So for part 2, we'll be looking at a selection of games released from 2008 to the first half of 2009, which are as follows:
Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, Guitar Hero: On Tour, Guitar Hero: World Tour, Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero: On Tour Decades, Guitar Hero: Metallica, Rock Band Unplugged, Guitar Hero: Smash Hits and The Beatles: Rock Band.
That means part 3 will cover Guitar Hero 5, Band Hero, Guitar Hero: Arcade, Lego Rock Band, Guitar Hero: On Tour Modern Hits, Guitar Hero: Van Halen, Guitar Hero: Warriors Of Rock, Rock Band 3 and Green Day: Rock Band.
Quite a fucking mouthful right there and that's not even every game from GH/RB that was released! I'm not counting ones like the iOS games or DJ Hero as a) I didn't play them and b) they're not part of the GH/RB series.
Buckle up!
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To this day, I still ask myself "why Aerosmith?"
Guitar Hero: Aerosmith was the first in a trilogy of band-centric games to be released over consecutive years (depending on which region you're from). Modelled around the GH3 design, the game contained a setlist roughly the size of GH1 and contained not only a decent selection of Aerosmith tunes but also "warm-up" acts consisting of songs and bands hand-picked by Aerosmith, such as The Cult, Joan Jett and Lenny Kravitz.
It goes without saying that this game isn't going to be for everyone, hence its smaller size. On top of an overall easier difficulty and a weird cameo from Run D.M.C, the game has plenty of downsides. Despite this, it's still quite fun and offers some decent guitar charts ("Toys In The Attic", "Walk This Way") as well as some great covers ("All The Young Dudes", "All Day And All Of The Night"). I would recommend it to people who perhaps don't know many Aerosmith songs but have heard one or two and enjoyed them.
There's always the possibility of games like these introducing you to your new favourite band so it's worth picking up if you can find a cheap enough copy. Around the time of this game's release, there was also another GH title available in shops except this one had a twist; it was for handheld consoles.
The best way to fuck your touchscreen up!
Guitar Hero: On Tour utilised the Nintendo DS's touchscreen and additional cartridge slot to bring GH gameplay to fans of portable gaming. It contained a setlist featuring old ("Hit Me With Your Best Shot") and new ("Youth Gone Wild") songs to the series. Sadly, whilst it was a great idea, the execution contained many problems. For starters, if the fret pad became dislodged from the cartridge slot ever so slightly, you'd have to restart the entire game.
Also, whilst the soundtrack was generally great, many of these songs never made it to a full console GH title so you could never truly appreciate a significant portion of the setlist through tinny DS speaker quality. Much like the first Guitar Hero game, it was a winning formula that needed some work before it could truly be called great. Whilst that work was being done, the next entry in the main series was released.
Guitar Hero: World Tour.
The game's tagline should've been "Great Artists Steal"
Taking a page out of the Rock Band book, Guitar Hero: World Tour introduced drums and vocals to the mix, as well as adding open notes to bass guitar and tap/slide notes to guitar in order to differentiate playing styles. The game marks the first title that used 100% master recordings as opposed to covers so there are quite a few Live songs or alternate recordings in the game. Fortunately, many of these contain even better charts than the originals would ever have ("Sweet Home Alabama").
On top of this, the new GH drumkit came with three pads and two cymbals, making it more "realistic" drum-based gameplay than Rock Band's four pad kit. Continuing Activision's decision to rely on "star power" to push the game, there are many cameos from popular musicians such as Ozzy Osbourne, Jimi Hendrix, Sting and Ted Nugent. The main downside to this game from a soundtrack perspective is the same as Rock Band's.
With the new focus on band gameplay, there are many songs that are just plain boring to play on guitar. Consequently, fans who joined the series early on began to abandon the franchise for being "too easy". So whilst the fans were unsure about whether they still loved Guitar Hero, what was happening with Rock Band?
Rock Band 2: Rock Bander
If you look at Rock Band 2 videos online, you'll probably find very little in the way of innovation. Still the same instruments, still the same soundtrack focus, still the same gameplay. The main differences between this title and the first come in small tweaks. For example, the career mode is less linear than previous games in either franchise and allows the player slightly more freedom in which songs they choose to play in order to progress further and unlock more tracks/get more stars.
There's also the addition of chord hammer-ons on guitar, new online features and a soundtrack full of master recordings too. However, unlike GH:WT, the majority of the game is the same as the predecessor but with slight improvements and there's absolutely nothing wrong with this when there are only two games in the series. For that reason, I easily preferred Guitar Hero: On Tour Decades to GH: OT.
Still reading this blog post? Cool, then I'll continue!
Whilst the main console games dealt with a full band, the DS titles still kept it to the stringed instruments. In Guitar Hero: On Tour Decades, you can progress through a strict chronologically ordered career mode on either Guitar or Bass with an extra option to play Guitar Duels against a CPU, a feature that would've been great in GH3 with the Battle Mode on songs other than the three boss battle tracks.
Starting off easy, the first tier consists of modern tracks ("The Pretender", "Crushcrushcrush") and as you advance through the game, you unlock more difficult and more enjoyable songs from previous decades ("No Rain", "Any Way You Want It") until finishing at the 70's. As far as career progression, soundtrack and gameplay additions go, this game is fantastic for fans of portable gaming and easily a series highlight in the same league as GH3.
Some problems still remained such as the game restarting easily and the songs that never made it outside of this game. Fortunately, these were easily forgivable when the rest of the game was so good. The Guitar Hero series and, hell, music games in general were in a good place by the end of 2008. Looking back with hindsight, it's easy to say that Activision drained the cash cow dry although I imagine it'd take a pretty shitty farmer to stop squeezing the udders when milk is still gushing from the teets.
Anyway, before I get too carried away milking this bovine metaphor, let's move onto the first & arguably best music game of 2009; Guitar Hero: Metallica.
METALLICUUHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
Say what you like about these games, they know how to land strongly on the 2nd attempt. GH:M improves the best aspects from Guitar Hero: Aerosmith whilst shedding the worst ones too. The soundtrack is more appropriate for fans of Metallica, mixing well known hits from the band ("Master Of Puppets", "Nothing Else Matters") with bands and songs they've covered ("Tuesday's Gone", "Am I Evil?"). It also keeps the drums and vocals so you can argue with three of your friends about who has to be Lars.
There are also modes that show you song lyrics and allow you to just listen to the songs whilst trivia about the band/track appears on screen, a great feature that sadly only appears in two games. Everything about this game has had time and effort put into it, including the band's motion capture which doesn't come across as stiff and robotic like the Aerosmith ones. There's a lot to love about this game if you like the soundtrack, a statement that can also be applied to Harmonix's first portable title from the Rock Band series.
I still haven't fully mastered Expert on this!
Available exclusively on the PSP, Rock Band Unplugged gives solo players the full band experience as you're tasked with essentially juggling riffs and rhythms for each of the four band members throughout the entire song. During a track, certain phrases of notes will appear for an instrument. They'll only appear on one instrument at a time UNLESS you mess up and fluff some of the notes.
If this happens, more phrases will appear and you'll be at risk of failing the song due to missing oncoming notes on a different instrument. Gradually, you'll get back on track by hitting lots of notes in a single streak whilst your avatars play along to Boston or Tenacious D. Unlike the GH:OT series, you don't need a clunky fretboard to play this. Thanks to the easy button configuration, all you need is a PSP and game.
Perhaps the best thing about this game is not just that the new songs added to the series via RBU were later added as DLC to the console games but also other songs playable in RB1 or 2 were added to this expansion via DLC too. However, the major drawback with this game is that it's entirely single player. Even the GH:OT series had multiplayer modes over WiFi so it seems odd that RBU lacked them entirely. It's likely that Harmonix wanted a small expansion to tide people over until the next big RB release. Meanwhile, Activision had another GH title to pump out!
Are these pictures starting to look a little 'samey' to you yet?
Guitar Hero: Smash/Greatest Hits is an expansion disc that contains songs from the five GH games lacking drums and vocals, all in original master recording form and playable for the entire band. There's also a loose storyline involving visiting the seven wonders of the world but let's face it, nobody gave a fuck about the plot of these games by that point.
There was a good balance of songs from each of the original games (although there could've been a few more from GH3) and despite not being charted by Neversoft, most of them were incredibly fun to play with the improved engine and graphics. However, with Harmonix releasing large track packs full of new content as DLC each week, perhaps this title would've been more suitable as a month's worth of DLC.
I'm not sure if Activision would've made more money that way but it definitely would've softened the over-saturation this genre was going through. At this time, gamers and gaming journalists began to call for less rhythm music games but what they probably should've asked for was less from Activision, as Harmonix were ready to release one of the other top music games from 2009.
Still angers me that they never released 'Help!' album DLC
If you know anything about music licensing, you'll know that creating a game consisting ENTIRELY of Beatles songs would cost a metric fuckton of cash and require a busted nut's worth of hard work to pull off without feeling tacky. Luckily, this game was made by a team who care about the band, the music and the art of creating a game. The amount of detail put into this game, whether it's through the dreamy background sequences of certain songs or the unreleased studio chatter played before each song, is astounding.
The only major downside is a setlist which probably isn't the best selection of tracks they could've chosen. There are some glaring omissions and only a few of those were added via DLC. Yes, about 90% of the songs on-disc belonged there but a couple had no place in the game over some of their classics ("I Want You (She's So Heavy)" was a fucking arseache to play). However, it's a hugely enjoyable game that's suitable for anyone who can play these games on Easy or above and likes The Beatles.
So here's another rundown of my personal scores for all of the above:
Guitar Hero: Aerosmith - Definitely not the strongest band choice for a game that lacks band gameplay but plenty of fun charts to keep guitarists entertained. 6/10.
Guitar Hero: On Tour - Solid soundtrack, decent gameplay and strong potential. 6/10.
Guitar Hero: World Tour - A much needed innovation might turn off some of the purists but if you give it a chance, you'll get hours of fun and maybe even find some more songs to pop on your iPod. 7/10.
Rock Band 2 - More of the same but polished and (more or less) perfected. 8/10.
Guitar Hero: On Tour Decades - Again, not a huge amount of change here but enough to make it more fun and a necessary game to play for fans. 8/10.
Guitar Hero: Metallica - Excellent soundtrack and a surprising amount of care for the team that published Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. 9/10.
Rock Band Unplugged - A refreshing mix-up on how you play these games but maybe not as fun as the standard instrument based gameplay. 7/10.
Guitar Hero: Smash Hits - A game that should've been several weeks of awesome DLC but definitely not a bad expansion disc. 7/10.
The Beatles: Rock Band - Personal taste regarding the soundtrack aside, this is the best possible game casual or hardcore Beatles/music game fans could've asked for. 9/10.
I apologise if these posts are boring to those who aren't into video games but don't worry, only one more left!
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