Rock Band 3

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2010-06-10-rockband10_ST_N.htm

Most notable addition is the keyboard. There's also a Pro Mode, which requires all new peripherals which are, apparently, basically real instruments that work with the game to teach you how to play guitar and stuff.

http://gamerant.com/rock-band-3-instruments-revealed-jeff-24932/

The instruments. One of them actually is a real guitar that's been programmed to work with the game.

Current confirmed setlist:

2000s
Combat Baby -- Metric
Dead End Friends -- Them Crooked Vultures
Get Free -- The Vines
Lasso -- Phoenix
Me Enamora -- Juanes
Oh My God -- Ida Maria
Portions of Foxes -- Rilo Kiley
The Hardest Button to Button -- The White Stripes

1990s
Been Caught Stealing -- Jane's Addiction
In the Meantime -- Spacehog
Plush -- Stone Temple Pilots
Walkin' on the Sun -- Smash Mouth

1980s
Crazy Train -- Ozzy Osbourne
Here I Go Again -- Whitesnake
I Love Rock and Roll -- Joan Jett
Just Like Heaven -- The Cure
Rainbow in the Dark -- Dio
The Power of Love -- Huey Lewis and the News
Sister Christian -- Night Ranger

1960s-1970s
Bohemian Rhapsody -- Queen
Break On Through -- The Doors
Crosstown Traffic -- Jimi Hendrix

Personally, even thought I almost certainly won't bother with any of the new instruments, I'm pretty excited to see how this all works out.

Oh, Harmonix also announced that from now on, each song released will use all 5 buttons for all difficulty settings. So easy will now use the blue and orange buttons, and medium will use the orange button. But the point isn't to make them more difficult to play, they say. Each song should be as easy with 5 buttons as it would be with 3.

I assume it's to get people used to 5 buttons so they don't feel intimidated by the higher difficulties and stop playing at medium.

A_Nonny_Moose wrote:

Oh, Harmonix also announced that from now on, each song released will use all 5 buttons for all difficulty settings. So easy will now use the blue and orange buttons, and medium will use the orange button. But the point isn't to make them more difficult to play, they say. Each song should be as easy with 5 buttons as it would be with 3.

I assume it's to get people used to 5 buttons so they don't feel intimidated by the higher difficulties and stop playing at medium.

That's a pretty good idea.

You know what's even more awesome? Go look up Guitar Hero 6 and then come back and read about Rock Band 3. It's mind blowing.

Harmonix are divine!

It really is mind blowing.

Guitar Hero 6 has a pretty decent setlist, though.
It has Arch Enemy, Slipknot, Avenged Sevenfold, Queen, AFI (dunno, I just kinda like them), Slayer, Five Finger Death Punch, Megadeth, Pantera, Children of Bodom, KISS, Ozzy Osbourne, Atreyu, Muse, Them Crooked Vultures, AND an entire concept album by Rush.

I bought this today. I love it. Even all the songs I already had feel new somehow. Only got the game, no bundles or new instruments because I can't really afford it at the moment. I'd quite like to get a drumset once I have the room.

Anyway, I love the game. The long career mode that was based around the difficulty scale is gone, thank God. In RB2's tour mode you went around tons of venues, and each had about 3 setlists for you to play, and the as the venues got bigger the songs got harder. But it was sloooow. You ended up playing the same group of about 10 songs for a couple of venues, and then another 10 songs for the next few venues, and so on. And you had to play through this to unlock all the songs.

Now you just have Road Challenges. Each one is a single setlist, and they get you rewards and stuff. But what's better is that quick play now counts towards your career. You can achieve goals and gain fans from quick play. All the songs are unlocked right from the start, and every song will get you fans, not just the RB3 setlist.

You don't earn any money this time around. You have to unlock instruments and clothing by clearing goals. I was wary of this, but there's only a small selection of items that are locked. Most of the stuff is available right off the bat. I managed to remake my RB2 band almost exactly as they were in RB2 without unlocking anything.

The setlist sorting system is much more comprehensive. You can arrange the order by difficulty, artist, song name, and all that stuff. But you can also filter stuff now, which is a massive help if you have a lot of songs. So you can, for example, list only RB3 songs, or only DLC songs, or only songs that are shorter than 4 minutes. It can all be mixed and matched. Score tracking is a lot better as well. It shows your score, note %, stars, what difficulty you got the score on, and you can choose what instrument scores you want displayed.

The pause menu has improved. You can now skip songs and switch difficulty on the fly (which admittedly is something Guitar Hero has been doing for ages). Another great feature is that if you fail a song (in quick play at least, don't know about the challenges), you get the option to continue playing but from the point you failed in a kind of practice mode.

I also like that your band is now featured on the menu screens, walking in slow motion and looking cool and stuff.

A few small things annoy me though. The game automatically switches out for a male or female singer depending on the song, so you can't always have the same character singing. Even if you have a single sex band, where everyone is male or female, the game still switches the drummer and vocalist around for songs where a woman sings. The character's heads are all slightly too big as well. The character models are just chunkier in general, but you get used to it.

Also, either the timing is a tiny bit stricter, or the calibration is slightly worse, because I'm finding alt strumming and pull offs a little bit harder in RB3 than in RB2.

Shit yes, I plan on getting it. Been waiting for it for a few months.

Oh, and they have the countdown after you unpause now, rather than the song immediately starting up. The song actually rewinds a bit and starts playing with a blank chart, and the notes start appearing from the moment in the song where you paused. It's even better than just having a straightforward countdown.

I really want this but i don't have guitars. I do have singstar mics so those work?

I also wouldn't mind that keyboard, the drums i want but the space they take up is ridiculous.

I also wanna hear about this learning to play instruments you mentioned way back.

Most third party controllers should work, although I don't know about mics. I think there was a problem with mics on RB2. You can play the guitar and bass charts with the keyboard too, if that's all you get. I'm still using the guitar I got with GH:WT.

And the pro-mode is basically just playing the song. They're making a real guitar that's compatible with the game, that can sense where your fingers are on the neck and stuff, and instead of the little coloured blocks the chart will be strings and chord numbers and stuff.

I'm guessing the keyboard controller will effectively teach you to play the piano though right?

If anyone has singstar mics and tried these though let me know. I'm kinda curious about those, i know that the beatles rockband came with those so i assume they work.

Pro-keys will. There's a normal option with just the 5 coloured blocks for the keyboard as well.

I'd consider getting the keyboard at some stage, but I'll probably just use the GH guitar I have. No clue about the mics, try asking on gamefaqs?

Oh, and the final song is Free Bird.

Honestly i just want an easy way to pick up piano i can read music and such and play to an extent but its all self taught and i can't be assed with using books or lessons so this will have to do. I guess i should hold off to wait for these pro guitars.

Just play an ordinary guitar, Buu

The Singstar mics should work, I think, as they are plugged in with a USB cable.

You can now save setlists as well, if there's a particular list of songs you like to play in a particular order.

Why, that's brilliant!
Is this game better than Rock Band 2?

Yes.

Although, the on-disc setlist isn't that great. RB2's is better. But you can get it cheap and export to RB3.

I don't think RB2 has even been released here...