Fortunately, I'm a big fan of the Guitar Hero & Rock Band series and can talk about them for bloody hours. However, since they've been around for nearly ten years each, I'm splitting this retrospective look at the series into two parts.
Part One will look at the following games: Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero 2, Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks The 80's, Guitar Hero 3: Legends Of Rock, Guitar Hero Mobile, Guitar Hero Carabiner, Rock Band.
For all the others, check out Part Two.
Guitar Hero started off as a simple PS2 title with an even simpler premise developed by Harmonix and published by RedOctane. Inspired by Guitar Freaks, the game contained over 30 popular Rock songs ranging from iconic riffs of the 70's (e.g. "Smoke On The Water", "Iron Man", "Frankenstein") to popular songs for fans of contemporary Rock (e.g. "Fat Lip", "Take Me Out", "Cochise") that you would play with a five fretted plastic guitar. Notes would travel down a fretboard on screen and the aim is to hold the appropriate coloured fret down whilst hitting the strum bar as the note crosses the strike line in time to the music.
In the early days, this was considered challenging
At the time (2005), it was a fantastic game. A relatively diverse soundtrack for a debut title, easy to learn yet hard to master gameplay and clear sequel potential. Of course, now we've got dozens of games that have been refined and perfected, we can look back on this one and say "Christ, it was terrible".
Between the arguably dodgy covers of Rock and Metal hits like "Bark At The Moon" or "Godzilla" and the absolutely terrible game-engine that made it incredibly difficult to play in-game hammer-ons without strumming, Guitar Hero was a bad game with amazing potential.
It was a game that caught on pretty damn quickly though and introduced new generations to fantastic music. It just needed a bit of fine tuning. Enter Guitar Hero 2.
A new way to piss off your experienced gamer friend
Guitar Hero 2 hit the shelves the next year and landed with a power chord...sorry, let me have another go at that sentence...
Guitar Hero 2 arrived a year later with a confident bang, boasting more Rock anthems ("Sweet Child O' Mine", "Carry On Wayward Son", "Message In A Bottle") and fairly modern hits ("Beast And The Harlot", "Woman", "Monkey Wrench") for the same audience...but this time, plus one! One of many additions to the series was the ability to have someone rocking either rhythm or bass guitar along with you.
This allowed for the addition of competitive and co-op game modes, along with a slightly more diverse soundtrack that didn't require bass to be rewritten and recorded by WaveGroup Sound. More importantly, the game was a lot easier to play but Harmonix accounted for this by adding songs with even more furious solos and introduced future GH fans to insane staples of the series ("Hangar 18", "Free Bird", "Jordan").
The series was also expanding beyond PS2 and an XBox 360 port was released that allowed players to download not only new material but also the tracks from the original GH, albeit on the superior game engine. However, it was at this point that some would say the series began to descend into mediocrity as Activision took over as publisher and the lawsuits arrived in their plenty. Cut to 2007 and the series' first expansion disc, Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks The 80's.
Hope you like Hair Metal!
Aside from a title with bizarrely incorrect grammar, Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks The 80's features a soundtrack with a slightly reduced quantity and, depending on personal taste, quality. The setlist boils down to Hair Metal ("Metal Health (Bang Your Head)", "I Wanna Rock", "Round And Round"), Pop Rock ("We Got The Beat", "I Ran (So Far Away)", "Turning Japanese") and awesome Metal ("Wrathchild", "Caught In A Mosh", "Electric Eye") so if you're not into any of that, this game would be one to avoid as it doesn't add anything new to the series except music and snazzy outfits.
This was the last game in the Guitar Hero series that was developed by Harmonix and many fans jumped ship at this point. Personally, the next game to be released is one of my personal favourites although this might be because it was the first GH title I bought. Either way, Guitar Hero 3: Legends Of Rock shot the series into the mainstream.
Confession time: South Park got me into this
Released in the same year, GH3 returned some of the glory back to the series thanks to years of popularity and Neversoft taking over as developers. On top of an enhanced soundtrack aimed to gently introduce newbies and relentlessly challenge seasoned pros, this title also introduced online play, battle modes, monthly DLC (unless you owned a Wii), multi-console availability, improved graphics, more master recordings instead of WaveGroup covers and playable avatars of Slash and Tom Morello. If you ignore all of those features, the game is technically not as good although in doing that, you'd be a complete fucking idiot.
These are things that Activision could actually advertise but beneath the surface layer, the notes were also slightly easier to hit and the charts for songs were considered pretty damn fun, even if some of them were a bit power-chord heavy (looking at you, "Before I Forget"!). I would say that this game contained songs that were fucking amazing to play for the HOPO sequences alone ("My Name Is Jonas", "Cities On Flame With Rock And Roll", "The Metal") and after years of practising until I was good enough to easily five star the top tier tracks ("Cult Of Personality", "Cliffs Of Dover", "Knights Of Cydonia"), the title earned a top spot in my all-time favourite GH games list...yes, I have a list. I'm a fan.
Around the time of this game's release, two things were happening. The first was that Activision essentially started to whore out the series with releases like Guitar Hero Mobile, a portable expansion so players could experience GH away from homes and annoy the shit out of commuters simultaneously, and Guitar Hero Carabiner, a toy for the uber fan and casual plonker. The second was that Harmonix teamed up with the other evil games company, EA (also MTV Games), to create a contender in the rhythm music game genre. This new IP was given the simplistic yet easily memorable name Rock Band.
"I actually think the rectangular notes are easier to read" said the Fool
Whilst GH3 was enticing people who sort of knew who Slash was, Rock Band went in a different direction and focused on the music aspect of the gameplay. Harmonix achieved this by adding two new instruments, drums and vocals. As well as this, they adjusted several smaller aspects about the gameplay in order to clearly set it apart from Guitar Hero such as special solo sections that allowed for extra points, character customisation, a star gauge and a soundtrack that was aimed for a full band instead of just one instrument.
The setlist is focused less on action-packed music like the GH series and more on all-round great Rock ("Blitzkrieg Bop", "(Don't Fear) The Reaper", "Here It Goes Again"). For fans of guitar-based gameplay, you're more likely to enjoy GH3 as it offers more of a challenge with fun charts (unless you prefer the soundtrack for RB, as music taste pretty much always governs your opinion on the game). If you've been dying for drums or enjoy karaoke games, the new instruments will help you fall in love with the series. Luckily, the series also has fantastic DLC with plenty of variety for everyone.
Overall, Rock Band is definitely more of a mature game but that doesn't mean it's not as good, nor does it mean it takes itself completely seriously. I also hesitate to call it "realistic" as there's still so much about it which is completely different to actually playing music. However, despite all the differences I've highlighted, there are similarities between the games too. Both have a good difficulty progression, both feature of mix of master recordings and WaveGroup covers, both end on an epic Southern-based note ("The Devil Went Down To Georgia" and "Green Grass And High Tides") and both are well crafted titles that earned their place in living rooms across the world.
So in the tweet requesting this post, I was asked to review the games even though I review albums instead of games on this blog, so here are my basic verdicts on each of the titles that I actually played.
Guitar Hero: Good idea with a great soundtrack but needed a bit more work in order to make it actually playable. 4/10.
Guitar Hero 2: Excellent sequel that fixed the worst issues with the first game & improved things you didn't know needed improving. 8/10.
Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks The 80's: Decent expansion pack but not to everyone's taste. 6/10.
Guitar Hero 3: Legends Of Rock: Personal bias aside, this is both a perfect introduction and continuation of the series. 9/10.
Rock Band: Definitely more of a multiplayer experience but still fun for the single player and/or gamer who has money to throw about on plastic instruments. 7/10.
Next time, I'll be covering 2008-2010.
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