So I've been dorking out playing Rock Bank for the last few hours or so and I have to say, I'm surprisingly disappointed. Maybe I just had expectations that were way to high. I also didn't like Guitar Hero 3 the first week I played it so maybe it will grow on me.

I have a few issues with it. First, either my guitar is broken or the new strum bar just sucks ass (I can hear something banging around inside the guitar). It's loose, mushy and just feels like crap. I like that it's much quieter than the previous guitars and I love the new design (looks like a Fender Startocaster). It's much larger and feels much more like a real guitar in your hands. The addition of the smaller fret buttons at the bottom of the fret board is nice but they just don't work that well. It's not smooth to move between them and the raised bumps on them are too small to easily find your place. Given that you can't really look down you should be able to feel this very easily, maybe it will just take me some time to get used to it.

Don't get me started on the drums. Yes, they are built very well and look like they will take a lot of abuse. It is hard to get comfortable with them, you can't really sit on a couch and need to sit on a real chair to play them well. The issue is they track oddly, or maybe my TV just isn't calibrated properly. I've tried to play them three times (remember, I can sorta play drums, certainly enough to keep a beat with real musicians) and each time I'm getting boo'ed off. I can't see how, I'm right in beat with what I hear so maybe I'm just retarded.

Don't get me started on the USB hub. I mean I know that they didn't need to go nice here but come on, this thing is a tiny piece of shit with a very short power cord. When this system is almost $200 can't you give me a nicer hub than this? The packaging of the whole system sucks (looks like something for a factory, not a "cool" game). Oh, and from what I can tell so far my mic doesn't work at all, or at least when I plug it in the game tells me there is no mic connected. Bargh!

So I gotta say after playing a few hours I wish I hadn't spent the almost $200 on this. I'll post back in a few days, I did read that single player is pretty weak so on Thanksgiving I'll be taking it to a friends house where 4 of us can play all at once. That will be the real test... Man I hope it lives up to the hype! I will let you know in a few days, right now I'm back to Guitar Hero 3 for some fun...