Ditto. I've been burned too many times to even give GH5 a shot. I may not even rent it since the setlist doesn't do much for me.

DJ Hero, on the other hand, wasn't developed by Neversoft and looks to be right up my alley.

LETS DO THIS!

You could try and check the displayed cases at your local Blockbuster...the ones by me leave the manuals in them more than half the time, so you might be able to find a code that hasn't yet been redeemed...
(I'm waiting for Smash Hits to be importable as I have a "rented" code from the manual just waiting to be entered...)

Changing the subject:
EPIC WIN for me yesterday at a local Target for GH: Metallica....I was waiting to pick it up once it dropped to $20 or below...well, they had just restocked (or moved around) the games in the locked glass cases, and they had put all their copies of the PS3 version in a row with a price tag of $19.99...turned out it was supposed to be for the PS2 version of the game, but they gave it to me at the lower price, plus I had my $5 off coupon for it from GH5, so I was out the door for $15!

One last observation, this one about GH5:
If you are a big Nirvana fan, I'd have to give the edge to the GH series right now* for that band....even if there was no creepy Kurt Cobain avatar in the game....
Rock Band (which I am a bigger fan of overall) only has Nevermind minus three of its four big singles....now, with two of those missing songs in GH5, the importing of one from GH:WT, the six carried over DLC, and soon the one from Smash Hits, GH has more Nirvana songs as well as a much greater variety from their catalog....

*RB has said more Nirvana DLC is on the way, though it may just be the other three Nevermind tracks to complete the album....

Personally I'd much rather play the non radio tracks from Nevermind than the missing singles, so I'm much happier with what I have in RB.

I would love to see the big singles from Nevermind come to Rock Band. The recent "big artists" tease from Harmonix did mention Nirvana, so I've got my fingers crossed. That's currently a pretty big coup for GH5 in my mind.

That same tease mentioned Queen, and we've learned that there are 12 Queen songs en route. Hopefully Nirvana can be just as epic.

WEll, Bleach is being reissued for the 20 year anniversary.

Isn't that Sub-Pop that's all up on RBN? Anyway, wrong thread...

...and Sub Pop is superenthused about the prospect of saddling up next to Rock Band anyway. "Bleach" seems like a very good bet to me.

Your family sounds like the specific group they're targeting with the forthcoming Band Hero game, actually. (Wikipedia article on it here.)

My wife and I took our GH:WT game with us to visit friends a few months ago and played on their Wii. We inserted the game and then decided to access the online store to download Stan Bush's "The Touch" (which is still free). We had no problem, and did not need to enter any codes from the manual or anything else. We just opened the online store and made our selection. We could have purchased songs, but our friends were out of Wii Points and didn't want to cough up any money at the time. Whether this is just a Wii thing, or representative of other consoles vis a vis DLC, I cannot say.

While I'm not super impressed with the tracklist for GH:5, the tracklist for Band Hero does not appeal to me at all. Honestly, the main reason I went for Legends of Rock was for the tracklist, it has lots of songs that I love. And I was surprised to find that many songs that I would not normally consider myself a fan of, were a lot of fun to play (such as Welcome to the Jungle). Personally, I'm geared heavily toward the guitar, since I play a little, and my basic skill level allowed me to quickly get the hang of the game. I find even playing bass to be boring quite often, so playing with someone else who is not very skilled is not that much fun. Either I play bass on Med or Hard and not have much fun while they play guitar on easy or medium, or I have fun on guitar while they play a boring Easy bass part. That's why I think being able to have multiple people play guitar, on different skill levels, would be a lot of fun. Drums would probably be fun, so if I can get cheap drums, and be able to play drums in Metallica, GH:5, and Van Halen, that sounds pretty good to me.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I'll probably rent GH:5 tonight or tomorrow, and ask my neighbor if I can borrow their Rock Band 2 disc to compare.

I get why you'd be less interested in Band Hero, but your description of the wife and kids and their taste/interest sounded more in line with that game to me. Of course, if you had girls, you'd have to buy it so they could play three Taylor Swift songs using the Taylor Swift avatar.

THIS to the Nth and then some.

Sympathy for the Devil in GH5 on drums can eat a bag of dicks. Maybe the least fun 6 minutes in my life ever. (Although outside of that, I'm actually having a lot of fun on drums in the game thus far. More than guitar. Now if only they didn't sound so quiet. )

Nah, the wife is into cool music (Weezer, Foo, etc, plus we both enjoy 80's stuff from our teen years, and can appreciate the classic rock stuff), she just stops short of the heavy metal. And we've gotten our two young boys into cool music, but there's only so many Metallica songs that are appropriate for a 5 and 6 year old. They do love Seek and Destroy, even though Mom kind of cringes at the "Dying one thousand deaths" line.

And while I'm not the biggest Van Halen fan, they are such a guitar-centric band that I think lots of their songs would be fun to play.

FYI, Rock Band 2 on Wii is not compatible with Guitar Hero instruments.

False: http://www.rockband.com/compatibility

I apologize. I was attempting to do some research on his behalf, and the site I read it from mislead me. Should've gone to the official source (but it's blocked from work). Thanks for correcting me.

I was going to post that.

I really like the animations they did with the avatars, and being able to see my big daddy helmet from behind

And yeah, the sound needs a lot of improvement.

I think the audio still has some problems but is at least an improvement over their previous games. They still do the 'drenched in reverb' stuff too much but at least they have upgraded their reverb algorithm somewhat so it isn't the worst-sounding-reverb-ever anymore, and it's been dialed back a bit.

The UI in general is so much better it seems like different people worked on it. I actually think even the font works well, personally. Avatars are a very fun addition. Nice to see they cleaned up the runway too.

Being able to save people who fail just makes the game more fun, period. Leaderboards still seem to be a mess though, unless I just don't get it.

Haven't tried the online...or any other instruments besides guitar yet.

Kind of annoyed that the Hendrix DLC doesn't work though. Not sure it was worth buying for only GH4, which I would prefer to never play again.

My only main complaint right now is I wish there was an easy way to see how many challenges you had completed (like a screen that say x number of challenges done gold, platinum etc.) so I'd know how many more until an achievement etc. without having to actually count all the ones I've done... also, the fact that the guitarhero website doesn't allow you to link GH5 at the moment is pretty weak...

2 questions:

Do GH games sound real low in comparison to Rock Band? I play RB on 17 (my sound settings on my TV) and I have to play GH at 27 and it doesn't sound right, like something's missing. RB has so much energy to it's sound with the crowd & the blend of instruments, but GH sounds like a bad mix...as a matter of fact, when I play Born to Run I can barely hear Bruce's voice at all.

Can you use your avatar to play in GH? Is that what everyone is talking about?

Yes. Overall the franchise has sounded muffled and "bad" for many games now. Espeically in direct comparison to RB.

Correct.

I don't understand how you can make a game that's all about music and not be able to make the sound quality decent.

Doing something with music doesn't automatically make you know what you are doing with music

The insane clown posse has been around for a long time and they still haven't figured out how to make themselves sound decent. Just saying