Eu jogo Clone Hero faz alguns anos. É um daqueles jogos (obsessões) que vão e voltam na minha vida.

É um clone (duh!) de guitar hero ou rock band, gratuito e movido pela comunidade ao redor. Já que as empresas largaram, os fãs continuam o legado, né? Eu real acho lindo como nichos de fãs podem manter algo vivo.

O que eu não tinha testado ainda era a versão 1.0 do jogo, que saiu tem coisa de 1 ano ou pouco mais que isso. Gostei das atualizações, tudo parece melhor e mais leve. Apesar de tudo mais ou menos igual também. O destaque vai pra melhoria mais importante, que foi adicionar suporte nativo e sem gambiarras pra tocar bateria.

A possibilidade de tocar o instrumento mais divertido do Rock Band de novo me empolgou muito. Infelizmente, baterias de plástico pra esses jogos estão valendo o peso em ouro e viraram raridades. Felizmente, o Clone Hero reconhece e configura qualquer bateria com saída MIDI. Infelizmente, de novo, eu não tenho nenhuma dessas e isso custa um dinheiro que eu não tenho agora. O melhor dos mundos era algo de graça, né? Por sorte eu tinha algo sem custo. Digo, teve custo quando eu comprei anos atrás, mas não teve custo agora. Então, não sabendo que era impossível, fui lá e fiz: pluguei meu tambor de Taiko no Tatsujin.

No modo simplificado do clone hero, a bateria tem 4 botões e da pra desligar o bumbo. O tamborzinho de Taiko também tem 4 botões. A matemática estava do meu lado, cruzei os dedos e... DEU CERTO. Surpreendentemente ficou bem divertido. Tem que considerar que é uma gambiarra adaptada, mas da pra jogar sim e fica legal. E, o mais importante, é muito engraçado. Existe um humor inerente muito forte em tocar, sei lá, Bring me to Life num tamborzinho de plástico vermelho baseado em um instrumento tradicional japonês. Ser engraçado é um bônus muito valioso pra mim.

Mesmo sem ser novidade, Clone Hero entra desde já pras minhas experiências mais legais do ano depois dessa bobeira que eu fiz. Reativou meu amor por jogos de ritmo e me fez jogar por horas sem nem perceber o tempo passar, que era algo que eu sinceramente nem lembro quando foi a última vez que aconteceu.

Lado negativo: ainda quero uma bateria. E uma guitarrinha. E o microfone. E outra guitarrinha pra ser o baixo. E amigos pra jogar todos juntos ao mesmo tempo numa bandinha de mentira.

photos: 30GB
data: 110GB
music: 90GB
dethklok clone hero charts: 9TB
videos: 150GB

someone who is good at hard disc storage please help me budget this. my family is dying

It's a great idea, but a couple things are a bit disappointing to me. I only have a RB4 guitar controller for the ps4, and that loses some functionality inherently. Not the game's fault, but still disappointing that some of the fun functions of the game are limited. But I can see past it and map an alternate way to use the whammy and tilt functions. It's also a bit hard to find large packs of songs I personally am interested in, since it's a loose collection of google drive folders. Of course, also not much the devs can do, so I don't hold it against em. I do also wish it had pre-packaged background screens instead of requiring you to install them separately. Other than that, all of the hard work put into it is well-appreciated so I can have a relatively simpler way to play RB on the PC.

I played some DJMAX for the first time today. It brought me an unexpected amount of happiness to start a rhythm game in 2022 and be greeted by expressive UI and a setlist of songs I didn't first download off of some Google Drive account. Don't get me wrong, the post-copyright rhythm game landscape we live in where games like osu!, Clone Hero and, if we're really getting unambiguous, PPDXXX and TJAPlayer3 practically hand the keys to the already-invested audience is hard to argue against, especially from the perspective of said enthusiasts who couldn't possibly squeeze anything more out of the original property.

But there is something to be said of music games as a celebration of music first and foremost, which is something that I can't help but think enthusiasts lose sight of. The one I'm most familiar with is this very one - I've been an on/off member of the GH community since GH1, and it's obvious that Clone Hero is second only to the money-spewing titan GH3 in maintaining the lifespan of that game, and for good reason! It's what you could only hope in your wildest dreams would pop up if the computer-illiterate you from 15 years ago typed "guitar hero pc free" into a search bar. It comes with... like 3 songs to start, but with some resources which are SHOCKINGLY easy to find and use, you can fill this bad boy up quick with free, high-quality, community-handled charts. As a former child who begged my parents for money to buy 1-3 DLC songs at a time, it fucking rules. It feels like having all of your birthdays at the same time.

I... I don't know how to explain this next part quickly, but I'll try my best. At some point a few years ago, it was discovered that the GH guitars made for the Wii, coupled with an adapter which made them wired, were unmistakably superior as far as latency and poll rate went. This was seen as a great thing for Clone Hero considering how easy it was to find them at Goodwill for like, $20 or w/e. However, a slow but inevitable discovery crept over the horizon, which is that CH at 2ms lag and 1000hz poll rates is trivially easy at times and absolutely exploitable! You see, the game has a relatively large hit window for the notes and unlike, say, Rock Band, there's no punishment for players who press incorrect frets between notes. This, without you knowing it, has likely saved your ass several times while playing the game casually, as charts which would've been difficult in the console games are inherently easier due to these things in tandem making note inputs more lenient than ever.

I would love for the game to take some inspiration from the older games and tighten that hit window down to only the strikeline (and in their defense, there's an optional modifier that alleviates this a bit). As it is right now, it's an issue, I think. But it is only an extension of the true issue.

Put some vaseline on your fingers (note: some don't and literally injure their skin! AAAH!) and get ready to TAP BABY! We've all mashed the buttons in a rhythm game, trying to maintain a combo only for the game to likely spit out negative feedback instead for trying to one-up it. Well, Clone Hero is one of a scant few games which sees this and goes, "Woah! You're really good!"

This has obvious effects in the short-term. Section FCs of dense tapping patterns are no longer that impressive by themselves in a world where anyone with a wool glove can mash that shit out. And mash it they do, as some of the more recent community accomplishments in the game have been done while utilizing these techniques. High-level players left scorned by these exploits have to place trust in the discerning audience to understand that them playing "clean" is impressive for its own sake. But for me, as an observer and player, the true bumps have only been felt long-term.

When I watch someone play a song at 250% speed and the accompanying webcam SFX is just a blitz of plastic meeting skin, it induces an existential episode within me where I'm not even sure why this game is being played to begin with. Like, if rhythm games are on one side of the spectrum then, I dunno, Go is on the other. One asks you to press buttons precisely and in a strict order and the other is played in a partnership, within an unknowable context, as to know it would be to understand human consciousness on a person-to-person basis.

This comparison isn't to disparage rhythm games at a foundational level, but rather it's to highlight how deep tremors like this can be felt. What is the message that a rhythm game this exploitable is sending out to the universe? I'm not a Go expert, but I do understand it to be a pretty rigid strategy game that has withstood ONE HELL of a timespan. Frankly, where CH is at in its small life, I wouldn't be surprised if a problem of this scale means the heights of the game have already passed us by. Imagine if Go had to reckon with something like that. It probably wouldn't have left the damn Zhou dynasty.

When I played DJMAX today, I'll admit I found it pretty easy to play even the hardest stuff because I have experience in the genre. And hell, it might also be in the same boat as CH as far as engine-born problems go. I have no idea. But at least providing the warmth of curated, varietal multimedia has wooed me for a bit, and I'll likely be keeping it around for a while as a result.

P.S.: Clone Hero also has drum support and all the issues from above do not exist there. I love playing drums on CH and I do it often!

I went to play DDR on a local arcade that opened up shop recently and that has sent me into an intense Rhythm game brainrot I haven't gone through since I played Theatrhythm Curtain Call and Elite Beat Agents. Now I'm sitting here setting this game up (along with fucking Osu!).

That doesn't mean I'm good at it (yet), I added a song from the karaoke of Yakuza 6, and it's only charted in hard and expert difficulties, and I have made it my objective to become good enough at this game to be able to play that one, oh and to maybe make some songs I like into playable charts.