I've been hitting up the music rhythm genre pretty heavily as of late. Round the end of November, I picked up Guitar Hero 3 (w/guitar). On Boxing Day, I picked up GH: World Tour (again, w/guitar) and not too long ago, purchased a copy of Rock Band (without any instruments). All three are good games. Guitar Hero 3 is great if you're stupidly hardcore and want to handle a decent, but utterly broken game. World Tour is good for parties, instruments and for a more hardcore, yet casual experience. And Rock Band? Well, the same idea of having fun in a party , but with plenty of music that you'll know, as well as over 500 songs up for purchase.
I'd wanted to compare these two games, but I didn't want to do it in much the same way an Australian game reviewer would actually compare them. I think it's really unfair to be comparing a game that was released late 2007 to a game that was released two months ago in the same way you'd compare two games of similar genres.
Personally, I'd recommend both of these games, but I'd like to focus on one specific aspect that I've noticed while playing both World Tour and Rock Band – specifically just how much of a difference a year can make on a product. There's more to it than the obvious statement that because Rock Band exists, Guitar Hero had to add in a drum kit and microphone for the 2008 version or risk being left 'out of date', as well as how because Rock Band handles its DLC, Guitar Hero's DLC plans were changed for the better.
Before I continue, it's important to note that this comparison is strictly for the current gen versions of both games. I'm using the PS3 version as my main reference here, but both games are similar enough anyway that unless specified, it'll also be relevant to the 360 version.
GAMEPLAY
In general, both games play almost exactly the same. You form a band with friends or people online and proceed to play songs for points. There's no denying that. But the ways that both games handle said gameplay is still different. One major is the way that the points boost powerup is handled. In World Tour, the traditional system has been changed somewhat. While Star Power is achieved in the same way achieved in any of the Guitar Hero games, once it's attained, anyone currently playing can use it. Example – the lead guitarist is the one that actually earns the Star Power for the band, but as soon as he gets it, the drummer can immediately activate it to gain a boost to their multiplier or save themselves from failure. It's a good thing if you need it to save a band mate who is struggling, but feasibly, unless there's more than one star power light lit up – only one member of the band at a time can use star power. This can be extremely annoying when you're playing with people who refuse to co-operate as a band and just use Star Power the second it's attained. It's an annoying design mechanic that should have been fixed.
Rock Band's Overdrive is slightly smarter in execution. It's exactly the same concept, but modified enough to actually make it awesome. Each band member gets their own unique overdrive which can be deployed at any time to increase the band's multiplayer (which Guitar Hero also does – minus the unique part). What's more interesting is the way that it's activated. For instance, players doing vocals or playing drums have it activate automatically after playing a serious of notes. Guitarists have to do it manually. It's...interesting, and works better for when you're playing co-operatively with other people, since you can easily co-ordinate when you'll activate it – thanks to the way notes are laid out. But at the same time, you'll want to activate your bonus whenever you'd like, and this is something that you can't really do in Rock Band.
Then there's some of the more unique gameplay elements to each game that also help to show just how much of a difference a year can make. For instance, Rock Band has a great mechanic where if you're playing with a band, and you fail out of a song, it continues, but you can't get back in unless someone sacrifices their Overdrive. It can't be done all the time though – fail three times and you can't go back in, and that players track is permanently muted. It's a very smart decision that Guitar Hero hasn't capitalized on – in this case, if any one of the four players fail a song, the entire band fails the song.
However, Guitar Hero includes something that's not in Rock Band and is extremely useful – a countdown after pausing. Let me explain this a little further. For whatever reason, you have to pause the game. You do whatever you need to do that required pausing the game and upon resuming, you are greeted with a countdown that will help to lead you back into the song. You'll also get enough of a look as to what notes you needed to hit when you paused that you'll easily be able to get back into the game. In Rock Band (or the previous Guitar Hero games), if you paused, the game would immediately start up again, and there's a chance that you'd miss out on whatever notes you were playing at that time.
Lastly, Rock Band has a huge advantage in the fact that if you play a song, it'll focus specifically on the instrument you've chosen. Let me explain – say you're playing Train Kept a Rollin' by Aerosmith on vocals; and solely vocals. The game will actually shorten the song allowing you to sing more and enjoy yourself by shortening or removing guitar solos. There's also a tapping mini-game in certain songs where you tap the microphone to simulate a tambourine or a cow bell. Guitar Hero doesn't do this. Instead, while you'll get sections to shout out to the crowd or sing any vocals, these are few and far between. As well as that, the songs aren't edited down – so if you're singing a song where verses are minutes in between one another, it gets boring quickly just sitting down and waiting for your turn. Granted, there's nothing wrong with listening to a song, but if you're just playing vocals, and you're stuck with practically nothing to do, it gets real boring real fast. Rambling Man by the Allman Brothers Band, while it's a good song, is almost borderline unfun to just sing during its second half.
So in this instance, World Tour still kinda does its own thing compared to Rock Band but yet hasn't really learnt or improved much. Star Power should have really be unique to each player, but this has been made up with the countdown after pausing – a very useful function that neither Rock Band or its sequel possess. With that being said, Rock Band does have some gameplay elements that Guitar Hero should have capitalized on – such as the way you can use Overdrive to save players who failed out or the unique Overdrives for each player. But at least in Guitar Hero – it's much easier to use your overdrive, especially in the cases of a drummer or vocalist.
DIFFICULTY
One of the big reasons why many people converted from Guitar Hero to Rock Band after Guitar Hero 3's release was due to difficulty. Aside from the far more difficult than necessary final set, GH3 also included one of the most broken and unrewarding gameplay modes in history – the Guitar Battles, which placed an emphasis on achieving Mario Kart like items to screw over the opponent than actual skill. This was extremely true during battles against the computer – who cheated like crazy, to the point where if you didn't beat them before their song ended, you'd lose regardless. But enough about that.
Let's kick off with Guitar Hero – who improved their difficulty EXPONENTIALLY. It doesn't feel as overly difficult and hardcore as GH3 did, and you'll find yourself doing much better overall. Hell, there's even a beginner mode (where you basically just strum – no button presses required), and the ability to change difficulty mid-song, which is always a welcome addition. That's not to say that Guitar Hero wussed out or anything. If at all, the game is still much, much more of a hardcore game than Rock Band is – aside from the whole part that if one person fails, everyone fails; the game features some stupidly challenging songs towards the end of the game, such as Van Halen's Hot for Teacher, System of a Down's B.Y.O.B and Joe Satrini's Satch Boogie. The latter of which is challenging enough on any difficulty. But regardless – that's how it should have been in the first place, starting off easy, THEN getting progressively difficult, but not stupidly and overly difficult by the end of the game.
Conversely, Rock Band handles its difficulty slightly better. While the original game doesn't individually score difficulty for each individual member (much like the sequel and the music store does), there is a tiering system in place that helps to clearly tell you how difficult a song is. I've already brought up how Overdrive can be used to save players, which also helps to make the game easier. In general, Rock Band was designed more for a casual audience, and it's not too difficult. However, that's not to say that Rock Band is too easy. You still have to play the songs – there isn't any of the No Fail mode present in Rock Band 2 here.
However, there's plenty of songs both in Rock Band (and the sequel), as well as DLC songs that prove to be an almost absurd challenge. For instance, there's a video of a three player band playing "They're Red Hot" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. They're sightreading (as in they don't know the chart, so they're going by what they see), and fail within seconds. As well as that, there's a video on YouTube of a player fully clearing the song, on drums, on expert. Supposedly, Harmonix employees were freaked out with just how quickly the player fully cleared the song upon its release. Iron Maiden's "Run to the Hills" on the original Rock Band has also caused major issues – Harmonix developers have said that more people have trouble beating it on Hard than Expert on drums. As well as that, there are several Who songs taken from their Live at Leeds album – which are nightmarish on drums. I guess Keith Moon wasn't thinking about how other people would play his beats in a video game.
If anything, Neversoft have definitely fixed Guitar Hero in this regard, while not so much learning from Rock Band, but more from experience than anything else. After all, when Guitar Hero 3 was as overly challenging and broken as a rhythm game was going to get, you can tell that sweeping changes needed to be made. At least the final set actually poses a proper and fair challenge, instead of the game basically saying "LOL GOOD LUCK".
CAREER MODE
Sure, both Rock Band and World Tour are all about playing music co-operatively in a band, but every rhythm game has at least one mode where you play a structured series of sets and get rewarded with money or other unlockable items. World Tour has its Career Mode, while Rock Band actually has two – Band World Tour and Solo Tour. Both modes are distinctly different to one another, and we'll cover this now.
World Tour's career mode tries to deviate slightly from the Guitar Hero norm of playing tiers of songs, and after completing a certain amount, play an encore song, then moving on to the next tier until you've finished them all....but not by too much. In World Tour, the tiering system is still in place – in each tier, you get four sets to play. There are four tiers in all – with 15 gigs to play (four each in the first three tiers, two in the last, and one dedicating to playing custom setlists of songs previously played in the Career Mode). Each gig you play is a proper set though – you work your way through a number of consecutive songs before playing an encore song at the end of most of the gigs. You can play through the career mode five times – once for the band, and once for each of the instruments. Despite these five career modes, it's still exactly the same game, no matter what and how you're playing career mode.
Rock Band's career is slightly different depending on what mode you play. Band World Tour sees you start a band of 2-4 people, and then travel around the world, playing individual songs, custom sets, mystery sets or specialized sets, earning fans and generally...well...be a Rock Band! It's very open and can't really end...but there are some major problems with it. For instance, once you start a Band World Tour – and you've chosen which players are playing which instruments or who the band leader is (i.e. the person that does all the selecting for menus), they're locked. So if you've started a four player Band World Tour, and your drummer can't make it for whatever reason, then you'd need to start a completely new game, delete that member from the band...or just play random setlists in the quickplay menu.
Solo Tour is nowhere near as awesome as Band World Tour. In fact, instead of being as revolutionary as BWT...all you do in Solo Tour is play tiers, similar to what you were doing in Guitar Hero 3 (and even the Harmonix developed Guitar Hero games). Each tier has around five songs, and you need to play all the songs in the setlist to proceed to the next one. Unlike World Tour, you can only play three instruments – lead guitar, vocals or drums. There's no bass career. This is unfortunate, but kind of understandable at the same time (especially when you play Bass in either Guitar Hero or Rock Band). Solo Tour also doesn't let you create your own setlists, unlike Guitar Hero World Tour, and you'll have to do each song individually. Whether or not you find that a problem will vary depending on the person playing the game.
In this regard, it's kind of sad to see that Guitar Hero really hasn't learnt too much from what Rock Band has done. It still seems too...shackled by what the previous games have done that if any form of major change is introduced the career mode, then Neversoft/Activision might feel that the fans would rebel against them. Conversely, Rock Band's Tour modes are well intentioned and have some good ideas, but have some completely stupid elements in them (such as locking members in BWT, or having a mediocre single player mode) – though this was all fixed in the sequel.
USER INTERFACE/PRESENTATION
It's extremely important to be able to see how you're doing, especially in a game like this. As well as that, the way that the game is presented to you is also quite important. Both Rock Band & Guitar Hero have completely different methods of presentation and UI, and whichever one you prefer is based on personal preference more than anything else.
Rock Band is presented in an extremely simple way. The best way to describe it would be to compare it to how Sony treat their Singstar games, in that the frontend is simplified enough where you can quickly go pick a song and play it. The Solo and World Tour modes are again, just simplified where there's little between you and the songs. There's no story, no cutscenes, nothing. Then when you get into the game, there's still plenty of simplicity. Hell, there aren't any crazy animations when you go into Overdrive – just your notechart turning gold.
Though the one problem people have with the game is the design aesthetic of both the menus and the characters. Personally speaking, it's not that bothering – though it's easy to see why people would get sick of the cartoonish and at times, unappealing looking Rock Band characters. Though honestly, the same could be said about the Guitar Hero characters.
The presentation of the UI is also quite nice. The overdrive bar is laid out on the bottom of all the note charts, and the total score is presented in the top right-hand corner of the screen. In addition, is that the game will actually show off how you're doing by showing how many stars you've achieved. In fact, you'll get a noise everytime you get a star, and it's notable enough that you don't need to constantly be looking at how many stars you have to know how many you currently have. It's a neat addition, and beats waiting until the end of the song to know how you went.
As for World Tour...it hasn't really evolved much from Guitar Hero World Tour. The presentation of the game is still that over the top 'metal' feel, as well as feeling much more like a game, if that makes any sense. For instance, each encore is presented with a brief scene of something crazy happening – such as an electrical fire starting. As well as that, there are animated cutscenes, courtesy of animation house Titmouse (best known for Metapocolypse). What's disappointing is that they open and close each career – there's nothing in between, which is weird. Lastly, for some strange reason, the game reuses the biographies for each of the returning characters in World Tour. Surely it couldn't have been that hard to rewrite some new text?
Though what's even weirder is that the cutscenes actually focus on the four new characters that represent the drummer, vocalist, lead and bass guitarists. Which is quite dumb – since for the most part you'll be playing as either a customized character, one of the other returning or licensed characters. It feels quite jarring to know that despite you playing as any of the other characters, you'll get the ending for just the ONE character. Which is kinda dumb.
As for the UI? Well, it's basically the same as Guitar Hero 3's. It feels too much like Neversoft just took the GH3 interface, added in the drum and vocal track. You can't check how many stars you have until the end of the song, but unlike Rock Band, you can specifically check how you went in a particular section – making problem identification for specific areas easier.
DOWNLOADBLE CONTENT
Finally, and quickly, is the issue of downloadable content. I'll go through this quickly, since there isn't all that much to cover. We all know that this has been a huge deal with Rock Band – with such a large variety of music up for download at reasonable prices. But one of the better things about Rock Band's DLC is that (mostly) every week since the game's original launch, there has been some form of DLC released simultaneously on both the Xbox Live Marketplace and Playstation Store.
To better illustrate the point – here's a brief recap on how Activision treated Guitar Hero 3's DLC. All the items were released as track packs, and only as track packs. So if you wanted the Coldplay pack to specifically play Violet Hill, then you're stuck with two songs that you might not want. For the 360 version of Guitar Hero II, this was exactly the same scenario. As well as that, releases were few and far between – and to date, there are only two complete albums up for download (Metallica's Death Magnetic and Oasis's Dig Out Your Soul).
How did World Tour learn from Rock Band in this regard? Simple. DLC is now being released weekly, and you now have the option to download individual tracks instead of being forced to download packs. Granted, there are some songs you can only get as a pack, but when you figure that two of them are Hendrix packs, as well as how stupidly restrictive the Hendrix family are with using ANYTHING related to Jimi, it's understandable. So far, it's all well and good, save for the fact that the songs are exclusive to the Xbox Live Marketplace for two weeks, before hitting the Playstation Network.
From a business perspective, it makes sense. After all, more people own 360's and play these kinds of games on their consoles, so in that regard...I guess it's acceptable. But at the same time, it's still completely wrong. It screws out a potential half of their audience for little reason other than money. It's not like the actual content needs to be recoded too drastically for the each of the different versions of the game.
CONCLUSION
In the time between the original release of Rock Band, and seeing how its release has impacted the rhythm game genre, it's almost unfortunate to see that Activision and Neversoft really haven't learnt too much from what MTV and Harmonix have created. Don't get me wrong though, there are some things that have been learnt (such as an improvement in DLC releases, the pause countdown and the ability to activate Star Power at any point in the song or anyone can earn star power for the band), but at the same time, there are some stupid mistakes that should have been fixed (such as the fact that anyone can use Star Power) as well as problems with the game that were actually perfected in Guitar Hero 3! (Such as text entry and character bios)
But with that being said, 2009 is going to be a very interesting year for both the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises. With Harmonix not working on Rock Band 3, and Activision releasing a rumoured six Guitar Hero games this year (so far, Guitar Hero V, Guitar Hero Metallica, Guitar Hero Smash Hits and two more Guitar Hero On Tour games), there's plenty of an opportunity for Guitar Hero to improve itself. If not immediately, but slowly.
Let's just hope that the yearly exploiting for Guitar Hero actually helps the series.
