The game structure remains similar enough in both series that it won’t influence anyone’s opinions too heavily; what it really comes down to is how each game is sold. In the case of Rock Band, you either buy the Rock Band or Rock Band 2 game disc, and then it’s up to you to download extra music from the music store to enlarge your library as you see fit. On the other hand, Activision’s plan for Guitar Hero is to throw as many discs at us poor schlubs as possible, and offer very little in the way of DLC.
The big difference here is that with Rock Band, you get to choose which songs are added to your game, and you won’t have to pay for half-a-disc worth of songs you’re indifferent to or flat-out hate. Guitar Hero, on the other hand, forces you to buy the songs they want you to play. It’s a damn shame, but the franchise that started a revolution in music gaming has been poorly marketed and left behind the trend to the point where it’s starting to be passed over by people who are addicted to the genre. Myself included. Actually, it sounds a lot like Nintendo’s life story. Only I don’t see a Wii-sized comeback in Guitar Hero’s future.
With Activision flooding the market with “Hero”-branded games, it’s getting hard to keep up with all of them. I’ve purposefully neglected to buy two titles already, and I don’t see myself too interested in buying any of the upcoming games (with the exception Guitar Hero: Van Halen, obviously). The one GH game that I was very excited about, however, was Guitar Hero: Smash Hits. It may seem a bit redundant for me to want the “greatest Hits” version of a game series that I’ve been ragging on for being stale and overused, but I have a very good reason: these are the songs I want to play.
GH: Smash Hits contains a handful of the most popular tracks from all the GH series games that came before World Tour. This is important to me because these are the songs I played and obsessed over while I was still smitten with the genre. Only now they aren’t covers anymore. It brings back a ton of memories and while it follows the trend of running the Guitar Hero name into the ground, it’s got a few redeeming qualities that I’m very much enjoying.
The most obvious change, and the main reason of the game’s existence (other than another udder on Activision’s cash cow), is that all the songs can now be played with a full band, rather than being restricted to guitar and bass, or in the case of GH1 songs, guitar only. This alone does not add nearly enough value to justify my purchase, as I bought the Wii version, and I rarely do any multiplayering on my Wii. Also I do not own Wii drums and do not plan on buying any. What does add the value is that all the note charts have been mostly re-written, making use of all the new GH gimmicks like the slide bar sections and the open note on bass. Most songs are also a Hell of a lot harder, and these changes make the game seem fresh and adds a new challenge to songs I’d long since mastered. The only song that’s noticeably easier is ironically enough Dragonforce’s “Through the Fire and Flames”, which is now entirely possible to play through thanks to the slide bar sections.
The career mode structure is also very nice. It’s back to the set list format, rather than World Tour‘s me-too gig setup. You unlock new sets by earning so many stars, and new sets unlock very, very quickly. Therefore, you can usually skip right to the songs you want to play without having to pick through too much of the other material. The only exception is the final set, which unlocks after you’ve played all the encore songs. But those are all the super-difficult songs anyway, and I doubt you want to play the new version of “Play With Me” without a nice, long warm-up anyway. (read: it’s very hard!)
I’d also like to make a little side note here, where must admit that I’ve forgotten how much fun it is to play these guitar-based games just for the sake of playing them. The last few I’ve been playing on the 360, and it’s really just become entirely about the achievements. Playing this on Wii has rekindled a lot of feelings of love for the actual gameplay, rather than the chase for arbitrary virtual medals. Just sayin’.
But everything else aside, I really just bought Smash Hits because Guitar Hero doesn’t have a lag calibration option and nobody’s re-released it. All I really want is to play the first Guitar Hero game. That’s it. But I guess the fourteen tracks they provided here will be more than enough. I got what I really pined for-“Killer Queen”, “More Than a Feeling”, “Take it Off”, “Godzilla” and “Unsung”- but I sure do miss “Crossroads”, “Spanish Castle Magic”, “Texas Flood” and “Frankenstein”. Also, how could they possibly say this is the best of Guitar Hero music and have not included “Iron Man”. That’s like the biggest song ever. not a personal favourite, really, but it’s insanely well-known. Fuck, I think I’m just going to go play GH1 for a while, lag or not. I love those songs so much…
As I was mentioning in the last post, Mega Man 9 is friggin’ hard. The day after I made my little blog post there, I went back to the game with a stronger resolve and a good feeling. It got me pretty far, through five more bosses in fact, but Tornado Man and Hornet Man had still eluded my iron grip. But yester day I went back and made my play for total dominance. Tornado Man’s level was a bitch, and that’s all that was holding me back from the green-plated robot master. After dying over and over at his stupid revolving lifts (see video below), I decided I’d just cheese my way through with the Rush Jet. It worked wonders, but things only got worse from there on. Somehow I was able to scrape through to the end on my last life, and I slaughtered Tornado Man with little trouble. Hornet Man was much less offensive, as his level wasn’t too bad, but there’s a mini boss that will take you the fuck out many many times before you’re able to stomp it into robo-dust. But this time, I had the Tornado Blow on my side, and it wrecked him pretty bad. Hornet Man never saw it coming after that.
So it’s not so much that I don’t like 
You may have heard something recently about the next Guitar Hero game. If you haven’t, I have some news that may disturb or excite you: It’s all Aerosmith. Yeah. Harsh. I mean, it’s just an “expansion” like the 80’s edition, but still. There are a lot of other bands I’d much rather have entire Guitar Hero games based on. Off the top of my head, let’s see…
As much weight as the track list may carry, the other big difference is the drum kit. I mainly play alone (or online, which isn’t much different), so the multiplayer aspect isn’t a huge draw, but those drums are like a little bit of Heaven. They’re extremely hard to learn, but I’ve got it down to the point where I can at least manage to scrape through most songs on hard, so I’m doing okay as far as game progress goes. But just playing for fun, the normal difficulty is more than enough. It provides a challenge, but doens’t have quite enough tricks to really throw you off. Learning to play the drum kit has given me a much bigger satisfaction payoff than playing the plastic guitar ever did. It feels absolutely amazing just to pound away to the beat, and accomplishing hard sections without missing a note is total bliss. I could recommend Rock Band based on the drum section alone.