So tonight I finished the solo mode of Guitar Hero III, and several weeks ago I finished the solo tour mode for Rock Band. It is time to share my thoughts, now that I’ve played both. Much ramblings to follow.

I will say up front that in my mind Rock Band is a clear winner for the better game of the two. While it’s not perfect, none of the imperfections really damage playing the game. The character creation is a nice touch, while there weren’t as many options as other games, I do think I’d rather just pick a face and start playing than spend hours working out how I want my eyebrows to look. The huge wardrobe is a fantastic way to really customize your character.

As for the actual game play, it did take me quite a while to really get in the groove for playing. As it turns out, my CRT type TV actually needed a lot of fine tuning with the game calibration, once that was done the game was just fun to play. All the songs just feel well put together, and are a joy to play. It’s true that several of them can be rather boring for a single player, but that’s going to happen when the game is really designed for multi player. And can I just say… The multi player is amazing. We’ve had a couple groups of people over to play, and everyone had a major blast, including people who have never played any of these games before. Once the calibration was done, I can’t say I’ve ever not enjoyed playing the game.
There are countless complaints about the guitars for the game, but I really only have one. The strum bar doesn’t click. Now that I’m getting used to it, it’s not all that big of a deal, but if that were changed I think I’d never go back to playing with the Guitar Hero guitars. I love the look and feel of the game guitar, and even how the buttons work. I guess this is really odd coming from someone who played all the original GH games, but I bet it helps that I also play real guitar, and this is a step closer to that.

The drums are such worthy addition to the standard guitar games. They are a lot more complex than the guitars, especially at first, but getting to play them well is very rewarding. Now if only I could play for a while without major back pains… Hopefully some better seating will solve this issue. Having the drums in a multi player game creates such a feeling of a real band, it’s hard to believe. I know I feel like I’m playing more than just a little plastic guitar when I have someone else there banging on the pads with me.

As for the microphone, I don’t know if there is much to say about it. You get to sing. It really is a lot more fun than it sounds, and I’ve been very surprised at how many people have enjoyed it a whole lot. I do sometimes get the desires to sing along with a song or two myself to be honest. I definitely think that it’s something that would be reserved for multi player though, as I can’t imagine just sitting there singing by yourself would be all that fun.

The music is to die for. It all sounds amazing, and while the cover band songs don’t sound 100% like the originals they do sound pretty close (Other than the Rush song, no one should ever try to cover them, their sound is just way too distinct). There is a special thrill when you’re playing/singing/etc and the crowd starts to sing along with you. This was implemented well into the game, there is always a nice smooth transition and never anything jarring about it. Actually, that’s a good way to describe the whole game… Smooth. Everything flows well together, all the instruments, navigation, etc.

Now, I will say the game is not perfect. My biggest complaint is that when you create a character, you have to assign them a specific instrument. So, I created Kishkumen and he is a drummer. This means that I can’t play that particular character when I want to play the guitar/bass or sing. That’s just no fun! Did they expect that everyone would only ever want to play one role in the game? There is also the problem that there is no way to get a 2nd guitar to play the full multi player for the PS3 version of the game (thanks Activision! You guys suck). Hopefully that will be resolved come January. Otherwise though, the game is a work of art. Any one can enjoy playing it, and so far everyone I know who has tried has loved it.

Then we have Guitar Hero III. I really only bought it because the creators of Rock Band (Harmonix) created a patch for their game that would allow the guitar from GHIII to play on Rock Band. Unfortunately, Activision decided that they wanted gobs of money for the work Harmonix did and has involved lawyers to keep the patch from working. I guess the money Activision got when we bought the guitar wasn’t enough, they need more so we can actually use it for other games… Not the smartest move, but oh well. So I bought the game, and literally let it sit around for weeks before taking the wrapping off of the disc itself. Then it was still another week or so before I gave in to play it. I only did so because I started listening to some of the tracks from the game (Specifically “Through The Fire And The Flames”) and I wanted to give them a shot. To sum up the game… It is very disappointing.

The game play is not much changed from the older GH games, even though it was done from scratch by a different developer. For those who don’t know, Harmonix created the original Guitar Hero games, then left Activision to make their own game. So now they have a game developer group who just stole all the look and feel of the old game… And well, that’s about it. There is minimal innovation, and a lot of what I enjoyed about the older games is gone. For me, these games have all been about having fun and feeling like you’re playing the music. GHIII has taken that, and turned it into a bit of a joke. I know there are people out there who enjoy “battle” mode, where you play with someone else and are constantly trying to mess them up as well as play the song yourself. I, for one, do not like it at all. I loved how the game was originally about teamwork and playing together. Sure there was head to head mode, but even then you weren’t actively trying to screw up the other person’s score. It took the game from being a way to work together with friends and turned it into a “musical” brawl. I don’t want to make my friend screw up an awesome solo so that I can get bragging rights… I want to work together and make it all that more fun for both of us.

The sound in GHIII was enough to make me seriously consider playing it with the speakers turned off. Somehow they managed to take songs I love, and turn them into flat emotionless piles of buttonmashing. I often mistook songs that were original master recordings to be cover songs, and wondered if the bands from the cover songs forgot who they were trying to impersonate. Before, when you turned on your Star Power, the guitar sound was enhanced and sounded more intense. In GHIII it seems they think turning on just a crappy echo effect would work. I actually stopped using star power because I couldn’t stand hearing it make the crappy sounding songs even more crappy!

As for the look and feel of the game… It is a plain and simple joke. I do realize that it should be about playing, and not what it looks like… But the least they could have done was do more than a half hearted attempt to make something nice. For example, if you want a laugh watch how the drummer moves his arms in every song. I’ve animatronic bears at Chuck E Cheese look more realistic than that. It was distracting enough for me that I would stop and glare every time I saw them do a close up of the drummer… Which naturally made me miss notes. And at the very least, if you’re not going to make it look anywhere near good, stop doing close ups of the drummer for half the song! Just keep him in the background where we don’t have to deal with the only two positions his arms can be in. Second, the face of the male singer scares the heck out of me. He looks like some deformed potato with teeth. I could almost accept it, if the whole game was trying to be cartoony. It could be a cartoony character that just kinda sucks… But so many other characters are very realistic looking, and switching between them and a man with the face that looks like a tumor is rather jarring.

I must admit, it’s not all bad though. There was that one thing that was good… I should have written it down or something. Oh yeah, the songs sometimes loaded pretty quick. I enjoyed that. And, all the problems aside, some of the songs were fun to play. But, chances are GHIII will not be having much play time in my game system. Hopefully between this lackluster game, and Activisions insensitive attitude towards the consumers, the monarchy of Guitar Hero will fall, and other quality games will take over. Though, if the Halo franchise is any indication of what can happen in that situation, I’m not holding my breath.