Monday 28 September 2009

Music games can cock off


First, I'll get this out of the way now so I can't be accused of hypocrisy later: I own Guitar Hero 2 and Guitar Hero 3 on Xbox 360, as well as Rock Band for the Xbox 360. I play them every now and then, and I enjoy them when I play them. However, music games can STILL cock off.

Firstly, a little history. Guitar Hero started as a collaboration between Harmonix and Red Octane, distributed by Activision. The game, despite being released on a limited budget (most of which was undoubtedly the plastic guitars), the game sold by the absolute bucketload, spawning a series of sequels. Sorry, that was a misprint. I meant to say "a sufficient number of sequels in which to drown myself".

Seriously, if music games contained sugar, I'd be diabetic. Have you been into a games shop recently? The shelves are awash with music games of all varieties now, from the guitar-based ones to full band sets. How are you, out of interest, supposed to be able to store all these guitars in a living room, bearing in mind there are now three different band sets with drum kits. THREE. The Rock Revolution drums are particularly interesting; I don't know if I should be playing them or trying to force brightly coloured wooden blocks through them!



The games have all become exactly the same in terms of style now as well. Three bars along the bottom for the rhythm section, and a bar along the top for the vocal track. Every game comes with a similar selection of songs, and they generally turn out pretty well on the whole. However, each one comes with its pitfalls. I mean, I'm all for choice being available, but I really don't feel that a Jimmy Buffett pack fits well with the whole Rock Band ethos really. On the other hand, I'm grateful for the inclusion of the album "Dolittle" by The Pixies, as seeing the tracklist made me realise that their best album has a pretty much identical tracklist to the Greatest Hits compilation that I already own, so I don't need to expand my back catalogue, saving me money. I am a fan of this.

As if all that wasn't enough, there are so many different varieties of the existing franchises. I could understand the 80s edition of Guitar Hero to a certain extent, as there has been somewhat of a 1980s resurgence in recent years, as humanity tries in vain to battle with its own lack of originality by regurgitating the previous decades' musical sounds. Don't believe me? Here's a couple of clues. Firstly, these decade resurgences only seem to last three or four years, largely, I suspect, down to our really short attention span as a species. Secondly, have you noticed how many old bands are making comebacks? I noticed it first with Duran Duran, then it was The Cure, now Faith No More. I don't mind, as they seem to be the better live bands recently, but it seems a testament to the mediocrity of new music nowadays that we clamour for these bands of old.

And clamour we do, as the Guitar Hero and Rock Band developers have shown. As I said, I could sort of understand the idea of a 1980s themed music game appealing to the music game crowd. Then they announced the tracklist, and I died a little inside, as I realised that I only recognised about three songs off the list, and thus could hardly call myself a fan of 80s music, despite being brought up in the 1980s and listening to a lot of 1980s music. As it turns out, the music of The Smiths is not conducive to the Guitar Hero franchise.



The next one to be released was Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. This one made much more sense to me, as Aerosmith are much more of an upbeat rocking band, worthy of the Guitar Hero moniker. Then they announced that the game would not only feature Aerosmith songs. I found myself confused at this point, as surely it should have been called Aerosmith and Friends or something. This game ended up selling quite well, as the fans demonstrated that they'd pretty much buy anything with the name Guitar Hero on it, a fact that Harmonix and Activision are now only too happy to exploit for profit. Don't believe me? Read on...


Tune in next week to the exciting conclusion of Music games can cock off!

2 comments:

  1. Guitar Hero: Aerosmith is a bit like the X-Men movies... or as they should have been called 'Wolverine and some other guys'.

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  2. Just sounds like Rob is bitter that he cant get past the hard difficulty setting..

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