The boys shook off their end-of-the-year hangover and are here with a glance back to 2009 before starting off a new decade of mad rockin' clickery. Enjoy.
The Plastic Rock gods have spoken and told us that they want more Plastic Rockers. So we took their advice and decided it’s time to take a look back at the hardest rocking rhythm games of 2009. Sure we’re late for the party, but it wouldn’t be rock n’ roll if we didn’t throw a middle finger to the Man and make our own schedule. It might not be a very original idea for a column, but we are taking a page out of P-Diddy’s book and working in a little bit of sampling. We also wanted to impart some of our vast Plastic wisdom to the masses. The games, we’ve played them all ... well, we’ve played most of them anyway … and now you get the benefit of all our hard work so you don’t make the same mistakes we have.
Speaking of mistakes, let’s get started….
6. The biggest mistake of the year, Guitar Hero: Van Halen. This game is so full of shit it beats out Rock Revolution for “Most Retarded Rhythm Game of the Decade,” (the only game that's worse is Wii Music, but we're not sure the word "game" even applies to that flaming turd.) That’s right, it’s that bad. We’re not sure who the bigger jackass was when deciding to make this game. Activision for slapping together a blatant cash grab off the heels of Guitar Hero: Metallica, or Eddie VH for being such a complete and utter jackass that no one outside his own kin and a coked out David Lee would even agree to be in the game.
The music, well the music isn’t particularly bad, but without Michael Anthony and zero input from Sammy, the whole experience feels incomplete. As Simon Cowell would put it, “It’s like walking into a bar on Karaoke night, and listening to someone murdering a classic song.” Making matters worse they used an old version of the game engine. It doesn't take long to understand why they had to give this game away with Guitar Hero 5.
5. Activision didn’t stop the turd factory at GH: VH, they decided to drop an extra large deuce with Band Hero this past fall as well. Their solid idea of putting out a game that you might be more comfortable playing with your kids ended in complete FAIL. They created a few new venues, threw in some family friendly tracks and slapped it with a $60 price tag. The one saving grace was their use of the outstanding GH 5 game engine. If you haven’t gotten GH5 but need something to play with your happy accidents, this may be a decent way to go, particularly if you can get it on sale, but we can’t guarantee your head won’t explode.
4. Here’s where the list begins to take a turn for the better. Way back in March of 2009, Activision released Guitar Hero: Metallica and proved that a band specific game could be successful both commercially and critically. Graphically the game was very impressive. The music selection spanned the entire career of the band; unlike GH: VH. One drawback was that the game used a dumbed down version of the Guitar Hero: World Tour engine, but that wasn’t a deal breaker. One thing that Activision did seem to “get right” was the difficulty level. It was easy enough to be accessible to most players yet gave the most expert of gamers a challenge. Overall, it’s a very impressive game.
3. The Beatles: Rock Band may have been one of the most hyped rhythm based games ever created. When you can sign one of the biggest bands of all time to help you create a game, you probably should tell everyone you can and keep telling them ‘til they’re ready to stab someone. Fortunately, for Harmonix it wasn’t all hype. They really gave The Beatles the royal treatment. The game was clearly built from the ground up and it was obviously done by some of the biggest Beatles worshipers Harmonix could employ.
Graphically, the game is quite simply beautiful. It’s hard not to look at the background animations instead of your note chart, (which we did many times until our band mates slapped us in the back of the head, or screamed at us over Live.) Add in a career spanning track list, unheard outtakes and never before seen photographs and you’ve got yourself every Beatles’ fan wet dream. Harmonix didn’t stop with just pretty pictures though. They also implemented some new game play mechanics and a unique take on playing through the career portion of the game. Instead of just piggy backing on previous games, The Beatles Rock Band innovated…what a novel idea Developers take note.
2. Bringing something new to the table was the best way to make our list this year, and Lego Rock Band did just that. This game got lost underneath the hype for The Beatles but it is an outstanding game in its own right. Unlike Band Hero, Lego made a game that went beyond just putting cutesy songs into an existing product. Everything about this game feels “Lego-y” from the Rock Den at the center of your career to the note charts that you play in each song.
If you can only buy one music game to play with your kids, this is it. It is designed from top to bottom to make playing with the less skilled members of your household an enjoyable experience. The new “Super Easy” modes ensure that everyone with even minimal ability to hit a button can play along. The tour portion of the game doesn’t force you try over and over to replay gigs since, for the most part, you can’t fail out. It simply costs you more "studs" (the game's version of money) to keep playing.
The best part … you can export all of the Lego Rock Band songs to your hard drive to play in Rock Band 2. Not only that, but (depending on your tracklist) a sizable portion of your DLC tracks will play in Lego RB as well. It’s a good thing because that’s one of the drawbacks to this game. You’ll find yourself playing “Kung Fu Fighting” and several other on disc songs multiple times. They will get stuck in your head, and you will want to punch yourself in the face. The one other downfall of the game is the continuation of Lego’s unwillingness to allow their games to be played cooperatively online. You can do the tour on your own of course but if you want that full-band experience, you better gather the kids around or call the neighbors, because you aren’t going to be playing this game on Xbox Live.
1. And the number one music game of 2009 ... and this is hard to type … Guitar Hero 5. We are admittedly Harmonix fanboys, but this game was just that good. We said earlier that the best way to make this list was to innovate and that’s exactly what Activision did with this game. For the first time in any music game you could play any instrument you wanted with anyone else regardless if they were playing the same part. This is a huge win for online play and has set a standard to which every game made hereafter should be held.
Activision re-thought the tour portion of the game as well, and though it seemed a bit linear, the addition of song specific challenges to complete alongside the tour made the game that much more interesting. It gave gamers a reason to play the tour over and over.
Another first for the genre was the way you could start up the game and just play along. In fact you could play a song put the guitar down and just listen to the next and then play another. It was essentially an interactive jukebox that was perfect for parties or just listening to while doing other things around the house.
Activision also took a note from the guys at Harmonix and incorporated song exportability into GH5. You could now play some of the Guitar Hero World Tour and Guitar Hero Smash Hits songs within the GH5 game as well as nearly all of the DLC you had ever purchased for Guitar Hero. As any loyal Rock Band fan knows, that’s important. It’s also a reason to finally keep both Guitar Hero and Rock Band in your library if you’re a DLC junkie like we are.
Well, that's our list. Not every game made the list, but not every game was worth the time to play or even write about. After all, our time is precious and we're not wasting it on Tap Tap Revolution. Of course no list is really complete until we have a nice long response list of flames telling us how much our picks suck, so breakout your keyboards and tell us what you think. That comments section underneath isn't just for spammers afterall.
All in all it was a good year for the Plastic Rockers around the world. We were inundated with rhythm games, giving us a chance to try a little bit of everything on for size. We’ve found that that size six doesn’t fit as well as it used to, Band Hero Sucks The Big Donkey Dick, we still love the Rock Band series, and that we unfortunately have developed a soft spot for Guitar Hero ... but don’t tell anyone we don’t want to get mugged in the parking lot.
We hope you have a great 2010, keep on reading our column, and acting like jackasses in your living room with a fisher price Guitar and Tritton headphones strapped to your head. We know we will.
