The first my friends and I played Guitar Hero, we looked at one another and said “They really need to do something for an entire band.”

Now, 2 years later, Guitar Hero’s creator Harmonix has created Rock Band while their creation’s third sequel. Guitar Hero 3 - now helmed by Tony Hawk franchise creator Neversoft, will compete with one another this holiday season.

Rock Band is the better game on the surface, particularly if you have friends with whom to play it. The guitar part, which is mandatory, is a throwback to the first Guitar Hero, i.e. more fun to play, before it was complicated with three note cords and furious, arthritis-inducing, heavy metal tracks in Guitar Hero 2.

I was surprised to find the drummer really has to play drums, which even comes with a kick pedal. For real drummers, it can be a little disorienting at first, since you aren’t playing every single lick in the songs on the easier difficulties.

We haven’t tried the vocals on a setting above normal difficulty, but I’ve been able to mumble my way through most of the vocal tracks. The game seems to hold rhythmic fidelity over hitting the actual notes, so knowing the pattern of the lyrics is more important than actually hitting the notes sung. So, if you don’t know the song you are doomed to failure, whereas if you just can’t sing you might be able to make through.

We were disappointed to find that there were no individual guitars for sale, completing the band with a bass player. We were even more disappointed when we found that, for the PS3 at least, none of the old Guitar Hero guitars were compatible with the game. I’ve read that they will work on the XBOX 360 version.

Additionally, the guitar for Rock Band does not seem to be as well-made as the Guitar Hero guitars.  After three nights of playing, the down strum on Rock Bands Stratocaster worked intermittently, and the up-and-down strum didn’t seem to work at all. We didn’t really notice at the beginning of the game, but as the game progresses and the songs increase in difficulty it becomes glaringly apparent, making the game unnecessarily difficult in parts. It seems to be a wide-spread problem if you read message boards online. My friend and I are both Guitar Hero veterans, having completed both Guitar Hero 1 and 2 on expert difficulty and cruising through “Hard” on Guitar Hero 3 in one night, and we had trouble making it through later songs. If the guitar was optional, this might be excusable, but you HAVE to play the guitar, even in single player.

If you haven’t played any of the Guitar Hero games, Guitar Hero 3 is the best one with which to introduce yourself to the series. It has the best game soundtrack I can think of and replaces many of the covers from previous games with actual songs. We were agape upon unlocking each tier and seeing the songs ahead.

Having played all four of the Guitar Hero games, including the lackluster 80s edition, I’m getting a little tired of the formula, but the song list was what compelled me to play it. I’ll never be able to play Slayer’s “Raining Blood” or Metallica’s “One” on a real guitar, so this is the next best thing

GH3 is also much more accessible than Rock Band. Rock Band mimics the rise of a real band, so you spend lots of time playing the same songs over and over at venues around the simulated world. There is no ladder of songs to progress through like in Guitar Hero

The difficulty progression in Guitar Hero was masterfully done and taught you how to play the game. It started off with easy songs, which, you realized by the end, were lessons on particular aspects of game play. There was a song easy enough that even my mom could pick it up and play (literally), and the songs that followed ramped up slowly until you didn’t fully realize how good you were until you got to Ozzy’s “Bark at the Moon” at the conclusion.

That ended with Guitar Hero 2, which started off at such a blistering pace that even some veterans were put off. Guitar Hero 3 pulls back of that a little bit, but the final group of songs, at least on the higher difficulties, are so brutal as to be almost unplayable except by the most talented of fake guitarists. On top of that, the difficulty levels themselves seem very lopsided when compared to one another. Normal seems like easy from the first game while Hard seems like Expert, and Expert seems like Impossible.

There are a few minor complaints about GH3, like the uninspired art direction and some of the silly choices for guitar-god avatarsy. Also, the battle mode feels rushed and tacked on, if not a little hokey.

Either way, both games are ultimately a blast, and would certainly put a smile on anyone who plays video games this holiday season.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 1st, 2007 at 6:37 pm and is filed under Online. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.