Having now gone through both songs on the Green Day demo multiple times on multiple instruments, I thought I’d share some thoughts on the demo for those of you who may not have had a chance to grab it yet.
Song Selection: “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “Welcome to Paradise” seem an odd choice for a demo, to me. Sure, “Paradise” is a fine little song, but Dookie is filled with better (and in more popular) songs. And sure, “Boulevard” is one of the band’s biggest recent hits, but it’s almost painfully easy, even on Expert. It almost seems to reinforce the impression that a game based on a pop-punk band can’t possibly be challenging or interesting — an impression that’s easily dispelled by “Welcome to Paradise,” but still.
And speaking of “Paradise”…
Difficulty: “Boulevard” may be so easy that it borders on boring, but “Paradise” most definitely is not. I am ashamed to say that I failed out on bass — on bass, fer chrissakes — more than once on Expert. And let’s not even talk about drums; the beat isn’t particularly challenging, it’s just frantic as hell, and I’m not remotely up to the challenge on Expert…in fact, I struggled to get through on Hard, which is something I’ve almost never run into before. Even the guitar parts are challenging thanks to a lot of switching up chords and triple-time transitions. For a song that sounds so simple, the difficulty is frankly shocking. The only part that’s really well within my ability on Expert is vocals.
And speaking of vocals…
Harmonies: This may be the real reason “Paradise” was included: The three-part harmonies do a really good job of showing off the differences in harmony styles between Green Day and the Beatles. (But again, “Boulevard” is dramatically inferior in this regard, with only two-part harmonies that don’t add a lot to the gameplay experience.) The meeting-and-diverging melodies in the chorus are a great exhibit of the kind of thing I saw in the rest of the game when I played it at PAX. And I don’t know how I missed this when playing Beatles, but the ability to enable harmonies even when singing solo makes it particularly fun to hop back and forth between the different parts. I could easily see jumping in on backing vocals even when playing on drums.
And speaking of drums…
Drum Fills: Here’s one little element of the game I hadn’t noticed before: In spite of the fact that you can now play full custom drum fills at the appropriate moments to trigger Overdrive (unlike Beatles, in which you’d just tap Green at specific spots), you can’t fiddle around on drums before the song starts like in the main Rock Band games. Not a huge deal, certainly, but I always had fun messing around before the drums kick in, and I’m a little surprised you can’t here. I can’t imagine Green Day was as protective of the integrity of their songs as the Beatles shareholders were, especially given the inclusion of fills. But who knows?
Have you had a chance to check out the demo yet? What’s your impression?
Yeah….. Paradise whuped my arse on the guitar…. I’ll go back and try it again at some point later on I think, but to be honest I’m not in a rush to do so.
It was very pretty, and slick as hell, which I was impressed with, and the few other things I noticed were pretty minor, and ones that will vanish over time:-
1) The chime of a star has changed. It’s subtle, but now it sounds more like a chime than a ding… I barely noticed it the first time, just heard…. something that stood out. After that I was watching for it and when it cropped up the second time I definitely noticed it. After that it just washes over me – much much less intrusive than the ding in RB2… some people may or may not think this was a good idea.
2) Overdrive makes a more noticable sound as you charge it and also when you use it. That was much more distracting than the chime was. I know I’ll shut it out eventually, but that one surprised me every time it happened. Sometimes it was enough to throw me off pattern, especially in Paradise.
3) Visually stunning. There’s no other way to describe it, and the videos don’t do it justice. Seeing it on my tv, with all the little touches was phenominal. I especially liked the pyros at the end of Boulevard.
4) WHERE’S MY BREAKNECK SPEED?!?!?!? (ok prolly removed from the demo…)
Oh, your comments about the sounds remind me: Was it just me, or are the “screwing up” sounds louder or otherwise different? I was surprised by how loud they were when playing bass…but perhaps that’s because I don’t normally screw up that much!
Those “triple-time transitions” in Paradise really threw me off, I have to say. I enjoyed the demo, even though it was essentially what I was expecting. I’m a little surprised we got a demo at all. I mean, isn’t this the first demo for a RB game on the home consoles?