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Guitar Hero: Love It Or Hate It?

Geckothan said:
Just another generic push-the-right-colour-button-at-the-right-time game with no depth. At best it's a "party game". I'll stick to playing real guitars at real volumes and risk my hearing.
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Haha, music snobs make me laugh. Get over yourself. I've been playing guitar for 16 years, and I still find the GH/RB games I've played to be both fun and challenging (on Expert mode). All this "real guitars are better" crap is just lame posturing.
 
It's also a bit harsh to call Guitar Hero "generic" when it's the franchise that kicked off the modern rhythm game boom and reinvented the entire genre.
 
Shakaar said:
Personally, I love it. I like Rock Band as well, but to me RB is much easier and it often feels like it leaves notes out that should be in there. Guitar Hero: Metallica is much more challenging than anything Rock Band has done. I recently purchased The Beatles: Rock Band and although it is fun, from the guitar standpoint there are only a couple of songs that actually made me feel like I was playing the real thing.
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How does Guitar Hero make you feel like you're playing the real thing when they overchart their songs and you're hitting buttons for nonexistent notes? Makes it feel more like button masher.
 
The big difference between Guitar Hero and Rock Band is that most of the developers at Harmonix are actually musicians themselves, in bands like Freezepop, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Bang Camaro, The Amazing Crowns and The Konks. They know music, so their note charts actually make sense.

Neversoft, on the other hand, went from making skateboarding games to making music games. It's very rote, by-the-numbers, production line stuff. That said, Guitar Hero 5 is by far the best Neversoft-developed GH game (not that the bar was set terribly high to begin with), with a great song list and an engine that almost completely fixes everything from the abomination that was World Tour.

There are still some "what the fuck" moments, though, like charting the harmonica in "All Along the Watchtower" and the trumpets in "Ring of Fire" to the guitar.
 
I really enjoyed Guitar Hero II and Rock Band II. If I don't like the songs I'm not that into playing the games. Beatles Rock Band was fun but too short.
 
Aragorn said:
Does GH5 have the "strum when there are no notes to play" that GH:WT did?
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Every so often the note-charting makes me put on a "what the Christ" face, but Neversoft seems to have learned its lesson -- outside of the aforementioned harmonica/trumpet charting to the guitar, I can't recall anything egregious, unlike the World Tour abortion.
 
Aragorn said:
Shakaar said:
Personally, I love it. I like Rock Band as well, but to me RB is much easier and it often feels like it leaves notes out that should be in there. Guitar Hero: Metallica is much more challenging than anything Rock Band has done. I recently purchased The Beatles: Rock Band and although it is fun, from the guitar standpoint there are only a couple of songs that actually made me feel like I was playing the real thing.
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How does Guitar Hero make you feel like you're playing the real thing when they overchart their songs and you're hitting buttons for nonexistent notes? Makes it feel more like button masher.
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Can't say as I've noticed this problem much in the newer titles, but even if it did I would prefer that to RB's trend of charting 1 or 2 notes for every 5 or 6 in some of their songs. And yes, I've played the real guitar for years and don't understand why others dislike these games so much.
 
Most of the time, yeah. I guess it's just a personal thing. I just find GH more satisfying. I even like the minor fact that the notes on GH are round instead of flat. That said, I do like a few of the things RB incorporates like the highlighting of the guitar solos, the big finishes and the career tour mode. Although the last has its flaws. When I first got RB2 and started the career mode it felt like I had to play Everlong about 500 times. I think with GH: Metallica and GH5 they've really gone a good way towards fixing some of the problems like the stupid guitar battles. They still need some improvements, namely with DLC and backwards compatability.

And I REALLY prefer drums on GH. Besides having an extra pad, I really like Expert+ mode. On RB I really dislike the freestyle drum sections in the middle of the songs. But again, that's just my personal taste.
 
Well, to be fair, most of the HMX bands are complete shit. And it hurts the games in the sense that they look to put their shitty songs into the game. GH of course counters nicely with their own shitty songs.

The biggest difference for me is that the GH engines of late have been shitty in that they're difficult to calibrate... and they handle laggy setups worse... I can't quite put my finger on it, but I think the overdrive bar on the the bottom of the screen in RB2 obscures notes when they lag past the line even though you hit them perfectly in time. In GH the effect is maddening, and I have a whopping 30-35ms of video lag, which really isn't THAT much.

As for the charting, for the most part I think HMX does a better job... but it's hard to tell sometimes because the engine is driving me nuts.

As for charting nonguitar parts... HMX does that as well... play the Beatles downloadable track for instance ("All You Need is Love?")... Clint Eastwood in RB2 is another good one. Or Smokin' for the organ solos... That stuff doesn't necessarily bother me so long as the charts are fun.

I actually thought GH3 was for the most part superior to RB, but by building up the DLC platform and fixing a lot of my nagging RB issues in RB2, HMX has leapfrogged Neversoft quite handily.
 
See, I'm just the opposite. I've had to adjust for lag on the RB games, but never on GH. That's probably just the setup I have, but it has caused me some problems with RB. There's nothing more annoying than knowing you're hitting the notes correctly and them not registering.

And when it comes to games focusing on single bands, again I have to go with GH. Admittedly, the presentation on The Beatles: Rock Band is stellar, but IMHO it IS a bit pricey for the smaller amount of songs available on disc. And let's not talk about the AC/DC track pack. Great music, but that might as well have been DLC as the actual game disc added nothing to the experience. Didn't even have the band members likenesses involved.

My favorite game in the genre is easily GH: Metallica as that's also probably my favorite band anyway. It was really cool going to their concert a couple of weeks ago and then coming home and re-enacting the entire set list in my living room.:cool:
 
Well, the AC DC disc was just an excuse to put it out on disc... you could just export the songs to the main game anyway.

You could also do the calibration to fix the lag. I could never do it right myself though, so I tend to skip it.
 
Shakaar said:
And let's not talk about the AC/DC track pack. Great music, but that might as well have been DLC as the actual game disc added nothing to the experience. Didn't even have the band members likenesses involved.
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I don't understand the issue here. You just stated yourself that it was a TRACK PACK.
 
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