best GH Tournament songs? suggestions for a great tourney?

**roguejumpr** · Joined: 03 Sep 2009 Posts: 3

My organization is hosting a Guitar Hero Tournament and we are looking for some suggestions for a fair and competitive song list to use and rules. We don't have a lot of experience with the game. I have read a lot of posts about how NOT to run a tournament but am looking for some suggestions to make it a great tournament.

We are using GH3 on a PS2. It will be a basic bracket system. Single elimination. One song per game. Total of 16 players giving us 15 total games (inorder to stay within our 2 hour event).

We let 100 people audition playing Knights of Cydonia on expert level. Some people strongly criticized us for this choice but others thought it was a fair weed out song. From those 100, 16 will advance to the finals.

I am looking for suggestions on a song list to provide diverse songs but fair challenge.

The songs should be progressively more difficult but also be entertaining for a large crowd. The audience will be at least 1000 people in a large auditorium. The game will be projected onto a huge 20 ft screen. Each player will have their own monitors so they face the crowd.

Looking for any suggestions to keep in mind. We want this to be a tournament that people like not one that they bash on forums.!

THANKS!!!

**bballcenter7** · Joined: 09 Jul 2007 Posts: 1313 Location: in IN

Here's a list with some good songs and possible rounds you could put them in:

Final Round: Through the Fire and Flames

Semi-Finals: One and Cult of Personality

Quarter-Finals: Number of the Beast, Cliffs of Dover, Stricken and Before I Forget

Round of 16: F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X., Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll, 3's and 7's, Monsters, Impulse, Pride and Joy, Welcome to the Jungle, and Take This Life

I put Cliffs of Dover and Stricken in the Quarter-finals as opposed to songs like Take this Life and F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X. because they would be more enjoyable for a larger % of the audience, while still offering a good challenge. It's hard to strike that perfect balance with this list between difficulty and enjoyment, because although Take this Life is challenging, it's not the easiest song in the world to listen to for a large number of people. That is why I tried to arrange the list both in difficulty and general song reputation.

Other possible songs would include:

Raining Blood: almost definitely as a Semi- or Quarter-final song if used. Very challenging
The Way it Ends: A tough song, but again, somewhat hard to listen to. Also weighted towards better strummers
My Curse: Somewhat difficult, should be a round of 16 song if you decide to use it
Prayer of the Refugee: Another possible round of 16 song
Nothing for me Here: same boat as The Way it Ends - tough, but not widely popular

So anyway, there's a working list that you can use. I recommend letting the competitors know which songs you have chosen for the tournament, so that they can prepare, but not telling them which songs will be featured in each round, or what specific songs they will play in the first round. No one likes to be surprised at the tournaments, so give them a few days to get up to snuff on the possible song selections. Also, I would recommend drawing the songs randomly at tournament time, not assigning different songs to different games in the bracket. This allows for better equality, so that one person doesn't have a better track of songs to advance with. Oh, and for the love of God, USE PRO-FACE OFF, NOT FACE-OFF OR BATTLE MODE! Pro-Face Off is by far the fairest multiplayer mode.

Hope I helped, and Good Luck!
_________________

**roguejumpr** · Joined: 03 Sep 2009 Posts: 3

This is a huge help bballcenter7! Thanks for taking the time to give such a thorough listing.

**bballcenter7** · Joined: 09 Jul 2007 Posts: 1313 Location: in IN

No problem. As you said, some tournaments are run rather horrendously, so I wanted to do what I could to make yours awesome
_________________

**Deschain** · Joined: 15 Dec 2006 Posts: 2137 Location: Austin, TX

**roguejumpr** · Joined: 03 Sep 2009 Posts: 3

Any suggestions for where I might find good advice for eliminating lag?

Deschain, thanks for the good point about using songs that require multiple techniques for our audition round. We'll keep those songs in mind for next year!

Out of the first 20 people who auditioned, only half of them actually completed Knights of Cydonia. At that point I was worried that I had made a very poor decision for the song. Those who complained the most about the song choice before they auditioned usually didn't make it more than 6% into the song before failing. The rest of the players didn't really care about the song. Our top 16 players achieved a 94% or higher and had note streaks between 300 and 1100. I hope this speaks well for the type of competition we'll see on the stage!

**Deschain** · Joined: 15 Dec 2006 Posts: 2137 Location: Austin, TX

If someone got an 1100 note streak, you're probably okay, but if they complain about missing notes, you might wanna check it. If you feel there is lag, Calibrate Lag should be in the options menu. It tests for audio and visual, and if the results are 0 ms and 0 ms, then anybody who complains is full of crap. If you get anything else, calibrate lag multiple times to ensure he first result is the right one.

It can be very hard to get calibration juuuust right. The most absolute way to test out the results is going into practice mode, and playing a song on Slowest speed. If everything matches up at 50% speed, you should be ok for the tournament.
_________________

Fraggle Rock

Lars Ulrich said, not wrote:

It's only 7 1/2 minutes! F***, we gotta put some more riffs in there.

**ricecake** · Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2009 3:00 pm Post subject:

If I remember correctly, the PS2 version of GH3 only gives you a single calibration number, so you cannot calibrate audio and video separately. Therefore, if you do have to adjust the lag, then it becomes a tradeoff between playing according to what is on the screen, or playing according to what you hear.
_________________

DLC Quickplay Profile