Bandfuse Catch-all (An upcoming "real guitar" music game/trainer)

Well, would you look at that. I thought these guys had just closed up shop after the RS2014 announcement. They've been completely silent for two months now.

Hi - We have announced our North American ship date of November 19th. We will have more news on our release dates Europe and Japan soon. BandFuse will release on X360 and PS3 and additional details on the set list will be made public closer to launch. Thanks for your patience and stay tuned for more announcements and contests in the coming weeks!

- The Artist Pack ($69.99 MSRP) includes the BandFuse: Rock Legends game and 1/4” to USB guitar cable (Xbox 360 also contains an Audio Adapter and headphone extension cable).

- The Band Pack($79.99 MSRP) includes two guitar cables, a microphone, multi-port instrument hub, and an acoustic guitar adapter.

- The Guitar Bundle includes the BandFuse: Rock Legends game, guitar cable, and authentic Fender Squier guitar (MSRP to be announced at a future date).

Wow! I thought the same with them passing on their July 1st announcment coming and going.

These guys really need to reevaluate how they're handling PR. I was super excited for this when it was first announced, but the really low amount of interaction they've had (from what I've personally seen) with their community has slowly stripped that away. I'm still happy that it's hitting but radio-silence after the new Rocksmith announcement has done nothing but hurt their chances of success. I wonder if there were some behind-the-scenes things going down that they just didn't want to talk about.

Coldstream wrote:

These guys really need to reevaluate how they're handling PR. I was super excited for this when it was first announced, but the really low amount of interaction they've had (from what I've personally seen) with their community has slowly stripped that away. I'm still happy that it's hitting but radio-silence after the new Rocksmith announcement has done nothing but hurt their chances of success. I wonder if there were some behind-the-scenes things going down that they just didn't want to talk about.

Thats the feeling i got. There was some noise at the start of their project about some of the rights on their song list. Just attributed it all to that. Or that the new Rocksmith announcment cause them to take a step back and adjust to be at least on the same level.

So obviously Rocksmith 2014 is the new hotness, but the Bandfuse guys are cranking up the press machine in an attempt to bail water. They posted this video today and it's the best BF video I've ever seen. ( ) They show song filtering options I was hoping RS14 would have. It also shows the playback save function, but no mention of whether you can dump them off the Xbox or not.

I think that they made an absolutely critical mistake in letting RS2014 hit before their offering does. They still have some differentiation, primarily in learning Tab from what I understand, but they've given themselves a very tough row to hoe to try to convince all of the RS2014 buyers that they need to make another purchase. I'm still not clear what all the delays and near radio-silence were about, but I'm hoping they do well enough to provide a competitor to the Rocksmith guys.

I'm hoping it's licensing issues and not gameplay ones.

Is that the official interface? Because they're using the Rock Band icons on Player 1 & 2 (Guitar & Bass)...

Yeah, that's been pointed out since they first started showing shots. Supposedly they're buddies with Harmonix and got the approval for some assets.

The Bandfuse guys are doing a livestream NOW.

LiquidMantis wrote:

The Bandfuse guys are doing a livestream NOW.

Thanks, dude, watching intently.

The scrolling tab format looks tough to read at speed.

The compression and framerate conversion doesn't do it any favors either though. But I think it'll mostly be about practicing and using it more as visual cues rather than literal reading the full part at speed.

LiquidMantis wrote:

The compression and framerate conversion doesn't do it any favors either though. But I think it'll mostly be about practicing and using it more as visual cues rather than literal reading the full part at speed.

I did consider that - I think the main thing is that it seems to take up such a tiny part of the screen. All that extra space seems wasted.
I appreciated the speed and accessibility of the "lick lab", though the riff repeater is so much better now I'm not sure that advantage is all that useful.

A final thought is it looks like all those endorsed mentors are a total waste - the videos they showed were not remotely close to teaching anything. It was like, "I kinda go -" WAAAAAHHH!! "then I just - " WEREEEEE!!! "and that's how you do a pinch harmonic."

I've gotten surprisingly good at reading the highway in RS2014 even at speed... and there are some fast ones (Cowboys From Hell comes to mind). I bet after an adjustment period reading the BF tab highway at speed would become second nature, too. Though, I did actually teach myself a lot of guitar when I was younger using tab and I never got to the point where I could sight-read it at speed.

I like the guitar track ducking a whole lot. Being able to completely replace the song's guitar track with my guitar is a killer feature. I suspect I'll hold off on a purchase until more DLC becomes available to see what kind of momentum they develop. I realize that's exactly counterproductive for them -- they'll almost certainly have to base DLC amount on sales and if sales aren't high enough they'll have to ditch -- but I can't help their market placement. If they put enough quality songs out there I might have to give it a shot.

I was disappointed with what they showed of the videos too. They said they have "something big" still so we'll see I guess.

My other big concern is that I now consider Rocksmith the "forward proof" solution. I don't really want to invest in Bandfuse DLC given that it's tied to a sunsetting platform. If I really like the system and they have exclusive content I'll buy the stuff I really want to learn but I'll be a lot less impulsive in my "gotta collect 'em all" type purchasing. Which is disappointing because most of the on disk content is redundant and I think they're supposed to have 45 songs as day one DLC.

ColdForged wrote:

I like the guitar track ducking a whole lot. Being able to completely replace the song's guitar track with my guitar is a killer feature.

Yeah, this is one of the primary factors for me too. That and the more "band" oriented approach that I hope makes for a nice hybrid of Rock Band casual party game (for vocals at least) and the more utilitarian Rocksmith trainer. I tried breaking out Rocksmith at the family gathering last Christmas and it fizzled whereas we had put in big Rock Band sessions in the past.

Bandfuse on-disk setlist was fully revealed:

Songs From In-Game Legends

Slash “Black From Cali”
Bootsy Collins “Rock Bandit”
Five Finger Death Punch “The Bleeding”
Lynch Mob “Wicked Sensation”
Mike Ness/Social Distortion “Bad Luck”
Zakk Wylde/Black Label Society “Overlord”

BandFuse: Rock Legends Set List:

2000s

Stellar Revival “The Crazy Ones”
Halestorm “Love Bites (So Do I)”
Red Fang “Wires”
Shinedown “Devour”
Bullet For My Valentine “Tears Don’t Fall”
My Chemical Romance “Welcome to the Black Parade”
Wolfmother “Woman”
All American Rejects “Move Along”
Children of Bodom “Are You Dead Yet?”
Fallout Boy “Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down”
Modest Mouse “Float On”
The Strokes “Reptilia”
The Distillers “Drain the Blood”
Maroon 5 “Harder to Breathe”
Blink 182 “All The Small Things”
Coldplay “Yellow”
Incubus “Drive”
Nine Days “Absolutely (Story of a Girl)”

1990s

Kenny Wayne Shepherd “Blue on Black”
Blur “Song 2”
Duncan Sheik “Barely Breathing”
Sublime “What I Got”
Alanis Morissette “You Oughta Know”
Bad Religion “Infected”
Pantera “I’m Broken”
Blind Melon “No Rain”
Dream Theater “Pull Me Under”
Pearl Jam “Alive”
Faith No More “Epic”
Jane’s Addiction “Been Caught Stealing”
Megadeth “Hangar 18”
Testament “Souls of Black”

1980s

The Pixies “Here Comes Your Man”
Living Colour “Cult of Personality”
Grateful Dead “Hell in a Bucket”
Ratt “Round and Round”
Billy Idol “Rebel Yell”
Modern English “I Melt With You”
The Clash “Should I Stay or Should I Go”
Brian Setzer “Rock This Town”
Rick Springfield “Jessie’s Girl”
Rush “Limelight”
Judas Priest “Breaking the Law”

'70s & '60s

Foreigner “Hot Blooded”
Blue Öyster Cult “Godzilla”
Cheap Trick “I Want You to Want Me”
Heart “Barracuda”
Kansas “Carry on Wayward Son”
Santana “Black Magic Woman”

Ooooooooooooh, Kenny Wayne Shepherd!! WANT WANT WANT. Not sure if I want it $60 worth, but WANT.

Pretty good setlist. Looks a bit familiar, but that's not necessarily bad.

Welcome to release day!

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/1NMk1re.jpg)

Yeah, I was about to come post. My Amazon pre-order, from April 1st, has now switched to saying they'll notify me when it's available. Best Buy has none. Gamestop apparently has limited stock. No sign of the constantly-bigger-number of Day One DLC either. I might make a Gamestop run later or I might just turn on Rocksmith and wait for impressions on this.

I still wonder what happened that Seth Chapla jumped from Rocksmith to this clusterf*ck.

LiquidMantis wrote:

I still wonder what happened that Seth Chapla jumped from Rocksmith to this clusterf*ck.

I imagine they have great ideas. The usage of tab format as opposed to the arbitrary new RS way is a boon. The artist collaboration is a boon. I just have no clue how they completely diddled so many aspects of the release, though. What a monumental failure in marketing, messaging, and delivery.

ColdForged wrote:
LiquidMantis wrote:

I still wonder what happened that Seth Chapla jumped from Rocksmith to this clusterf*ck.

I imagine they have great ideas. The usage of tab format as opposed to the arbitrary new RS way is a boon. The artist collaboration is a boon. I just have no clue how they completely diddled so many aspects of the release, though. What a monumental failure in marketing, messaging, and delivery.

Well, Realta seems to be some kind of venture capital type LLC with a core team consisting of middleware and multimedia developers. It's the type of company that you might normally see dropping cheap iPhone games in between contract work. Based on the company profile on the site I suspect they have some connections with other entertainment industries that they felt they could leverage, but little to no marketing experience. I'm also willing to bet they were at one point hoping to sell off the whole thing to a larger entity. Instead they ended up with Mastiff games, which is a budget game dumping ground. Good luck getting marketing support from them.

Still if this was PC i'd snag it today. Since its only for the 360 (xbox one?) I'll wait and see if it's available for the new console and may get it then.

I canceled my pre-order and didn't run out to find it. The fumbled launch, 0 Day One DLC, and overall fizzle on top of all the other mis-steps has made me decide to hold out for some initial reactions. The couple of reactions I've seen are favorable on the overall game but Shred U is as disappointing as the video made it look.

I didn't realize Bandfuse was console only. I guess that shows how much I've been paying attention.

Anyway, like a fly to a dung heap, all this talk of the botched launch inspired me to wander over to the forums on the Bandfuse site. Seems to be off to a pretty inauspicious start. I'll be interested to see if any GWJers report in soon.

Looks like Amazon has stock now after a pretty bad release day for availability. I keep staring at the page... I still have 8 hours to decide to get it tomorrow.

BUY IT! Someone needs to charge bravely forward. I've been in the same temptation but it's still nothing but crickets for the most part. Their Facebook page has very favorable comments. The main complaint about the game itself, rather than the mismanagement, is that you get rhythm parts up until the final tier, then it switches to the full lead part. There's no partial lead like RS. That sounds like a huge negative, but with the solos broken down into little two bar or whatever mini chunks rather than RS's full section it could be nearly a wash. I know I really wish I could fine tune RS's sections to grind in certain licks.