Latest news with #CloneHero
Daily Mirror
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
CRKD Gibson Les Paul Pro Edition Guitar Controller review – an almost perfect way to get rocking
Clone Hero and Fortnite Festival aficionados will definitely want to check out what CRKD has cooked up with its new Gibson Les Paul Pro Edition Guitar Controller Collectible-focused hardware manufacturer CRKD has constructed a wonderfully tactile and well-designed guitar peripheral, with plenty of ways to customise your style of play. The rhythm game genre is having a bit of a renaissance currently. The likes of Clone Hero, Fortnite Festival, and a few others are making it easier for players who want to recapture the golden days of Guitar Hero and Rock Band by letting them rock out to their favourite new and classic pop tracks in-game. Doing this on a conventional gamepad is all well and good, but real ones know that in order to properly mimic the act of being a rock god, a guitar perhipheral controller is required. That's where CRKD's all-new Gibson Les Paul Pro and Encore Edition Guitar Controllers come in. Very much styled after the look of Gibson's iconic cutaway guitar shape, it aims to improve upon competitors by integrating a few extra functional and aesthetic differences. It's not a complete homerun since getting it to work with all consoles, platforms, and games isn't as smooth as it perhaps could be. However, for those wanting a reliable way to jam out like the good old days, unprecedented customisation options and tactile performance come together to make the CRKD Gibson Les Paul Guitar Controller an easy recommend for both newcomers and veterans. READ MORE: Ludocene is the 'Tinder for Games' app that just might help solve the issue of game discoverability CRKD Les Paul Guitar Controller design Starting off with the design, and you'd be hard-pressed to complain about what CRKD have cooked up with its Pro Edition Guitar Controller too much. Fully endorsed by Gibson itself to recreate the classic Les Paul shape, the Pro variant of this peripheral touts a gorgeous blueberry burst design that would see it easily fit in on stage at any rock show or festival. There's no option to change the faceplate, sadly, but as someone whose first ever electric guitar was actually an Epiphone Les Paul in this exact colourway, it's uncanny just how well CRKD has recreated this beloved design. As for the guitar controller's neck, the top features all five individually coloured fret buttons as expected, but a nice touch I really adore is the RGB lighting embedded into the bottom half of the neck. These will pulse in different colour waves according to how you program them and how well you play, adding an appreciated amount of flash to every performance. Finally, in terms of pure function, the CRKD Les Paul Guitar Controller cleverly integrates two analogue sticks, a mod dial, and star power CTRL button neatly into the face of the guitar, complete with gold trimmings to really sell you on that authentic Les Paul aesthetic. Most are located in unobtrusive positions, and don't take away from the overall authentic design. While I'm specifically reviewing the Pro edition of CRKD's product here, I will also briefly shout out the Encore version. Although cheaper for the few ways it doesn't match the Pro's performance, its Tribal Black faceplate (though less authentic to Gibson) harkens nicely back to the classic designs of Guitar Hero controllers. I particularly like the gold-coated whammy bar and guitar bridge, which contrasts nicely with the Encore's overall darker design. CRKD Les Paul Guitar Controller features The main way CRKD's Les Paul guitar controllers differ from something like, say, PDP's Riffmaster, is the sheer amount of customisation they allow for. Most of this is determined by the CRKD app, which up until now has merely allowed other CRKD products like its Nitro Deck grip for the Nintendo Switch and NEO S controller to be added to your digital collection and for their buttons to be remapped. Here, however, the hardware manufacturer has gone several steps further, letting you tweak such aspects as the RGB light display and pattern, the specific title degree needed for the controller to activate star power, and the exact sensitivity of the strum bar – all within the CRKD app. All this truly does represent an incredible amount of customisation clearly intended to appeal to the true rhythm game aficionado, and it does well to set both the Pro and Encore Edition apart from other guitar controller options. Lastly, and perhaps less successfully, is the inclusion of a navigation hub in the guitar face's top-left corner. This is where the CRKD guitar controller's insistence on being all things to everyone sees it stumble a fair bit. Essentially, every button you can think of that would appear on a standard Xbox controller is included here in the form of a dial, which works well enough, but I always found using it to be a tad unnatural. That said, it's nice to have the option, and I'm glad it's there. The mod dial, by comparison, is a work of genius, coming built-in with several presets for all four separate modes in Fortnite Festival, as well as three fully programmable presets, and finally a preset called Keyjam, which allows players to fully customise button inputs – even on Xbox Series X |S and the PS5. The latter takes a lot of patience and willpower to set up and get right. Stick with it, though, and you'll be able to play outside of the guitar controller's typical compatibility in no time. CRKD Les Paul Guitar Controller performance Into the meat of the matter, then, and I'm pleased to report that the CRKD Les Paul Guitar Controller held up very well during my extensive performance tests. Primarily, when playing Fortnite Festival on PC and Nintendo Switch, the Pro version's Hall Effect strum bar never once failed to register my taps and slaps, even when I got a little too carried away. My only real complaint with the strum bar is that its haptic feedback feels just a touch too subtle, but I'd rather this than a loud mechanical click. Speaking of which, the mechanical fret buttons deliver similarly great performance in terms of the tactility they offer, This makes them perfect for pulling of hammer-ons and pull-offs aggressively with hardly any delay due to the controller's low latency functionality in both wireless mode (via dongle or Bluetooth) or wired using a USB connection. Better yet, despite all these different features being built into the design, CRKD has been careful to ensure that the Pro Edition Les Paul Guitar Controller is incredibly lightweight. It makes playing for long sessions a blast, since the weight of the thing never hangs too heavy on the neck. The whammy bar, meanwhile, offers a good amount of resistance in the palm of the hand and has a satisfying sense of springing back up and locking back into place when not in use. Finally, although its possible to activate star power using the dedicated CTRL button positioned next to the guitar controller's bridge, I found tilting it upwards just like the good old days to be far more effective. Overall thoughts on the CRKD Les Paul Guitar Controller Much like it did previously with the NEO S controller and Nitro Deck, CRKD has brought its fully customisable, 'all-in-one-solution' approach to its duo of Les Paul Guitar Controllers. The result is easily two of the best peripheral options around, ideally suited for players who take rhythm gaming seriously. Of course, this kitchen sink approach means setting them up for certain platforms and modes can be a tad finicky, yet this, as well as the awkwardly positioned navigational hub, is easily forgivable for all the ways the guitars excel elsewhere. In terms of price, it's an unfortunate reality of where we're at with today's market that CRKD can charge £119.99 / $124.99 for the Blueberry Burst Pro Edition and £109.99 / $114.99 for the Tribal Encore Edition, and I can call it fair. Because while it is a lot of money for the specific use case it's intended for, despite all the customisation features it offers, the truth is that it's still less than what the PDP Riffmaster controller launched at. Just be aware that extras such as the CRKD carry bag and individual fret neck upgrades come at an additional cost once again. Purely when it comes to design, functionality, and performance, the CRKD Gibson Les Paul Pro Edition Guitar Controller is a player's dream, with its Hall Effect strum bar and mechanical fret buttons offering tactile performance and responsiveness. Throw in the ability to adjust the RGB lighting in the neck as you play and several built-in presets that make getting set up in Fortnite Festival (mostly) a breeze, and the CRKD Gibson Les Paul Pro Edition Guitar Controller is a glorious way to recreate the golden age of pretending to be a rock god with friends.
Engadget
06-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Engadget
RedOctane relaunches and will continue to make new rhythm games
RedOctane Games is back and ready to make more rhythm games. The studio announced its re-launch today and said it is already in production on its first title. Charles and Kai Huang, who co-founded the original RedOctane back in 1999 and launched the Guitar Hero franchise, will serve on a special advisory board for the new company. The first RedOctane was acquired by Activision in 2006 and shuttered in 2010. The team is small, but it has some heavy-hitters from the rhythm game world. Its head of studio is Simon Ebejer, who was the production director for multiple Guitar Hero games, and many of its employees worked on Guitar Hero and DJ Hero . RedOctane will operate within parent company Embracer Freemode, which also houses CRKD, a gaming accessory company that also has history in rhythm games . There are some interesting competitors to this revived RedOctane on the market, such as Clone Hero and Fortnight Festival , not to mention legions of arcade titles. It should be exciting to see what new ideas RedOctane will bring to the party.
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
CRKD teamed up with Gibson to make new guitar controllers
Gaming accessory maker CRKD and Gibson have teamed up to revive the guitar controller in the form of two Gibson Les Paul-shaped controllers that will let you play your way through Fortnite Festival, Clone Hero, and even Rock Band 4. The Gibson Les Paul Black Tribal Encore Edition Guitar Controller and Gibson Les Paul Blueberry Burst Pro Edition Guitar Controller featured the whammy bar and colored frets from older gaming guitars, updated to work with modern platforms. CRKD is making both multi-platform and Xbox specific versions of the guitars, and depending on whether you pick the Encore or Pro Edition model, you'll get a slightly different set of features. The Pro Edition includes frets that have been "engineered for unmatched precision and responsiveness," along with a Hall-Effect whammy bar and a Hall-Effect Strum Bar with haptic feedback. The Encore Edition only has traditional mechanical frets and a normal strum bar, but CRKD says both guitars are designed to be modular, so you can purchase and swap in new components down the road if you want. See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories. By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. Both guitars have built-in analog sticks and a d-pad for navigating in-game menus, and offer three different methods of connecting the controller to your console, mobile device or PC: wired via a USB cable, wirelessly via a 2.4GHz wireless dongle or Bluetooth. The Xbox versions of the guitar controllers work across Xbox, PC and Android, while the multi-platform version works on PC, Switch, Android and PS3. Notably, if you're looking to play Guitar Hero instead of Rock Band, you'll want the multi-platform guitar controller, because it offers greater compatibility with Guitar Hero games. Guitar controllers fell to the wayside as the companies largely responsibly for making Guitar Hero and Rock Band games either moved on or where shutdown. The bright spots in the slow decline of the music rhythm game genre has been third-party PC games like Clone Hero and YARG, and Harmonix's Fortnite Festival, which brought Rock Band-style gameplay to Epic's battle royale game in 2023. The Gibson Les Paul Black Tribal Encore Edition Guitar Controller is available to pre-order now for $109.99 for the multi-platform version, or $119.99 for the Xbox version. The Gibson Les Paul Blueberry Burst Pro Edition Guitar Controller can be pre-ordered for $119.99 for the multi-platform version, or $129.99 for the Xbox version. Both guitar controllers will start shipping in June 2025.
