one blue note (the first blue note after the second set of star notes) that kept giving me problems needed to be strummed for the note to register.

So, does anyone know if that's it for downloadable content? 9 songs is the most ever available for any 360 title?

They are supposed to announce more downloadable content in July.

Cool, thanks. I've been going nuts waiting and checking xbox live.

Wait they are including 'Radar Love' but instead of the real version they are having White Lion do it???? That's just GROSS

no, White Lion already did a cover of Radar Love back in the late 80's/early 90's. This version of Radar Love is the one going to be in game.

Anyone here full combo trogdor on expert? Is the last set of fast notes in the solo even possible? I'm sitting in the top 30 on that song but I can't for the life of me nail the notes no matter how fast I strum.

As far as I know it's impossible. I don't think it's physically possible to strum fast enough to get the really fast single note thing and I've never heard of anyone even able to do it once on practice mode.

No wonder I'm so high up on the charts Maybe I can figure something out with the 360 guitar and strumming on both the bar and the D-pad.