I find it sort of funny that I ended up purchasing Activision's latest Guitar Hero release, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, the day before they killed the series. Now, personally, I've always been more of a Rock Band fan. The Rock Band series always seemed to be more about the music and interacting with the music, rather than trying to destroy an evil boss or seeing how fast you could shred.
The main reason we tend to steer towards Rock Band is the massive song library. Just including the four exportable Rock Band games we have; Rock Band (58), Rock Band 2 (84), Rock Band 3 (83) and Lego Rock Band (45), that's 270 songs (plus or minus a few that were not licensed to export). Not included is Beatles: Rock Band since those songs can't be exported and we didn't buy Green Day: Rock Band. Then you add all of the normal Rock Band DLC (1,220) and the new Rock Band Network DLC (977), that's 2,197 more songs to pick from. We have somewhere around 700 songs in our library.
Up until this point, I only thought Guitar Hero had two decent releases: Guitar Hero II and Guitar Hero: Metallica. GH II because it was the one that we first bought. It was the game that “redefined” the music game genre. GH:Metallica because of the amazing job they did on it and the amount of detail that was put into it. It does help that I've been a lifelong Metallica fan, which helped me notice some of the great detail, but even to an outsider, it's still a very well-done game.
Warriors of Rock is probably up there with those two. Granted, the theme of the game and weak plotline are pretty silly at times, but you know this going into a Guitar Hero game. While it had some pretty good song selections, I did find some of the songs boring and not very fun to play. What really sold me on the game is the inclusion of Rush's “2112.” The way that they implemented it into the game made it feel really epic and the narrations by the members of Rush was a nice touch. That's the type of song that Guitar Hero was made for, full of fantasy and very epic.
The final battle was neat, too, due to the fact that you needed to put together your two bands from the eight characters (each with different power-ups) to try to take down the main boss. My only gripe, while I am a Megadeth fan, is that all of the songs were Megadeth songs. I do agree with some of the critics when they said “with so many of the more iconic rock songs having already been used in previous Guitar Hero and Rock Band games developers are forced to use ever more obscure songs and/or acts” [The Metro]
All in all, it's a decent game. Along with the ability to export songs from previous GH games (surprisingly including Guitar Hero: Metallica), it does give you a decent song library. If you can find it on the cheap (I think it was $20 used at Amazon) go pick it up.
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I’ve always preferred Guitar Hero over Rock Band. Musically, Rock Band was by far the better game, but I just found myself having more fun with Guitar Hero.
I totally agree that GH2 and Metallica were far and away the best of the series, and that Warriors is right up there with them. Not only was Warriors damn fun (if the LEAST musiacally accurate of the franchise) but the soundtrack was, in my opinion, the best in the series. Black Sabbath, Styx, DEEP PURPLE? Hell yes. The 2112 segment was in my top 3 gaming moments last year.
Sadly, Activision only has themselves to blame for the loss of the franchise. They oversaturated their own market, just like they did with Tony Hawk and any number of other franchises. Call of Duty will be joining their ranks in a few years.
Totally agree. My only issue with the soundtrack overall was some of the weaker rock tracks with certain characters. I found myself saying, “Which boring song should I force myself to play next to get through this part of the quest?” Otherwise, like 75% of the soundtrack was really good.
I’ve already burnt out on CoD.