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Preview: Easy Piano kicked my ass
First off, know that I'm a seasoned piano player. I've been playing for over 25 years now, and I still play almost daily. I play part-time in a band or two, record often, and have even taught a few people to play piano. But Easy Piano for the Nintendo DS kind of tripped me up. That's not necessarily a knock against the game, though. For whatever reason, I didn't do well in my demo time, as evidenced by the above audio clip. How embarrassing! In the Easy Piano box, for $39.99, you'll get the game cart and a little one-octave (13 key) mini piano to snap into the bottom side of your DS, via the GBA slot. We had a chance to try it out during GDC this weekend. Hit the jump to read our impressions. Easy Piano is a cross between a rhythm game and an instructional title. It does teach you a bit, but you won't come away knowing how to play the piano properly. What you will get is a pretty solid grasp on music theory. Lessons show you scales and train you on finding notes on both the staves. In one example, I used the touchscreen and stylus to locate notes on a staff by dragging and dropping. For me? No problem. But later when a game aspect was introduced, I fudged up. This was more of a timing game: Notes come across the screen horizontally, and I had to tap them out on the keyboard as they passed a certain point. I was laughably bad at this for some reason. I was missing the timing and keying in the wrong notes! Again, this is nothing against the game. It was probably because I was thinking too much like a musician and less like a gamer. An in-game composer tool lets you record songs up to 32 bars long to share with your friends and family. You'll be able to both play and manually drop in notes with the stylus in this mode. The composer mode comes with a metronome, tempo control, copy and paste functions, and five instruments. I wouldn't call it robust, but it gets the job done. The play-along song mode is more like a music game. You'll use the keyboard controller to play notes according to on-screen cues in 36 songs. There's three levels of difficulty. On the easiest, you only use a few of the keyboard's keys to help the song along. On the hardest you're basically playing the melody yourself. I thought I had this in the bag. I did not. I was fumbling all over myself. Maybe being cocky and requesting expert mode wasn't the best idea. Sure, they keys are small, but I was equally at fault, hitting the wrong notes at the wrong times. My rendition of "Oh, Canada" on easy was pretty bad, but "Oh, Susana" on Virtuoso mode was just embarrassing. Everyone in the room was laughing at me. The PR person was laughing at me. Even the on-screen piano player looked distressed. You can hear my session in the above audio clip. Easy Piano will be released on March 30th. It's more music lessons than piano lessons, and it's more game than either. Look for our review soon. Legacy Comments (will be imported soon)Man, that image made me really excited, but reading the article made me less so. That keyboard attachment is still pretty cool and the concept makes me doubly glad I didn't "upgrade" to the DSi See this is what happened to me the first time I played Guitar Hero. I've been playing guitar for about 15 years now. I'm by no means the greatest, but I do have some skill.
So I picked up Guitar Hero and it kicked my ass. I've since gotten a bit better but it's a testament to these games and their players that they can provide such difficulty on higher levels that even if you play said instrument you'll still have trouble with it. Playing Final Fantasy VII's battle theme over and over doesn't count as being a "seasoned" piano player, Dale.
;) Something about knowing how to play an instrument and then trying to go and play it in a game almost makes you worse at the game I've noticed. Except maybe drummers and RB drums everytime I introduce a guitarist to playing guitar in RB they ALWAYS fuck up hardcore in the first hour or so. But I do the same to someone who knows shit about guitar and they pick it up in about 10 minutes.
It's an interesting phenomenon. sucks that the notes you're playing aren't actually the right sound. love when they transpose shit for fun and then just reassign notes for convenience's sake. @ Xzyliac
I think atleast for guitarists it has alot to do with the formation of chords as apposed to pressing a single button. When you play a guitar and you use one finger to hold down a note, it's a entirely different thing than chording, so playing Guitar Hero and hearing chorded parts done by pressing a single button can kind of screw you up I guess, since most of the time guitarists are used to strumming while holding their hands in a certain position with several fingers on the fretboard as apposed to one finger on a button. Just a thought anyways. this would be worth the $40 price tag alone if it worked with the DS-10 software... confirmation anyone? @ garethxxgod
I've been playing guitar for over 10 years, I find that the worst part about games like GH is that the guitar is so damn small it is really uncomfortable, trying to press the buttons and strum at the same time is akward and can hurt your wrists especially if your used to playing a real guitar. Another problem I find is that you really have to apply a lot of pressure with your fingers to hit the notes which is completely opposite of how you should do it on a real fretboard. I guess the upside would be coordination, but I always end up trying to hit the keys like you would actually play the song (higher and lower notes being higher and lower on the keys) and it fucks me up. I guess the main advantage is coordination but I think it's way easier to play a real guitar than Guitar Hero. They should make a scale guitar hero guitar with touchscreen buttons instead of those clunky plastic ones and maybe an infra-red sensor instead of a bar for strumming that would be way better. @Xzyliac You know, you may have a point there. I do play a real guitar from time to time, but when I try to play Rock Band, I'm just not that good on the guitar bits, probably because I'm wishing for strings and hoping tabs appear on the screen instead of color buttons.
I do better on the drums, but then, being a drummer requires no skill or talent. @Xzyliac so true. i've been playing bass and guitar since i was around 14-15, when i tried playing guitar hero it was just completely awful. let me just say that i'm very glad i was alone. but since then i haven't tried to play it ever again, nor rock band.. which makes me think i'm missing out. one of these days i'll have to just suck it up. or maybe i'll just stick to the DS rhythm games. i suppose, HEY! Indie Royale launches the 'Debut Bundle'Indie Royale's latest collection of games has launched today, featuring six titles in the "Debut Bundle," so named for bringing Windows versions of four games and two which are the first commercial release for their studios.... more Retro/Grade coming to Steam March 20Though you've been able to pick it up straight from the source for some time now, Retro/Grade will be appearing for sale in the Steam store on March 20. The game will be regularly priced at $9.99, but will have an intro... more Review: Richard & AliceRichard & Alice is, ostensibly, an adventure game. It's simply presented, short, indie fare made created by the two-man team of former games journalist Ashton Raze and Lewis Denby. Underneath its brevity and simplici... more Gero Blaster: The new game from the creator of Cave StoryDaisuke "Pixel" Amaya has new game coming out in a matter of months. That news alone is sure to give fans of the illustrious one-man development team a strong case of the vapors. His latest creation is Gero Blaster, ...; more Project Awakened is down, but not out!Project Awakened unfortunately failed to meet its Kickstarter goal, despite an intensely promising concept. However, Phosphor Games is keeping its spirits high and is still determined to find a way to dedicate itself fully to... more Review: The BridgeIndie puzzle platformers seem like they're a dime a dozen these days. Start with an art style, something unique or just simple pixels, add some cool gameplay hook, and then make some levels. It’s a standard formula that... more Dungeon RPG Hammerwatch now has a demoHammerwatch, the indie cooperative dungeon crawler with a sweet Gauntlet vibe and mod support, has just released a public demo of the game. The demo consists of the entirety of Act 1, 3 of the 4 classes, and multiplayer... more Preview: Mage's Initiation channels Quest for GloryThe adventure/roleplaying game is one of my favorite hybrids, next to the Liger, and undoubtedly the first series that the mind conjures up when thinking of this genre is Sierra's Quest for Glory titles (other than the f... more To The Moon prequel A Bird Story announcedTo The Moon is easily one of the most memorable videogame experiences available. It's sad yet beautiful, and has splendid writing all throughout. Freebird Games has announced the title of their next project, A Bird Story... more Funded: Delver's Drop to launch on Windows, Mac, & LinuxIt's pleasant to find out that a cool-looking game like the 2D action-adventure Delver's Drop does, in fact, look cool to other people as well. With less than a week to go, this title has safely secured enough money for fundi... more |
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2:40 PM on 03.16.2010
