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.
As for other small games released between 2005-2010, they won't be mentioned in this history lesson but I'm sure you'll get over it.
Around the same time as The Beatles: Rock Band was released, Activision had another entry in the main console series to release.
Right bands, wrong songs
Guitar Hero 5 has the feel of a series trying to reinvent itself. In the past, GH has been all about being able to play iconic Rock songs in general video game style. GH5 features more Indie bands with simplistic guitar melodies and songs from classic artists that are generally quite easy to play, almost as if the game was designed for newcomers to the series. It would also explain the addition of modern bands like My Morning Jacket and Brand New, artists who have no place in the series but will likely bring in hip, young kids who were turned off by the idea of "dinosaur Rock" in these games.
Fortunately, the series adds some great ideas which make you wonder how you ever played the games before. For example, the addition of Party Play mode means you can drop in & out of songs whenever you want whilst other bandmates keep on playing. There's also the ability for players to rock the same instruments, so you can have a band consisting entirely of drummers if you really wanted. There are also song specific goals for tracks which make playing them in Career a bit more entertaining, although this could've done with some expansion.
There are also more cameos from artists such as Kurt Cobain so if you want to watch an in-game avatar of him singing "You Give Love A Bad Name" (probably the best thing about GH5), you're in luck. If this game had Guitar Hero: World Tour's soundtrack, I would hate it a little less. Unfortunately, this feels like the hipster of the series and nobody likes hipsters except other bloody hipsters. Still, it could be worse. It could be full of annoying Pop songs...
It genuinely took me a good couple of minutes to pick this game up in stores before I took the plunge and bought it
Band Hero isn't strictly part of the GH series but I'm talking about it as it did have a fairly notable impact on the franchise. For starters, the soundtrack being mostly Pop music meant that Guitar Hero 5, a game designed to have a soundtrack that included something for everyone, would have less shite like Hilary Duff and more from actual Rock bands. However, it also meant that GH5 included Pop music as DLC occasionally, just in case any of the teenage girls who bought the game knew you could buy extra music for a game they were sort of into.
However, when you look at this game from a non-biased standpoint, it's actually quite good. As the "GH of Pop Music", the soundtrack is alright and the engine is based around GH5 with a few extra tweaks like Karaoke mode for vocalists. All in all, it's as faithful to Pop as the original GH games were to Rock. Some may call this series expansion as yet another case of Activision selling out but I can think of a much better example...like Guitar Hero: Arcade.
I feel ashamed at the amount of cash I've put into these machines
Using on-disc and downloadable music from GH3 as the soundtrack, Guitar Hero: Arcade allows you to experience the same fun as GH3 but this time in a public place with teens judging you whilst you try to play a grotty guitar with a chewed up strap and sticky buttons. The songs picked range from the astoundingly easy ("Juke Box Hero") to the immensely difficult ("Surfin' With The Alien"), giving you plenty of choices in between.
Since this is literally designed only to make money, some songs are labelled "Premium" so you have to pay a bit extra for having a slightly less malleable music taste. However, provided you get a machine that works properly, you can still have a lot of fun on these machines although don't expect any features that were added after GH3. Yes, one of you still needs to be bass and no, you can't play Beginner mode. Oh yeah, GH:WT added Beginner mode. Forgot to talk about that in the last part. It's basically just open strums.
I can't call this too much of a sell-out as the GH franchise was inspired by GuitarFreaks arcade machines. What I CAN call a sell-out is charging people extra for songs that aren't particularly long or special, it's almost a random selection of tracks the publishers decided were worth the extra £1. Anyway, during the period that these three Activision titles were put out, Harmonix had a colourful game doing the rounds as well.
"How can we make hammer-ons even harder to read?"
If Band Hero was specifically aimed at younger audiences, Lego Rock Band was aimed at the whole family. I don't want to spend too long talking about Lego games in general so I'll leave it at one sentence: they're awesome. This game is no exception and RB2's career mode partnered with adorable yet silly Lego avatars jumping around on-stage to "Ghosbusters" or "The Final Countdown" and the extra additions like the cinematic song challenges make this one special.
There's also the ability to shorten songs so that younger players don't find it too challenging, which is a neat touch. Perhaps one of the most subtle yet ingenious facts about Lego Rock Band is how it feels more like you're developing a sort of Rock empire. You unlock fans and pets that casually walk around your pad whilst you get ready to play a set and in true Lego fashion, it feels more like you're building something awesome than other games in the series.
For seasoned experts, you're unlikely to find too much challenging although some of the solos may take a few tries to nail, especially on the RB engine. Any enough talking about the more creative competitor, TIME FOR ANOTHER GUITAR HERO!
The "Return Of The Jedi" of the handheld trilogy
Guitar Hero: On Tour Modern Hits was the handheld game that nobody asked for. Despite critics praising the soundtrack from the previous game, claiming it got better as you unlocked the older tracks, this game is all about songs released in the early 21st century. But hey, modern songs are cheaper to license and Activision had a lot of games to push out!
It adds very little that's new or fun to the series aside from a slightly revamped career mode similar to RB2's and once again introduces songs that you'll never play on a console title, since Activision didn't learn anything the first two times (they were too busy extrapolating the wrong message from all their market research). This game has its moments but they dwindle in comparison to the ones in previous handheld or rival games.
It was around this time that the consensus was "Ugh, not another one" whenever a new game was announced. What Activision needed to release was an instantly popular title that would sell like hot cakes and justify the growing number of SKUs being produced. Instead, what they made was Guitar Hero: Van Halen.
The "Back To The Future Part 3" of the trilogy
I hesitate to say "when this game was first released" as the first iteration of this expansion wasn't actually sold in shops. It was given away with copies of Guitar Hero 5 in America. Many critics brought up the likelihood of Activision knowing they had a mediocre game on their hands, but what exactly made this game lacklustre? The soundtrack is alright, even if the guest acts were picked by Eddie Van Halen's son. Plus, the Van Halen songs are all picked from the David Lee Roth era so there are plenty of great "filler" tracks from the original albums that introduce people to songs they probably wouldn't be aware of.
However, there's a small issue with some of the charts, namely the one for "Painkiller". Apparently, there was some sort of licensing issue so the guitar chart has been butchered to the point where it's no longer challenging. The game reeks of these kind of corner cuts, factors such as the recycled GH:WT engine as opposed to the current GH5 one and the mixed tone of the soundtrack that was assembled by a kid who probably enjoys playing Rock Band more.
The game could've been amazing and I guess it's not really bad, although it was enough to help hammer in a nail on the franchise's coffin at the end of 2009/start of 2010, as was the next game to be released (even though again, it's one of my all-time favourites).
Not too little but definitely too late
Similar to how bands would seek their older material for inspiration after their experimental phase, Guitar Hero: Warriors Of Rock is full of songs chosen due to how fun they are on guitar, although there are still several picks that are fun for vocalists ("Bohemian Rhapsody"), drummers ("Aqualung") and newcomers that joined at GH5 ("I Know What I Am"). There's also a brand new career mode that involves powers influencing gameplay, although for expert players who can FC the majority of tracks, these add practically nothing to the game.
There are also more song challenges for each instrument, meaning that there are many challenges in Quickplay mode (retitled Quickplay+ because rebranding equals something else to advertise) and the entire feel of the game is more rough-edged, though sadly a bit too serious for its own good. Despite the temptation of a Hard Rock/Metal soundtrack, there are many tracks that feel odd in this title. Fall Out Boy and Tom Petty may be popular artists but you'd have to be short in the skull to call them Warriors Of Rock.
Whilst the game contains some amazing guitar charts and a great selection of tracks, most of the fans this game was aimed at had jumped ship long ago. As a result, GH:WoR wasn't enough to resurrect the dying franchise and a few months into 2011, Activision announced the series would go on hiatus for the indefinite future. GH fans were unhappy but fans of Rock Band had not one but two games to enjoy.
I hear they actually hired a "Trippyness" consultant to make the game extra trippy
Keeping in mind that there wasn't a main series release from the Rock Band franchise during 2009, this game was developed whilst Activision were selling GH5. In other words, Rock Band 3 is the experimental phase of the game's career. It's hard to talk about the "big innovation" Harmonix added to this game as there's honestly quite a few. They've added Keyboard so a fifth player can join in. They also added "Pro Mode" so you can now play six-stringed guitar controllers for a more realistic experience. They included Vocal Harmonies, a feature added in The Beatles: Rock Band that I also forgot to mention. Want me to continue? Alright then!
The soundtrack is more diverse although, much like GH5, pretty rubbish. There's also the ability to rate songs so the ones you prefer show up in random selection more often. Little things like this make the game that bit better and career mode is also more unique with more unlockables for the achievement addict too. The game was made with love, care and the player's entertainment in mind, even if it did feel like it was being pulled in too many different directions for it to truly be the best of its kind. The soundtrack had to have keys and iconic riffs so it meant several odd choices nobody would've requested made the cut.
Overall, it's a great game if you have a large amount of DLC and admire features over general substance. This wasn't the last Rock Band game to come out in 2010, as they had one more slightly questionable band-centric expansion up their sleeve. Nobody knew how they could possibly hope to top The Beatles: Rock Band and between you and me, I don't think Harmonix knew either. That's why we got Green Day: Rock Band.
I personally blame whoever woke them up in October
I won't spend too much time talking about this as I didn't actually buy or play it. What I can tell you is that it contains a fairly handsome collection of Green Day songs, all of which became available via DLC. After these two games were released, Harmonix kept putting out DLC for a few years to come. They also created another expansion called Rock Band Blitz but that came out in 2012.
Whilst Activision may have been responsible for the series blasting in and out of the mainstream, Harmonix did their part to keep the series alive and whether you're into Green Day or not, I'm sure the title had the same care put into it as all their other products. So here are my ratings for each title I actually bought/spent money on:
Guitar Hero 5 - Excellent additions to gameplay ruined by a pretty pathetic soundtrack. 5/10.
Band Hero - A solid expansion pack aimed at a new audience with a few diamonds in the rough. 6/10.
Guitar Hero: Arcade - Obvious cash in, presumably to make back money on failed GH games. 5/10.
Lego Rock Band - Another hit to add to the growing collection of awesome Lego games. 8/10.
Guitar Hero: On Tour Modern Hits - Completely unnecessary and almost entirely lacking in fun. 3/10.
Guitar Hero: Van Halen - Needed a lot more work on it to truly be considered great but luckily, it's still good. 6/10.
Guitar Hero: Warriors Of Rock - This game got a bit of an unfair grilling by rubbish critics, definitely a series highlight if you're a fan of the series/Rock music. 9/10.
Rock Band 3 - With GH:WoR's soundtrack and engine, this probably would've been the perfect game. Sadly, it's got the same problems as GH5. 7/10.
As for the future of these games? Well, Rock Band 4 and Guitar Hero: Live are coming out later this year. I have my opinions on both games already but chances are you've read them on Twitter already. Maybe I'll do a special blog post about them when they actually come out in October but I will say this about both games now.
Rock Band 4 looks like it'll only be worth getting if you have a shitload of DLC, which is not something I can back as a gamer.
Guitar Hero: Live looks like it was inspired by Freemium games and will probably ruin every other music game after you play it for too long.
That's this three-part series of posts over! No idea what I'll review next week but hopefully it can be contained to one entry. If you have any suggestions, definitely let me know! I still enjoy a challenge and still enjoy reviewing or talking about albums/setlists/things involving music.
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