I’m very underwhelmed so far. Most of the tracks have a terrible sound and the sound choices for the first 4 teirs anyway aren’t very good. 18 and life sounded HORRIBLE. Ugh. I 5 starred 5 out of 15 songs on hard at lunch on my first try. I didn’t 5 star any on hard on my first try on either of the first 2 GH games.
I may be losing interest in the series. Bring on Rockband.
Just beat it on hard. I’d give it a 6.7 out of 10. It’s very easy, on hard anyway, and the covers aren’t that great. The cover of Police Truck is as silly as I thought it would be when I first heard it would be on here. You can’t take a song like that and make it “radio friendly”. It just can’t be done. Not only are the curse words missing (as expected) but the lyrics are HEAVILY changed in content.
The closing track is Extreme Play With Me. Pretty easy.
Rent it.
I bought this today at lunch, and just went through the first 15 songs on expert. 5-starred 13 of them, and 4 starred the other two. And I’m not bragging about that, because I still haven’t got that kind of record on the first 15 songs on GH II, and I’ve had that since the day it came out. This game is just way too easy.
But what’s worse, is that so far the songs suck. There’s only one out of the first 15 that I even want to ever play again (“Hold on Loosely” by .38 Special - the only song with a decent guitar part so far - and I don’t even like the song that much).
When Harmonix bowed out of the Guitar Hero franchise, I was worried. One of the great things about Guitar Hero has always been that it just dripped with authenticity. From the song selection to the cute little bumper phrases between songs, Guitar Hero always seemed to me to be created by people who really knew Rock, and who had taste and talent.
This game strikes me as being completely fake. Like some suit found someone under 50 and said, “You must know what the kids like - go make a game featuring that Rock and Roll stuff.”
First, the song selection. Anyone who was playing guitar and listening to Rock in the 80’s would never have picked these songs, unless he had no taste at all. I’m sorry, but bands like Quiet Riot, Scorpions, Scandal and Twisted Sister were a joke in the 80’s. They were the ‘rock bands’ real rock fans loved to laugh and sneer at. Whoever thinks these bands represent the quintessential 80’s guitar sound is an idiot. And there was a good reason they were sneeered at. Actually playing the guitar parts to these songs just highlights how lame they really were. Not just easy, but with no real sense of composition. The solos suck. There are discordant notes. Just bad music, generally.
Second, half the songs on here aren’t even guitar songs. The Go-Go’s? A Flock of Seagulls? Asia? Some of these songs are okay as pop songs, but they’re not the first or even the 1000th songs I would have picked for a Guitar game. These songs belong in a Karaoke game or maybe ‘Synthesizer Hero’.
Third, there are songs on here I have never bleemin’ heard of, and I listened to a lot of music in the 80’s. “Because, It’s Midnite” by Limozeen? Never heard of the song, never heard of the band. And it’s an encore, yet.
It’s not like there isn’t good 80’s guitar music to choose from. This was the decade that brought us ‘1984’ by Van Halen, “Appetite for Destruction” by Guns N’ Roses, and most of Stevie Ray’s hits like “Cold Shot” and “Pride and Joy”, Aerosmith’s biggest albums, U2’s biggest albums, ZZ Top’s biggest albums, “Start me Up” by the Rolling Stones, Dire Straits biggest hits, etc. Not one of these bands makes an appearance. Instead we get “We Got the Beat” by the Go-Go’s and “The Warrior” by Scandal.
To be fair, the last 15 songs look to be somewhat better, at least on paper. But after having grumbled about paying $60 for 30 songs, I’m even more angry that the best I can hope for now is 15 that are worth playing. GHII had closer to 70 songs, and they were better. For the same price.
The bumper phrases that I’ve seen so far sound like nothing I’ve ever heard a rock musician say. In GH, we had the ‘Free Bird’ in-joke, funny stuff about turning it up to 11, etc. In this one, there’s something about the last set making you sticky and gnarly, and you should pour a soft drink on your drummer. There’s another that goes something like, " They want us to play an encore? Well, DUH!" WTF?
Maybe what it is is that this game is a cash grab. Maybe the songs suck because they picked them up for fire-sale prices out of a licensing remainder bin or something. But I think it might be that all the rock cred and taste left when Harmonix split. Looking at GHIII, I see it has ‘Boss Battles’ and ‘Battle Mode’ where you have power-ups and can make your opponent do things like have to use his whammy bar to keep going. What in hell that has to do with the core game experience of simulating being a rock musician is beyond me. Again, it sounds like the suits said, “All you can do is play music? Where is the fun in that? Give the kids some of those power-up things! And I heard these ‘Boss Battles’ are all the rage. Throw some of those in, too.”
My money is on Rock Band eating the lunch of the Guitar Hero franchise.
There. I’m done venting.
Nitpick: Harmonix was involved in Rocks the 80’s as well.
Limozeen is one of the most well-known heavy metal bands of the '80s- or at least one of the most prolific. Larry, Gary, Mary, and Perry even had their own cartoon show at one point- even though it lasted only one episode.
Okay, Limozeen doesn’t actually exist. They’re one of the bizarre features of the Homestar Runner universe, poking fun at heavy metal bands of the '80s. Apparently, the guys who developed Guitar Hero are big H*R fans, so Trogdor! showed up in GHII and Limozeen shows up here. Keep on ‘zeenin’!
Yeah, but I’ll bet their minds were elsewhere…
Huh. I must be the one person on the face of the planet who doesn’t hate this new game with a passion. I think it’s alright - yeah, I’m a little confused/underwhelmed by some of the song selections, but what are you gonna do. On the other hand, maybe it’s because I was pretty young in the 80’s, but I have fond memories of “joke” bands like the Scorpions and Twisted Sister. Yeah, the Go-Go’s and Flock of Seagulls were an…interesting choice (preparing to play I Ran So Far Away last night, I said out loud “Did this song even have any guitars?!”), but Only a Lad! I really would have loved to see Girl U Want by Devo on there, but oh well.
It’s fun, and worth the $40 I spent on it to have some new songs to play on Guitar Hero, as I’ve made myself quite sick of the selections on 1 and 2.
I got the game last night for $40. So far I’m enjoying it. There are some problems, but to me it’s the same problems as before, the vocals usually suck. Whoever did the Accept song shouldn’t have tried to sound like Udo, the No One Like you sounds pretty bad too. And while the Twisted Sister song is original, they shouldn’t have used the newer version of it, I can’t stand that one.
I personally like that it’s a bit easier as well. I still haven’t finished GHII, or I for that matter, on Hard. I can only do a couple of songs on expert on II. This version I’ve gotten through the first 15 songs on hard.
I also like the song selection for the most part. I played II for a bit then got bored of the songs. Here I enjoy most of the songs, except for the Go Gos song. They could have gotten some better songs, but over all I’m enjoying it.
I made it through about 17 songs in hard last night before going to bed for the night. They are a lot easier and I five starred all but two on the first try. I have a feeling I’ll be able to beat expert without too much trouble, something I’ve not managed in GH1 or 2 yet.
I don’t consider myself a serious music fan and I find the songs to be mostly fun. A few are quite long and boring though. Oddly enough, Turning Japanese has been the most fun to play for me so far.
A large number of these songs have long pauses or breaks where there is no guitar. That is ok for one or 2 songs, but I think 5 or so have long breaks in them. Yuck.
Well, I played through the next 10 last night, and the good news is that the songs get better. Synchronicity II is good, “Only a Lad” is pretty good, and while I never liked Ratt in the 80’s (another lightweight band as far as I’m concerned), the note chart for “Round and Round” makes it fun to play.
So I’m hoping the last five will be good as well, and I’ll get 15 good songs out of this. But $60 cdn is way too much money to pay for 15 good songs.
Out of curiosity, did anyone else go with an 80s flavored band name? After much deliberation, I settled on Skeletor’s Closet.
I finally have a complaint to lodge about this game:
Extreme? Extreme?! For the final encore? Really? :dubious:
Other than that, pretty fun. How humbling that I had the most trouble stumbling through Seventeen by friggin’ Winger…I was muttering out loud “How can such a sucky song be so hard?”
Out of curiosity, what would you folks have picked for the final 80’s encore? I’d have enjoyed some old Metallica, myself.
Haven’t played it yet (should have my copy today) - for an encore, I would’ve picked:
Queen - probably Bohemian Rhapsody - any number of songs could be good there.
AC/DC - Hells Bells or Back in Black
For the encore, I’d pick one of these:
“Pride and Joy” by Stevie Ray Vaughan
“Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N’ Roses
“Paradise City” by Guns N’ Roses
“Panama” by Van Halen
“Tom Sawyer” by Rush
Played thru it last nite - songs do seem a mite easier (i’m still mostly a ‘medium’ player, can’t quite seem to hit orange at will yet)…
My single biggest complaint?
“Radar Love” - that has to be one of the worst sounding covers of a song I have ever heard… it’s actually painful.
Finished Hard last night. I confess to being disappointed that the prize guitar was the exact same one from Guitar Hero 2. Oh well.