Monday, April 17, 2006
To be a Juke Box Hero...
Shocking Pre-E3 News! There is going to be a sequel to Guitar Hero! Oh my God!
Seriously, we all knew it was coming. Heck, anyone with a brain knew the darn thing would be coming out this year. It's a music game, not some epic RPG, of course they're going to push another one out in time for the holidays. There have certainly been better music games, Guitar Hero isn't even the best game made by Harmonix, but no music game has ever had the mainstream appeal before. Not even Dance Dance Revolution could tap into a market this large. Even if you like dancing on those four arrows, no one likes the music in DDR. But Guitar Hero not only lets you jam on the phallic-inspired instrument that most people dream of playing, but you get to play awesome songs as well.
If anyone has heard me talk about this game before they are probably wondering why I am so gung ho about a sequel. I have a few problems with the original. Namely, there is no variety at all. There is one mode and it just involves rocking. Unlike Amplitude you can't even remix the songs. Unlike Band Brothers you don't actually feel like you're playing in a band. Sure, wielding the sweet peripheral makes you feel like a Guitar God, but you are limited in what you can play. In Band Brothers, you can play notes at random. There are limitations to this, only five notes can be played, but the octaves change depending on how the actual song is constructed so it actually feels like you're playing music rather than playing Simon Says.
However, even with those obvious flaws, I'm still pumped for the sequel. First of all, they are including Bass and Rhythm guitar tracks. Thank Christ. The original just had some weird agglomeration of guitar tracks, meaning you played lead when solos came up but other string sections when lead took a back seat. Kind of lame. The new one should offer a more robust experience. Plus, when playing two player, you can chose two different difficulty modes. This is key since I am quite poor. I can't play anything higher than Medium whereas Nick likes to jam on Expert.
Best of all, there's going to be 55 new songs. That's a lot of songs. Ouendan only has 15! They can't get into any specifics yet because of licensing, but they did mention that the Toadies contacted them after the first GH came out. The Toadies broke up 4 years ago! Do you realize the implications of this? Guitar Hero is either a time traveling device or has the power to mend relationships. Either way, I get to rock out to Possum Kingdom in a few months. Yay me! And now that Pearl Jam is doing Saturday Night Live, maybe they'll put one of their tracks in the game... Would anyone say no to rocking on Go? Or maybe Grievance... I'm getting too excited now.
E3 can't get here soon enough. Last year, Nick was able to walk up to the Harmonix Booth (Red Octane had some involvement maybe...) and schedule an appointment that very day. I can't imagine it will be that easy now.
Seriously, we all knew it was coming. Heck, anyone with a brain knew the darn thing would be coming out this year. It's a music game, not some epic RPG, of course they're going to push another one out in time for the holidays. There have certainly been better music games, Guitar Hero isn't even the best game made by Harmonix, but no music game has ever had the mainstream appeal before. Not even Dance Dance Revolution could tap into a market this large. Even if you like dancing on those four arrows, no one likes the music in DDR. But Guitar Hero not only lets you jam on the phallic-inspired instrument that most people dream of playing, but you get to play awesome songs as well.
If anyone has heard me talk about this game before they are probably wondering why I am so gung ho about a sequel. I have a few problems with the original. Namely, there is no variety at all. There is one mode and it just involves rocking. Unlike Amplitude you can't even remix the songs. Unlike Band Brothers you don't actually feel like you're playing in a band. Sure, wielding the sweet peripheral makes you feel like a Guitar God, but you are limited in what you can play. In Band Brothers, you can play notes at random. There are limitations to this, only five notes can be played, but the octaves change depending on how the actual song is constructed so it actually feels like you're playing music rather than playing Simon Says.
However, even with those obvious flaws, I'm still pumped for the sequel. First of all, they are including Bass and Rhythm guitar tracks. Thank Christ. The original just had some weird agglomeration of guitar tracks, meaning you played lead when solos came up but other string sections when lead took a back seat. Kind of lame. The new one should offer a more robust experience. Plus, when playing two player, you can chose two different difficulty modes. This is key since I am quite poor. I can't play anything higher than Medium whereas Nick likes to jam on Expert.
Best of all, there's going to be 55 new songs. That's a lot of songs. Ouendan only has 15! They can't get into any specifics yet because of licensing, but they did mention that the Toadies contacted them after the first GH came out. The Toadies broke up 4 years ago! Do you realize the implications of this? Guitar Hero is either a time traveling device or has the power to mend relationships. Either way, I get to rock out to Possum Kingdom in a few months. Yay me! And now that Pearl Jam is doing Saturday Night Live, maybe they'll put one of their tracks in the game... Would anyone say no to rocking on Go? Or maybe Grievance... I'm getting too excited now.
E3 can't get here soon enough. Last year, Nick was able to walk up to the Harmonix Booth (Red Octane had some involvement maybe...) and schedule an appointment that very day. I can't imagine it will be that easy now.
// posted by Tom @ 10:25 AM 
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]