Anyone else think Guitar Hero is way too...well, narrow?

The Game Room
1

This has been gnawing at me for a long time, and the announcement of the new Guitar Hero: Aerosmith made it unavoidable. (And hey, first post on the new board is always cool! :slight_smile: )

I’m as fanatical about music games as anybody. More than half of the games I have total are music games, in fact. There’s just something about the simplicity of following a notechart, the challenge of doing so accurately (which gets really challenging at the highets levels), and the all-around awesome music that results that’s infinitely appealing to me.

Rock? Love it! Can’t get enough! Memories, Buffalo, Wana, pretty much anything by Kozo Nakamura, play them all the time. I’m pretty much the only person I know who gives Used to Rock 'n Roll the time of day, for crying out loud. (You’ve probably never heard of these songs…go to bemanistyle.com if you’d like a primer.)

By rights, I should’ve been over Guitar Hero like a hungry dog on a steak. New York cut. And seasoned. But I’ve never warmed up to it, and it looks unlikely that I ever will.

My problem isn’t that GH encompasses only one genre of music. My problem is that it encompasses only a tiny part of that genre. Loud, forceful, headbanging, thrashy. Three games and a bunch of assorted side titles and counting. Legends of Rock? The 80’s? Aerosmith? All different names for essentially the same thing.

Where’s the pop side? Bruce Springsteen, Huey Lewis and the News, Mike and the Mechanics, Bon Jovi, Katrina and the Waves, Heart, Steve Winwood, Pat Benatar. Shouldn’t a mainstream music game about the most populist music in the world reflect the bread and butter?

Where’s the alternative side? R.E.M., No Doubt, Deep Blue Something, Goo Goo Dolls, Vertical…oh, just check my last American Idol post. Edgy, defiant rock that became so immensely popular, it defined the mainstream for the 90’s. If this game is supposed to be aimed at gamers in their 30’s (not sure about that, but never mind)…hey, I’m in my 30’s, and this is my music!

Where’s the progressive/spiritual/offbeat? Martin Page, Genesis, Chris DeBurgh, Michael W. Smith, Mr. Mister, Men Without Hats. Not every rocker is into drugs and booze and cheap sex and weird hair colors. The more thoughtful side deserves a little attention.

Where’s the big beat? Fatboy Slim, The Crystal Method, Chemical Brothers. Deep, rythmic, pounding, hard-edged…it’d be perfect.

Where’s the freakin’ rock & roll?? Dire Straits, Paul Herzog, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Eagles, heck, even Elvis Presley himself. How in blazes do you market a game as rock, rock, rock, and not have any rock & roll? Why do you think the Hall of Fame is called that?

Yes, I like the thrashy, headbangy stuff. No, I don’t want it all the time. There’s so much ground here that hasn’t even been touched yet. Why not?

[Caveat: I’ve played it a few times, and it is a pretty fun game once you get past the limited song variety. MAYBE I’ll get it someday if it gets really cheap. My point is, it should’ve been a much, much easier decision.]

2

Pssst…over here.

3

What I want to know is where is the blues?

4

I would literally buy an XBox 360 or whatever if Guitar Hero (or Rock Band) had some 1970s era Genesis songs to play.

I bought the original GH and have played the others. Not bad, but I agree, the music style is pretty limited and I get bored with playing a lot of songs I don’t know or don’t particularly like.

5

Please shoot me if “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” ever makes it in a guitar-based game.

Anyhow, the problem you have is that a lot of those songs would make for very boring guitar lines (Fatboy Slim? How are you going to do Fatboy Slim in a guitar game without boring your player to tears from a repetitive guitar line? Mind you, I actually don’t have anything against Fatboy Slim.)

The newest version of Guitar Hero has one of my favorite songs in it: “She Bangs the Drums” by the Stone Roses. It fits into your alternative category, but is boring as hell to play, even on expert, because it’s not really a Guitar Song in the way that the hard-rockers you lament are.

That said, a lot of the bands you’re saying are not represented are.

You have Heart (Barracuda). You have Pat Benatar (Hit Me With Your Last Shot). I’m not sure how you’re defining “alternative,” but there’s plenty of bands represented that would have been called alternative at one time or another (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Sonic Youth, Stone Roses, Rage Against the Machine, Rancid, Weezer, just to name a few…).

I think that for a game based on songs that need good guitar riffage or just interesting guitar lines in general, and a game that will play well on a five-button fretboard, the Guitar Hero series does a good job of balancing gameplay with fun and varied songs.

6

I want Christmas songs. I think it would be a cool party game around Christmas time.

They are really just hitting stride with their franchise. I think you’ll see more GH games that are targeted to bands, eras, or genre. Where there is money to be made, they’ll milk it.

7

I guess the thing I really don’t get about Guitar Hero is how playing such a blatantly finite set of songs can stay entertaining. I mean, obviously any game is going to be limited in the new possibilities it offers, but I feel like few are so noticeably so.

8

The same way playing the exact same game of space invaders or Pac-Man is entertaining. Score inflating and betterment of self or others. I can personally say I still play some of the songs because I have a personal vendetta against them from failing on them so many times.

9

Pssst, over here.

10

Rock Band is going heavy on the downloadable content with 3+ new songs released per week, you have to buy them though. They’ll be releasing entire albums in the future… I’m really hoping the undecided metallica album will be Master Of Puppets - they already have songs from the other albums but haven’t touched Puppets yet. If they do Load or Reload or something there will be a whole lot of people that will be pissed.

But they picked songs like Blackened and And Justice For All for the game, so they seem to appreciate the good Metallica.
And to the OP: Yeah, someone else nailed it - a lot of the music that you listed would be really boring to play even if they’re likable songs. The type of music they include tends feature guitar work very prominently.

11

Play this as well as this guy on the same level, and you’ll see why: people work their way up to hella challenges. I see what the guy is doing, yet I still don’t believe it. The word is that the guy who actually played it only got 12% on expert for this song.

12

Umm no one mentioned licensing??? The reason those songs are not present is because the record labels and artists have not given their permission to the game companies to USE their songs. It’s all about money.

I personally think artists do not realize what a benefit it could be to their music to have their songs being played in video games, which is a multi-billion dollar industry, surpassing even the motion picture industry. Hopefully more and more of them will get on the bandwagon. Aerosmith has realized how this could bring their music to another generation.

13

Agreed! I had never heard of many of the songs on GHIII but now I want to purchase Ruby, I’m With The Band, Avalanche and Closer - they play through my head all day!

14

Isn’t it the producer/label that decides these things? From what I know from my marching band and the University down here trying to get a U2 marching show for years the producer is the one making decisions like this. Extra point, Wierd Al wanted to parody “You’re Beautiful” James Blunt gave permission, Atlantic Records did not, so he didn’t release it commercially.

Either way same point, but the band can like the idea all they want but if the record company is being stupid it’s not getting out.

15

You’re going to see a flood of good downloadable content soon. Early on, bands wouldn’t consent to allowing their music in Guitar Hero because they thought it was ‘selling out’ to put their music in a game so people could play it on plastic instruments. Owners of the content worried about damaging the band’s image. The creative forces worried about having the music changed to fit the format (the songs sound a little different when split into multiple tracks and remixed so the various parts stand out).

That’s all changed. First, the Rock Band guys sold their product not just as a game, but as a vehicle for experiencing music interactively. They didn’t treat it like a cartoon, as the latest Guitar Hero does. Second, the various companies involved were bought out or partnered with large companies with serious influence in the music industry - MTV, for example.

But most importantly, they’re selling a giant whack of songs. Rock Band has already racked up more than 3 million paid downloads - at twice the price of a regular music track. Also, the bands that are in the game are all experiencing a significant revival. Old bands like Kansas are seeing their touring audiences grow dramatically, and their fans are now trending younger again. Back catalog songs that are in the game are selling in huge numbers. “Carry On Wayward Son” sold 119,000 copies digitally in 2006 before the Guitar Hero game that contains it went on sale - and 297,000 in 2007. Cheap Trick’s ‘Surrender’ went from 58,000 sales to 161,000.

Those are huge numbers - for a 30 year old song to sell a third of a million copies in one year is amazing. And the ‘Guitar Hero Effect’ will probably get stronger as these games trickle more into the mainstream and overall sales increase.

We’re at the point now where bands are actively soliciting the game manufacturers to try to get their songs into the games, just like they used to try to get their videos on MTV.

This is pretty much the only bright spot for the music industry these days. Well, that and ringtones.

16

It’s admittedly a very different game than Guitar Hero or Rock Band but you may want to look at Audiosurf. Instead of hitting buttons on a controller you’re trying to drive over them with a vehicle, but instead of coming with a limited set of songs it allows you to use any mp3 file you have in your personal music collection. (It’s being distributed by Valve so it does come with the Orange Box soundtrack but you can play it with anything you have.)

ETA - For an example, here’s Through the Fire and Flames in Audiosurf.

17

TripleTee and Sam have nailed it - the first GHs were unproven - so you had bands you’ve never heard of because you could get very little licensing for famous bands. Now, bands and record companies are seeing GH as a marketing machine - so the nature of the music will change.

18

I’m guessing that you can’t mod in any song that you want?

19

You can, but it

  1. Takes a lot of work
  2. The key charts usually suck
  3. Requires a modded console (illegal)
  4. Requires you to rip the game, edit the files and burn a custom one (illegal)

So… I suppose you CAN, but it’s not easy or legal (not that the latter point really stopped anyone before)

20

Okay, the requirement for a song getting into Guitar Hero is a guitar part with lots of variety? Most R&B falls into that category. I doubt it’s that simple. Anyway, I’ve played the first two games (one full version, two demos), and there’s a pretty nice progression from super-easy to intense, so it’s not like there’s no place whatsoever for simplicity. Kinda doubt that licensing fees are a big issue, either…every song is licensed, and anyway, wouldn’t, say, Citizen King or Chumbawamba be a lot cheaper than megastars like KISS?

Naw…it’s an image issue, plain and simple. Activision is very unsubtly pushing a very specific image, and something along the lines of Gin Blossoms or Steve Winwood would upset it. Fine and good; it’s their game, they can design it any way they like. Just don’t think it’s a good idea to stick with one image indefinitely. It’s been, what, six or seven games? They can branch out. At the very least give a nod to rock 'n roll. If that’s not an ironclad requirement, it should be! :slight_smile:

I probably should’ve asked this earlier, but has anyone here heard of two closely related games called Guitar Freaks and Drummania? (So close, in fact, that most of us don’t even bother separating them; the whole shebang is known as “Gitadora” or simply “GFDM”.) It a guitar/drumming game that didn’t last too long in America but has gone on forever (and is still going on) in Japan. Bemanistyle.com (and some other sites) has details. The variety of music is incredible…far greater than you’ll see in any stateside music game, much less Guitar Hero…and despite the guitar side having only three frets, the notecharts can reach truly astounding difficulties. Overall, Bemani’s (Konami’s division that makes GFDM, Dance Dance Revolution, and several other music games) attitude is that if you need a complex notechart, you make a complex notechart. That’s why I have trouble believing that excluding alternative, pop, big beat etc. is necessary.