These are FIRST IMPRESSIONS of a game FRESH OUT OF THE BOX, not a review, just thoughts. 

Well, I finally broke down and played Rock Band. I'm a huge fan of Guitar Hero 3(you can bold this when you quote me) and I'm really good at the game.

Admittedly I've only played it for about an hour or two, but here are my current thoughts.

What, unfortuantely, I find lacking in Rock Band is two things.

1. The difficulty. I like to play the guitar on these games. So, on my brothers game, I picked solo and sorted the songs by difficulty, picked the hardest song, and put it on expert.(It was the NiN song "The Hand That Feeds" and I immediately noticed a that I didn't start playing for a good 20 seconds into the song. However, I understood the emphasis being left off the guitar to help boost the "lamer" instruments importance.

Anyway, the song was so freakin' easy it put me to sleep, on expert. There are far harder bonus songs on NORMAL mode of Guitar Hero 3, imo.

I immediately deemed that this game was for casual fans of the genre, or people who were simply unable to ascend in Guitar Hero.

Here was my immediate analogy:

Difficulty:

Rock Band: Super Mario Galaxy

Guitar Hero 3: Shinobi for PS2

2. The asthetics. The graphics are better, but the art style is worse, imo, but that's not the bad thing. The song selection is too "MTV" modernish. It's like, well, Guitar Hero 3 has awesome Rock Anthems, One by Metallica, freakin' awesome. The default songs on Rock Band are kinda meh, like Enter Sandman by Metallica, one of their worst songs, and just in general, a lower quality of song selection, which was obviously picked to emphasize other instruments(drums) instead of what all the best songs emphasize, which is guitar, in general(cept for Phil Collins songs, imo, which are awesome). Also, the little sideways pegs are a little offputting, and I prefer the GH circles.

Also, the hammer ons and pulloffs in Guitar Hero 3 is definately my favorite part of the game, because of the potential for thrashing and the ease of play with practice.

Now, I had some immediate retalliations from Rock Band fanboys in the room when I gave my opinion. They said "The Drums are hard though."

I said, that's only because there isn't a Drum Hero 3.

Overall, it's an alright game, and as a Wii fan, I know the hipocracy of giving a game a bad review because its made for "everyone," but I'm just not sure about this.

If feels like I'm playing a very simplified version of a game that I'm really good at already and it feels like regression. These games are meant to challenge you, or so I thought, and Rock Band does anything but challenge the seasoned GH fan.

I believe that I could easily play and sing the parts of all the songs on expert at the same time without ever seeing the fail screen, after a listen to the song, and maybe a playthrough on practice mode.

That's how easy this game felt. It's like if all the songs on Elite Beat Agents were on 2 stars.

I dunno if the DC songs fix this difficulty issue, but I sure hope they do.

It's the easiest thing in the world to make a really hard difficulty for those who want to take these games a step further and expert in Rock Band isn't it.

I expected it to be easy, but it wasn't just easy, it was boring.

That's my 2 cents. I'll get back after I've played it a bit more, but those are my first impressions.

 I stopped there, there is no way "The Hand that Feeds" is the hardest song.  It's like one of the intro songs.  Going by this solely I say this thread fails.  Pretty hard.

Did I play them in reverse order, lol? Is the hardest at the top or the bottom, cause that was at the bottom, lol.

That could explain it.

Even though, it was pretty simple for an "expert" song any way you look at it. I did play a couple other songs as well, and found them just as easy. What song should I go play right now that will change my mind?

Maybe it's not ordered in difficulty?  Because there is NO WAY that that song is the hardest.  Did you unlock them all?  Here's a list of the songs, and The Hand That Feeds You is listed as a Tier 2 guitar level, but I would argue that it's more of a Tier 1. 

Might want to come back to this thread and do an edit once you don't play one of the newbie songs.  Green Grass and High Tides will eat your soul just from the pure length and occurance of guitar solos.

Did anyone else thing this game was mind numbingly easy on solo, and could have benefited from a one step higher difficulty level?

Run to the Hills is pretty fucking crazy on guitar.

No, I didn't unlock them all. It's actually at my brothers house, so I only played for a little while, I dunno what he's unlocked. I did see that it said "sort by difficulty" though, and scrolled all the way to the bottom. The game is brand new, so it could have very well just been the T1 songs.

I'm playing it some more tomorrow, and I'll say what I think then. I'll edit my OP to say these are first impressions right out of the box though.

I might be prejudging. 

Wrote it down, youtubing now.

Guitar Hero 3 is miles better than Rock Band, IMO. It is just so much more fun and I really like playing with 2 or 3 other people in such a unique and cohesive way. I think that alone justifies the game.

You should definitely try the vocals too, they are much harder than you think. Play a song like Dani California on expert and you will be out of breath for sure.

 I mean it is no Dragonforce, but it is one of the harder songs on the game.