5 years, yeah its only been 5 years since Activision released Guitar Hero and changed the landscape of rhythm gaming as we know it. Since then, all hell has broken loose and everyone has their finger in the rhythm game pie. Harmonix (creators of Guitar Hero) broke off and made Rock Band, Konami tried their hand at it with Rock Revolution and Activision has produced the spin off series DJ Hero. All in all the rhythm game genre has seen massive growth.
In the 5 years since the original Guitar Hero, there have been a total of 14 Guitar Hero games (not including the myriad of portable titles), 6 Rock Band games (not including the portables and the 6 track packs) and 2 DJ Hero games. The problem is that saturation happened much too quickly and the general public’s tolerance for plastic instruments piling up in their home is wearing thin. 2009 was the most egregious year for GH games with 5 different disc based console GH games being released. Both sales and profits significantly dropped last year. Activision has apparently learned their lesson and scaled the releases in 2010 down to 2, DJ Hero 2 and Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock.
Neversoft the most recent developers of GH were again responsible for creating this year’s installment. They’ve been the chief dev team on Guitar Hero since Guitar Hero III: Legend of Rock. They’ve handled the 360 and PS3 versions, while Vicarious Visions cranked out the Wii installments. In contrast to last year’s attempt to gain new players across the board with Band Hero, and Guitar Hero 5, Warriors of Rock caters specifically to the audience that made Guitar Hero III such a phenomenon.
The songs are harder and more guitar centric and the art style leans very heavily in the direction Legends of Rock took. The visual tone is one of demons and metal gods, pretty much what you would find on the cover of a speed metal album from the 80’s. Just like in GH3 that art style has its charm, and quirk but that style has been integrated into the all new story mode of the game in a way that will turn a lot of people off.
Most of what you will see in Warriors of Rock is standard fair, but the all new “Quest Mode” is the crux of this release. Quest mode replaces the standard career mode seen in previous GHs and is narrated by Gene Simmons. His haunting voice fits the game well, but his tendency to over-pronounce his words makes it obvious that he is not a professional voice actor. In “Quest Mode” the player assumes the roles of several Guitar Hero characters, I.E. Johnny Napalm, Pandora, Lars Ümlaüt, etc. and earns stars by playing songs. Once a predetermined number of stars are reached the character transforms into a warrior and his/her character model gets a drastic metal-fide makeover. Each character also gets special game effecting power and the player moves onto the next rocker.
Once all the characters are transformed, the player must use them to free the Demi-God of Rock that has been imprisoned by “The Beast”. Where this “Demi-God” fits in the canon between the God of Rock and Lou (The Devil) is unknown, but its clear that to beat the game you must free him. If you are still interested in this I suggest you just play the game. In all actuality the Quest Mode isn’t bad its just completely disposable and sometimes gets in the way of just playing the game. It adds a little bit of non-linear gameplay to the mix, but the structure to the progression isn’t different from what was seen in GH5.
By dropping the number from the name Activision is turning more attention towards the Quest Mode of the game than what is really necessary. Had they named the game “Guitar Hero VI: Warriors of Rocks” it would have more clear that this was a true successor to Guitar Hero 5 and that the Quest Mode was only an addition to the stellar formula in place already. As it stands, Warriors of Rock looks like a confusing product on the shelf.
Speaking of Guitar Hero 5, I am on record saying that minus the atrocious lag calibration, GH5 was the best GH game to date. Well, Warriors of Rock builds very nicely on the foundation in place from 5. Some things that carry over from 5 are the song specific challenges, Party Play, imported songs from previous games and non-traditional band setups. The most disappointing thing that has not changed in the year since 5 is the lag calibration. With the calibration tool in hand I again fiddled with the audio and video lag to get best setup possible out of the crap tools in place. After about 6 failed attempts at calibration I decided it would just be easier to boot up Band Hero and see what my settings on it were and just copy them over. Those settings weren’t perfect, but they were good enough. Shame Neversoft shame!!!!
The challenges are now found on the quickplay menu and instead of having single instrument challenges; each song has multiple challenges for all instruments. Even the DLC and imported songs have challenges. This is a huge benefit to the game, as it adds replay value and incentive to dig into your back catalog of music and also encourages multiple plays through each song. Speaking of the catalog, just days before the release of WOR, Activision announced that in addition to the Band Hero, GH: Smash Hits, GH:World Tour and GH5 songs being exportable, GH: Metallica’s songs (at least most of them) can now be added to your greater Guitar Hero library. That leaves GH: Van Halen as the only Post GHIII game whose tracks are not exportable.
Another thing I stumbled upon when playing through the challenges was my high scores from other games. Songs I had imported from previous games, GH5 and Band Hero had their high scores from those respective games bleed over into Warriors of Hero. This was an unexpected addition that was also very welcome. Every song has a leader board that allows you to directly challenge any player that has previously played a song. The additions to quickplay and the robust stat tracking are impressive and are the right things for the franchise to explore.
The track list in Warriors of Rock is less dynamic than what was in last year’s GH5. The songs cling closely to the genres Rock, Classic Rock and Metal with a few punk tracks thrown in the mix. Highlights include “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “Free Ride”, “Jet City Woman”, “Wish” and “Burnin’ for You”. The entire epic that is Rush’s “2112” is included and plays a large part midway through the Quest Mode and Megadeth contributed three songs that will make your fingers bleed.
The biggest problem with the set list is that many of the songs were already in Rock Band as either DLC or as on disc tracks. I counted 15 tracks I already own in my RB library. Many of the songs that are exclusive are from bands that have already been heavily featured in GH and RB games. Bands like Foo Fighters, AFI, Ozzy Osborne, Rush, Nine Inch Nails and Lynyrd Skynyrd are already all over used in this world and should be retired ASAP.
For a limited time your purchase of Warriors of Rock gets you a free copy of Soundgarden’s pseudo greatest hits package “Telephantasm”. I’m not sure why this is included, as I don’t see many Soundgarden fans rushing out to get GH:WPR because of its inclusion and since it has most of what you would want out of a Soundgarden CD anyway, future Soundgarden purchases by newly found fans seem unlikely. Either way it’s a neat addition.
Finally, the most impressive part of the entire packageis…the guitar! The idea of a guitar that has the ability to swap out entire body pieces sounds silly and a bit 3 years ago, but that can be over looked since the quality of the guitar is nearly unrivaled. From the clean storage compartment for the formalities (batteries, usb dongle etc.) to the effortless strumming provided by a revamped strum bar, the current best fake plastic guitar’s (the Rock Band 2 Stratocaster) crown could be in jeopardy. Obviously not all attachments are created equal. The Quest Wing guitar replacement body that was included with my review copy of the game makes the guitar terribly uncomfortable, but if you stick with the stock body, you will love it.
I was completely prepared to trash this game in this review for its shallow and gimmicky story mode, that takes itself way too seriously, but I simply can’t. Warriors of Rock has alot of really good things going for it. Anyone that is still interested in guitar based rhythm games will enjoy its breadth of features and the hardware has never been better. The track list could use some alterations, but for the first time in a long time due to massive amounts of existing libraries the feature set is more important than the content of the music.
Verdict: Guilty Pleasure Worthy
Unboxing!