Band Hero: Dual Review & Unboxing Extravaganza

Band Hero PS3 Review

Band Hero is a potentially interesting take on the Guitar Hero franchise with a different paint job and musical focus. At first glance it may seem like the entire game has been overhauled, when it fact, the changes are primarily cosmetic.

Its good to see that all of the benefits added in Guitar Hero 5 are present in Band Hero.From the Instrument challenges to the party play, each mode in GH5 is faithfully copied and coated with bright glossy colors to be consumed by the masses. However, the problems with Band Hero don’t lie with the features that it HAS, but more with the features that it doesn’t have.

With shift to “Pop” music, a term I use loosely (I’ll get to that later), Band Hero has to deal with the tracks found in traditional “Pop” music. Typically, Pop music isn’t heavy on the guitars, and maybe be made entirely of synth music. However, Band Hero chooses to ignore the genre change and simply finds Guitar centric Pop music. This works most of the time, but when you have a huge install base that has already played hundreds if not thousands of guitar songs; unless your setlist is strong the gameplay will get tired quickly.

Take the song “Wannabe” by the Spice Girls. It is a great Pop song and choosing it communicates that you as a developer are serious about making the game different from GH games. The song has multiple vocal tracks and singers, and the game supports up to four mics. However, all 4 mics are singing the exact same tracks. Now, I’m not suggesting that Band Hero copy The Beatles: Rock Band exactly, I’m just saying that not acknowledging the extra singers defeats the purpose of including a pop song.

What I would like to see out of future Band Hero games (assuming they get made) is the genre to be embraced wholeheartly. I want to see Nsync, BackStreet Boys, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Hip-Hop, R&B, Disco, Funk, and maybe even DJ controller capability. Don’t get me wrong, I am digging the setlist, and like GH5, the new features work fantastically but if Activision and Red Octane are determined to create a “New Franchise” they need to make a new game, not a skin for an old one. In fact, many of the GH5 features feel more at home in Band Hero, than they did in GH5.
Speaking of the setlist, for every great song choice there is an equally bizarre choice to go with it. The brilliant song choices include:
Devo – “Whip It”
The Go-Go’s – “Our Lips Are Sealed”
The Jackson 5 – “ABC”
Marvin Gaye – “I Heard It Through The Grapevine”
N.E.R.D. – “Rockstar”
Styx – “Mr. Roboto”
Village People – “YMCA”
Don McLean – “American Pie”
Culture Club – “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me”
Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals – “Steal My Kisses”
The Go-Go’s – “Our Lips Are Sealed”
Janet Jackson – “Black Cat”
KT Tunstall – “Black Horses & The Cherry Tree”
Taylor Swift – “Love Story” & “You Belong to Me”
The Turtles – “Happy Together”
Duran Duran – “Rio”
David Bowie – “Let’s Dance”
Carl Douglas – “Kung Fu Fighting”
Katrina and The Waves – “Walking On Sunshine”
Mighty Mighty Bosstones – “Impression That I Get”
All of these songs are fairly well known and would appeal to an extremely large audience. On the flipside, Band Hero has a decent number of tracks that your average person is not going to care about and a whole pile of songs that SHOULD have been in a Guitar Hero game and in the case of All-American Rejects “Dirty Little Secret”, HAS already been in a GH game.

Here’s my list of questionably included tracks.
The Kooks – “Naïve”
The Last Goodnight – “Pictures of You”
The Bravery – “Believe”
Boys Like Girls – “The Great Escape”
Cold War Kids – “Hang Me Up To Dry”
Counting Crows – “Angels of the Silences” (Omitting “Mr. Jones” in place of this song should be a crime)
The Airborne Toxic Event – “Gasoline”
Alphabeat – “Fascination”
Aly and AJ – “Like Whoa”
Angels & Airwaves – “The Adventure”
OK Go – “A Million Ways”
Papa Roach – “Lifeline”
Parachute – “Back Again”
Robbie Williams and Kylie Minogue – “Kids”
Santigold – “L.E.S. Artistes”
Snow Patrol – “Take Back the City”
Many of the other songs ride the line between Rock and Pop, and if the line between GH and BH wasn’t blurred enough, to make even muddier, you can use your imported songs from Guitar Hero: World Tour (included downloaded content), Smash Hits, and GH5 (Band Hero tracks are also exportable to GH5). This is a great feature pioneered by Harmonix with Rock Band, that continues to benefit the party player, but the inability to export the majority from World Tour and Smash Hits, still has a dampening effect on the whole experience.

So, I suggest you look at the entire setlist, before any purchase decisions are made, and if you like the songs, buy it. Or if you somehow haven’t managed to pick up a GH Drum kit, pick up Band Hero for the hardware since no other new GH game has a full band set packaged with it this year. Nothing gameplay-wise is going to surprise you since the Guitar Hero formula is a known quantity, oh, and just in case you were wondering the lag calibration is still boned.
Verdict: Research First

On DS, Band Hero is a very different game. Let’s take a look at it.

Band Hero DS Review

Vicarious Visions, has been developing Guitar Hero Games for Wii and DS for years, to positive reviews. Guitar Hero: On Tour is their flagship DS title that has sold pretty well and included the strange yet equally awesome Guitar Grip. If you have never played GH for the DS you are really missing out.

Its enough like its console counterparts to be familiar, but bit more abstract and off-the-wall. Outside of the hand cramps caused by Guitar Grip use, the On Tour Series has been a pretty solid series of DS games. But this isn’t an On Tour review, now is it?

Band Hero for the DS picks up the idea of On Tour and gives it the full band treatment. Band Hero comes bundled, with the game, the Guitar Grip and the brand new Drum Grip. It’s much like a Wii remote jacket, with little drum pads that sit over the d-pad and face buttons.

Its really a cosmetic cover, and I’m sure the game can be played without it (unlike the Guitar Grip). Its inclusion has more of a symbolic significance. It symbolizes the full band and proves that Vicarious Visions is serious about bringing the console experience to a handheld, which brings me to my next point.

Band Hero DS has pitch recognition, meaning you can sing into the tiny DS microphone and participate without any ad-ons . Singing into my DS and seeing it register on the note chart was mind-blowing and I realized that the amount of game packed into this single cart was staggering. So, with the addition of vocals and drums, the standard band setup is complete. As you would assume, four DSs can be linked wirelessly to play songs together a-la Band Hero on PS3, WIi, & Xbox 360.

A small but welcomed addition to the game is the Stage Stunt Minigames. They pop up to perform during songs and are activated like star power. They are completely optional and can provide a welcomed break when working through a torturously hard track. These minigames include things like giving fans high fives with the stylus, or using the stylus to guide a crowd surfer through the crowd. They come at you lighting quick much like Warioware and help to break up the gameplay.

However, everything’s not all peaches and Jelly Beans. The game comes with all songs already unlocked and instead of having a Career Mode and a Quick Play mode; it only has a Play mode. All playing is done to open achievement-like unlockables. This setup prevents the player from getting too attached to completing the game and makes it feel a bit shallow, even though its not.

Also, the wireless play that is available isn’t single cart, so any body that buys Band Hero in the bundle (which currently it’s only available in a bundle) will never need to actually use all the instruments simultaneously. If four kids show up with their DSs, each with a copy of Band Hero, they will have several extra instruments sitting around. This is a minor issue to say the least, but it going to be harder to get your friends on board with buying the game if you are never able to play multiplayer (since you only have a single cart). If anything it would have been smart to include dummy carts that you put into the drone DSs that only included enough of the game to boot and play wireless multiplayer.

The pitch detection stands out as being a bit janky. It works well enough, but its obvious the DS mic was not designed for this kind of use. It took me a few tries before I found the right angle to hold the DS for optimal mic pick-up. The song choice is a bit more on the same page than its console counterparts, with Visions deciding to take a more Pop-Rock stance on song selection. There are very few duds in 30 the set-list. Band Hero DS is tough, probably one of the toughest rhythm games I’ve ever played, second only to Elite Beat Agents, and the Drum parts are punishingly difficult.
If you are looking for a decent portable rhythm game Band Hero is definitely the way to go, but just remember that you will definitely look like an idiot playing it in public.

Verdict: Surprisingly Awesome