Now, if you're also a plastic guitar player, a mini-drum set player, or simply a person who likes to sing while people around you pretend to play instruments, then you'll likely know that the two most popular music video game franchises out there are Guitar Hero and Rock Band. There are some other popular ones out there as well, such as the sliding arrows of the aforementioned DDR, the Kinect-enabled Just Dance series, and a recent song teaching game with a guitar called Rocksmith. However, Guitar Hero and Rock Band have been in the spotlight the most, and for good reason, as they probably made the game genre what it is today.
Still, over time it seems like Guitar Hero became the token, predictable game over the years. Like Call of Duty, the Guitar Hero franchise is overseen by Activision, and it seemed like the release plans were to have one new Guitar Hero title every year for the main game series as well as 1-2 off series or handheld games. Every year, besides a new song list and a handful of new features, it was easily predictable what the game would be like even before they were launched. Some features, like being able to play any instrument at any time or the ability to play an Expert+ difficulty on drums, were really cool and unique to the brand, but a ton of things that were handled differently than Harmonix with Rock Band just seemed like dumb ideas.
With that said, here is a list of things that I like/dislike about Rock Band and Guitar Hero:
1. The Music Store. Rock Band's music store is bigger than a donut shop line on Fat Tuesday. It keeps adding new songs weekly ranging from obscure to insanely popular, and it's super easy to go online in the game and purchase any amount of songs you want, like the iTunes music store only for video games. The list of songs in the store stood mostly consistent through each Rock Band game with you being able to buy any song(s) you wanted and add them to your growing song list. Obviously past versions of Rock Band don't support more recent releases, but being able to get all of your songs at the low price they have always been at while being able to import almost all previous songs is amazing on its own.
Guitar Hero has a music store as well, and it does have a pretty good variety of songs, but it has nowhere near as many songs as the Rock Band store. Forget Fat Tuesday; the amount of songs here is more comparable to any typical line at a McDonalds in the morning for breakfast. However, the miniscule list of songs in the store is probably because of the way they released games. Having 1-2 console releases every year ensures that customers would buy the new games for the songs they wanted, but with the added burden of a game's price tag as well as waiting for months to get a license on the store to import songs (that is, if they even decided to release one, and most of the time they didn't).
The question here is if they going to have a music store where you purchase individual songs and bundles for low prices, why bother releasing new games at all? I guess it's nice to have some games themed around a single band, like Green Day, Metallica or Van Halen, but switching between games is just obnoxious and needless.
2. The Instruments. For a game that is parodying the dream of many young musicians, the instruments aren't too bad, with a few exceptions. The Guitar Hero controller has stayed the same over the years for the most part with the Whammy Bar, Strummer and the colored buttons, and it generally is easy to pick up and use (unless you play like how I know most newbies play: strumming and pressing at the same time. Wrong!). One fair criticism it has received is it looks more like a toy than the Rock Band guitar, which is true, but isn't that what it is? A toy? Next we'll be complaining that the in-game characters look nothing like the band whose song they're playing.
The Rock Band guitar, while it does look more like an actual guitar, is a little more difficult to get used to. The buttons aren't colored on top, but on the sides, which could confuse those who like glancing down to check them while playing. For me personally, it takes a little more pressure from your fingers to press down each button as well as each one being just ever so slightly further spaced apart, but with practice that became less of an issue. Both guitars are fairly nice at what they do and they each have their own minor nitpicks.
The drum sets are where we get a little aggressive. The Rock Band drum set initially had only 4 pads and a pedal, but with the advent of Pro Mode in Rock Band 3, there have been attachments for three cymbals, adding up to 7 total things to hit with your wooden sticks. I haven't yet tried it myself, but it does appear to be challenging, which I like. Guitar Hero's set had three pads and two cymbals, and eventually two pedals to give those who liked metal and harder rock songs (like me) a run for their money. To this day I don't believe Rock Band ever confirmed a difficulty for two pedals, although you can use two in any song anyway with a splitter. I liked the two pedals and I liked the blatant difference with the cymbals at first, but those cymbals were really finicky. Sometimes they would work and sometimes they wouldn't, and it was because the pressure sensor inside is so small that it doesn't register on some parts of the cymbal. If it were a real drum set and nothing happened when I hit a cymbal, then I'd be returning it to the store and wondering what law of physics I broke.
Exclusive to Rock Band is the keyboard, which I've never tried as it appears to be ridiculously hard at higher difficulties. I do like how they implemented it though, with the track shifting in the game whenever higher or lower notes are coming in the song.
The microphone is...a microphone. Not much to see here. Sorry. :) Kidding aside, it does behave like your average karaoke machine for the most part, which is easy and fun.
3.Gameplay. Pretty much the same. Press or hit small or large buttons that correspond on the screen while strumming if you're on a guitar. The Hammer-On notes in both games are similar, but the Guitar Hero ones are more noticeable with the solid white on top compared to the harder-to-notice size difference in Rock Band. To compensate though, Rock Band incorporates a more fun way to start your point-multiplyer on drums by inserting small drum solos, and some songs end in a typical concert-like fashion where the whole band just smashes all the buttons on their instruments and finishes strong to earn as many points as possible. As I mentioned previously, Guitar Hero allows you to play any combination of instruments that you want, like two people playing Guitar, and correct me if I'm wrong, but Rock Band hasn't done this yet, and it's a great idea.
On a slightly different note, comparing these plastic instruments to the real things, they do portray them pretty accurately. However, if you had to ask me, I think the drums are the instrument that stands out the most. The microphone and the keyboard are slight exceptions because playing a piano or singing is mostly the same no matter how you do it, but the drums have actually taught me personally how to play an actual drum set. I'm not joking here; the drums are a great tool for learning how to play songs on an actual drum set because they aren't constrained by learning notes and chords on a piano or guitar or the range of your voice, and I applaud that. I have some great fun playing on my real set as well as my plastic one.
That's about it for that list. There's probably more to say, but it's been a while now since I've played one of these games to be honest, and my memory of these games mostly comes from nostalgia, so I wouldn't be surprised if I'm wrong about some of the things I've laid out here. Guitar Hero went on temporary hiatus to reevaluate their game model, and while Rock Band 3 is still releasing songs every week and is a really fun and raging success, there hasn't been any talk at all of any major music game coming up. The market was really bogged down for a short time in the late 2000's with so many different releases that it was hard to keep track of which was released when without a timeline, or an encyclopedia.
Still, I'm looking forward to what Harmonix and Activision have planned for their two franchises. With the apparent success of the Rock Band store, the decline of Guitar Hero, and the advent of Pro Mode with guitars that actually have strings (!), who knows what each company is planning for the not-so-distant future.
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