Next week's Rock Band 3 launch marks a giant step for the franchise, with the Pro mode being closer to the actual musicality of gameplay. The keyboards and drums are easier to make transitions, having regard to what is essentially a mapping for notes and logical input solutions. But what about a guitar, arguably the genre flagship instrument? We've seen and tried two solutions to the pro Guitar puzzle: the Squier Stratocaster, an actual guitar that is not yet ready for prime time, and the Mad Catz Fender Mustang.
However, with a mid November release date, the latter is probably your only option for Pro Guitar rocking this holiday. So, how does it rate? Read on and find out!
PS for all your other Rock Band 3 queries, check out the Joystiq full review!
The controller itself is similar to the fender surf body popular amongst the lifelike-Mustang (of course) and the Jaguar guitars. The peripheral equipment is much lighter than a real guitar, but fortunately the neck is almost the same height and width as our personal Stratocaster. Every fret and each string is represented by a vertical button, all representative for the actual fret, but all of equal width (more on that later). On 17 frets, which add to more than 100 buttons--a lot of gamers used to only five.
Buttons are not limited to only those frets, of course. The pickguard has the typical gamepad face buttons and there is a directional pad below, as well as a Guide button, starting and back/select buttons, sync and the necessary mic/camera for automatic calibration. There is also the MIDI-out port, a handy must have , you can get a MIDI track--synth, there are six identical heavy-gauge steel strings on the body. They are long enough to easily find mid-song, although they might be a pain if you're used to playing closer to the neck.
The General construction--which can be broken down into the component of head, neck and body components--feels lightweight and border-flimsy at times, but to be honest, it is held up remarkably well during our time with it and we have no reason to suspect that the else could do.
We have gone thorough the detail about how Pro Guitar works on the software side of Rock Band 3, for better and for worse, so for this review we largely focus on how the hardware feels. And, as we have alluded to before, it's kind of a hassle if you are used to a real guitar. Given the different width of real guitar strings, it is much easier to tell what frets we're pressing (and which strings we finger-picking) on a real instrument without having to look down. Here, each string, and the button is a uniform width, so that everything feels the same against your skin. We can definitely get used to this over time, it's more of a nuisance than anything, but it's certainly increases the learning curve and detracts from enjoying the instrument.
Another annoyance that we noticed is the overall sensitivity of the buttons--it doesn't take much to operate, even if you are not using Light touches, resting your finger against an unused series, can lead to a note that would otherwise be considered a damper. Maybe we are nitpicking here by comparing the Fender Pro to a real guitar, but there are definitely some little nuances to become acustomed to.
We'd be lying if we said that our view of the Mustang was not tainted by our previous time with the "real" Squier Stratocaster Guitar Pro, which is infinitely more comfortable even in prototype form. That is perhaps a bit unfair, and frankly, our Joystiq cohorts had a much more positive experience. Many people are going to love this rig, but at $ 150, we feel that it is our duty to warn you about this even before you shell out. While some of Mad Catz ' design decisions were a nasty experience at first, they never really detracted our general enjoyment of the game-or to put it another way, when the going got tough and we swore like a sailor, it was not the controller that was to blame.
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