I picked up Rock Band this evening from the post office down the street. It took me about 15 to 20 minutes to set up all the components. I wonder whose job it is to design how boxes are packaged for consumer goods. All the Rock Band stuff was neatly bundled and wrapped to prevent damage during shipping. If you want to see an efficient job of packaging, look at how the Wii is boxed up.
Anyways, putting the guitar together is easy while the drums are a little more work. My only complaint about the drums is the cord from the kick pedal to the rest of the drums seems awfully short.
I then did the tutorials for both the guitar and drums. I’m way better at playing guitar than I am at the drums. Using the guitar, I played Orange Crush by R.E.M. on easy at 100% speed and well, it was easy. I then tried Creep by Radiohead on the drums on easy and 100% speed. It started off ok but then during the chorus, things got crazy and totally missed the beats. It’s really hard (at least for me) to coordinate both hands and one of your legs sometimes. I had to replay that one section over and over again to get better at it. First, I slowed it down to 50% speed and then bumped it up to 90%. In the end, I was able to make about 80-90% of the beats but I still found it quite challenging.
Ok, I’m off to try a few more tracks before bed time.