Sound, Gameplay, and Peripherals Compared
Sound
Sound wasn't an area where I expected to be comparing the two games. After all, as long as both games have the songs in digital sound, what's the difference? The difference, and it's big in my book, is the crowd noise. The crowds in Guitar Hero III clap and cheer and get rowdy but they never really sound big. Even the larger venues don't sound like you're playing to thousands of people. On the other hand, the crowds in Rock Band will sing parts of the song if you play well enough.
It's a familiar sound to anyone who attends rock concerts and is such a simple addition to the game soundtrack. I couldn't really hear it until I hooked Rock Band up in a full surround sound room but the difference was like night and day. It may sound like a small feature, but when I'm playing Rock Band now I'm always striving to get the audience to sing. Hearing the entire audience belt out the chorus to "Enter Sandman" or "Epic" while I'm ripping through the guitar riff is the kind of thing that will keep me coming back to Rock Band for a while.
Winner - Rock Band
Gameplay
The actual gameplay of Guitar Hero III and Rock Band are extremely similar yet not identical. There are subtle differences between the two that affect your experience. The first thing to know about Rock Band is that it suffers terribly from calibration issues. I've set up Rock Band at a number of different places on many different TVs and every time I have to recalibrate it three or four times at each location. If the calibration is off even a little bit it can mean the difference between drumming like Keith Moon and drumming like...well, like you. These calibration issues mean that everywhere you play the game it will feel slightly different. That's good for customizing it to your liking - if you have the patience - but it's bad for a standardization of play.
Guitar Hero III's Xavier Stone.
Another component of the gameplay is the way the notes are set in each song. The songs in Rock Band are transcribed with fewer notes and chords but the window of opportunity to hit each note is smaller. At first glance, it appears that the game is much easier because you're seeing fewer notes but you'll find them harder to hit in the solos than on Guitar Hero III. Guitar Hero III throws more notes at you but is also more forgiving about when you can hit them. This subtle difference between the two means that you may find Guitar Hero III to be more rewarding and Rock Band to be more punishing. It's a very delicate balancing act between the two - the difference is probably in milliseconds - but it can be the difference between having fun and being frustrated when trying to hit every part of a 12-note hammer-on run.
The other big problem with Rock Band is the way profiles are used. Characters, songs lists and even calibration settings are tied to profiles and profiles are tied to instruments in the multiplayer. It's a nuisance when you're playing with four people locally but if you're playing online it's downright chaos. Changing instruments in an online band means you have to log out on one instrument and log in to the Xbox Live enabled account on another. It becomes even more complicated since characters you create are all tied to a single profile. That means in multiplayer games, if the wrong person logs in under the wrong profile, none of the characters will show up. Have fun figuring out how to get the character list to appear every time. You might also consider coming up with a unified field theory while you're at it. Rock Band's problems are not deal-breakers, but they do take some getting used to.
Winner - Guitar Hero III
Peripherals
Almost all of the fun of Rock Band and Guitar Hero III is tied into the peripherals. Hand someone that guitar controller or microphone and they immediately know what's going on. Both games come with guitar controllers, yet there are many differences between the two. The Guitar Hero III guitar is modeled after the Les Paul Gibson shape and retains the classic Guitar Hero look and feel with the difference being the buttons are only colored at the edges. The Rock Band guitar follows the look of the classic Fender Stratocaster and deviates from the Guitar Hero model. Most notably is the addition of another set of five buttons way up on the neck to be used for solos.
These buttons can be tapped without strumming during solo sections of the songs to make hitting those fast notes a little easier - although the transition from the two sets is difficult enough. The other differences are in the button configuration and the strum bar. The Rock Band strum bar is softer without the "click" from the previous guitar controllers. This change results in quieter strumming, but the buttons' layout is actually noticeably louder. The buttons are set flush with the guitar neck, which makes it look more like a real guitar but it also makes it harder to slide hand positions and not get lost. There are numerous reports of Rock Band guitar strum bars breaking, which is something to consider since you can't buy the guitars separately yet. EA has been replacing faulty guitars with a quick turnaround time.
Rock Band's other peripherals are almost perfect. The microphone is a real mic with the look and weight that goes with it and the drums are practically a full electronic drum kit. I always felt that the drum peripheral would be the saving grace for Rock Band, and I was not disappointed. The drumming is closer to playing real drums than the guitar is to playing real guitar, and because of this, the learning curve is steeper. The flaw of the drums is that the "thwack" of the stick hitting the pad is very loud, especially when you're playing energetically. There are a number of forum posts on different methods of quieting the drums, but it can also be overcome by turning up your sound system. I expected to call this one for Rock Band just on the basis of including a quality mic and the drums, but their noise and the faulty guitars are factors as well.
Winner - TIE
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