Guitar Hero/Rockband

Some time ago my brother got a Nintendo Wii, and soon thereafter was playing Guitar Hero with a Gibson Les Paul controller (considerably lighter and smaller than his actual Les Paul Custom).  He played it for some time and enjoyed it, then we forgot about it for the time being.

 Guitar Hero/Rockband 101.  You pretend to be a guitar band, with onscreen avatars: with cute chick bass player (sometimes the virtual camera goes up her skirt, which distracts me), scruffy heroin-skinny male lead singer (looks like one of the Gorillaz), and some typical drummer; and your choice of different guitarist avatars.  The overweight punk is hilarious, but I prefer Axel Steel (my favorite), who looks like Bruce Dickinson on steroids.  On GH Legends of Rock you can pick Slash as an avatar – and the choice is nonexclusive, so the bassist can also pick him.  Dueling Slashes?  You bet!

 You can either pick and choose individual songs to play, or you can choose “career mode”, in which you start off playing your back yard, then small clubs, then more respected clubs, larger venues, etc.  The game makes various comic remarks about “setting cars on fire” and other rock excesses which reduce the amount your band gets paid for gigs, but anything like groupies or drugs are strictly off-“camera” as numbers, statistics, and purely abstract elements, and not part of the game experience: no “sex” or “drugs”, just rock’n’roll.

 The controller looks like a much smaller, plastic version of a famous guitar: Gibson SG, Les Paul, Explorer, Fender Stratocaster, Fender Precision Bass (no Rickenbackers), plus some Jacksons, Paul Reed Smiths, and other models.  For Rockband Beatles you can get Lennon’s Rickenbacker, Harrison’s Gretsch, McCartney’s Hofner bass, and Ringo’s Ludwig drums.  I haven’t seen any left handed controllers, though – including the McCartney bass, which is right handed.  And the guitar controllers have whammy bars, even on Gibsons which typically don’t have them on the real guitars.  I purchased a Stratocaster controller for Wii, which I was lucky to find at this late stage in the game’s life cycle.  There are also “skins” (overlays) you can put on the plastic guitars – dragons, CSA flags, Union Jacks, the usual subjects which are available for guitar pickguards.

 As the song progresses, notes come down the screen across a virtual fretboard.   You have to push the correct colored button(s) – out of five – on the fretboard along with the “strum” bar on the guitar body, just as the note hits the line.  There is a whammy bar which fortunately does not cause tuning problems, but I’m unclear if there are any score bonuses to using it.   More crucial is a “meter” which varies from green (doing well!), yellow (caution), or red – at risk for being booed off the stage in contempt and dishonor.  The more accurate your playing, the higher on the meter you stay.  Missing notes results not only in the meter dropping, but an audible gap in the music which is itself fairly annoying.  Although Rockband adds in bass and drums, from a guitar perspective I find Guitar Hero and Rockband to be almost indistinguishable.

 At the higher difficulty levels, the blue and orange buttons (#4 and #5) are combined in awkward and implausible ways, Z# chords only Alex Lifeson knows.  Note: skill at a real guitar – even if you actually do know how to play the song being played – has zero relevance to playing this game.  And Mastery of the Five Buttons will not help you on a real guitar with 6 strings and 22 frets (plus open strings).  It was this disconnect between the game and reality which damped our ardor for the game.

 More recently, Rockband Beatles came out.  We got it and tried it out.  WOW.  Instead of a fake band, RBB has the real Beatles: John, Paul, George and Ringo.  No sign of Pete Best, Stuart Sutcliffe, Jimmy Nicol, George Martin, or Billy Preston; nor any sign of Yoko Ono, although the liner notes imply that she participated to some extent in the game development (perhaps to veto any disruptive on-screen presence).  Moreover, you can progress from The Cavern, to the Ed Sullivan Show, Shea Stadium (’65), Budokan, Tokyo (’66), then Abbey Road studios for the “studio” era, finishing up with the famous January 1969 rooftop concert.  The Shea Stadium and Budokan scenes feature the 60’s era screaming female audiences (black hair in Japan), while the otherwise sterile studio sessions at Abbey Road are enhanced with dazzling psychedelic visuals.  Despite not having any potentially hostile audience members in the studio (perhaps Yoko Ono, off camera) the game still pulls the plug on you mid-train wreck if you drop too low into the red zone.  And on the rooftop, you can see various confused people down on the street looking up – bankers and barristers going about their business on the streets of London.   No screaming teenage girls in this part of the game.  Amazing!  In fact, the graphics are so good on this, that I find them a bit distracting and I enjoy watching others play the game so I can simply watch the extra stuff.  It’s that good. 

 Impressed with that, I decided to check out the other band-oriented varieties. There are, by now, several non-band collective additions, including, but not limited to, GH 3, World Tour, Smash Hits, and GH5, the most recent, and several similar Rockband collections, all of which feature the “house band” playing covers.  Among the band-specific games, although none are nearly as impressive as the Beatles game, they vary in execution.

 Rockband AC/DC.  No sign of the real band, so far as I can see.  It’s a fake cover band playing AC/DC songs, half Bon Scott era and half Brian Johnson era.  At the end of each song you “widdly widdly” at random to mimic Angus Young’s tiresome song-enders which add musically meaningless minutes to each song (which combined could be at least another whole song).  Likewise, “Let There Be Rock” features 2 minutes of “da DAH DAH” riffing until closing it up. 

            I was not impressed.  Since this is a band with unique stage presence, Angus Young in his schoolboy outfit, Bon Scott and Brian Johnson as lively, charismatic singers, and various props such as the inflatable Rosie, the Hell’s Bell, and the FTATR cannon, relying simply on a generic cover band is a particular disappointment.

 Guitar Hero Van Halen.  Eddie’s here in his late model short haircut and Peavey-style guitar.  The drummer bears a passing resemblance to brother Alex. I don’t recognize the bassist, but it’s clearly not Michael Anthony; apparently they subbed in Wolfgang Van Halen whose only claim to fame is being Eddie’s son.  The avatar singer is supposed to be David Lee Roth, but in short hair and a shirt and jeans, he bears absolutely no resemblance to any DLR we might recognize from the classic DLR era.  This is despite the fact that all the songs come from his time, i.e. Van Halen through 1984; none of the songs are from the Sammy Hagar albums or later.  Boo hoo – although I like Sammy Hagar, both as a rock celebrity (that is, he seems like a regular guy with no ego problems) and a musician, count me in the multitude of VH fans who prefer Roth.  My biggest problem with GHVH is not the absence of Hagar – or even Anthony – but that the singer doesn’t resemble the long-haired Crazy Dave we’re familiar with.  

            Having ripped them on the presentation, I’ll give them huge credit on the song selection, though; not only the DLR focus, but they picked the very best ones: “Mean Street”, “Unchained”, “Hear About It Later”, “And the Cradle Will Rock”, “Cathedral” and “Intruder>>Pretty Woman” and even “Eruption”, which can be played without the double-tapping.

 Guitar Hero Aerosmith.  Too bad I’m not a big Aerosmith fan, as this was very well done.  On the career mode, you play two non-Aerosmith cover songs (e.g. “Dream Police” or “I Hate Myself For Loving You”) as the stock Guitar Hero house band (including Axel Steel!) then play as Aerosmith themselves for two songs and an encore.  You progress from Nipmuc high school, their first gig, to Mike’s Kansas City (in NYC), to the Orpheum, all venues with special significance in the band’s history.  In between songs the band members talk about their memories of that show or time; they are remarkably articulate and charming.  Unlike the Van Halen game and its curious lineup deficiencies, this features the full band we know and like: Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, Brad Whitford, Tom Hamilton, and Joey Kramer.  I’m glad they include my favorite song, “Uncle Salty”.

 Guitar Hero Metallica.  Also well done, also the full band, though with Robert Trujillo on bass – I don’t see any career mode with Cliff Burton, Dave Mustaine or Jason Newsted as alternate members.  Unfortunately the Load/Re-Load/St Anger/Death Man-getic era is heavily represented, about 40% of the material.  I do recall seeing the band on the Load tour, and Hetfield made some remark like, “you people [audience] like the old shit, don’t you?”  Perhaps I’m not the only one who isn’t that impressed with the later material.  Anyhow, this was well done and recommendable to anyone who likes Metallica.

 I’d love to see GH/RB Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, or King Crimson, but some of these bands would need a keyboard controller which I’ve yet to see; though seeing how the guitar controller works, a keyboard controller would be closer to how the real instrument works than the guitar controller is.  Rockband added in bass and drums.  I have no interest in DJ Hero. 

 No one’s asked me, but here are some ideas I have:

Guitar Hero WHO:  You can throw your guitar up in the air for extra points, demolish your drum set, or forfeit your hotel security deposit.

Guitar Hero Pink Floyd: Start off with Syd, strum the same chord throughout the whole song; have a whole middle era segment in Pompeii; late 70s (Dark Side, Wish You Were Here, Animals) with inflatable pig; then play The Wall show.

Rockband Deep Purple: The band members change DURING the set.  Wait? Is this Rockband Rainbow or Whitesnake?

Rockband Beach Boys: Unlock the bonus level in which Charles Manson joins the band – whether they like it or not. 

Rockband Black Sabbath: Ozzy doesn’t lose points for mumbling lyrics, forgetting them, or singing them in the wrong order. 

Guitar Hero Led Zeppelin: between phases in career mode, as a bonus you can unlock the fantasy sequences from “The Song Remains the Same”;

Guitar Hero Grateful Dead: Be ready for songs that go on for hours.  Remember that “South Park” Warcraft episode? 

Finally, Rocksmith.  Someone actually bothered to rig a game which can be used with an actual guitar, and I've played it.  Unfortunately I don't have an xBox360, and the selection of songs was very weak.