I’m a huge fan of music games. I’ve been playing music based games for a long time. Such game series include DDR, Karaoke Revolution, Amplitude, and Beatmania. However in the past two years the music game genre has taken a turn for the worse. I love the Guitar Hero(older ones) and Rock Band games but in the past two years we’ve seen this genre nearly fall apart. Here are my reasons the genre is now in a downward spiral.

1: Too Many Games Too Frequently

I used to really love the Guitar Hero series. But ever since Activision took over the franchise they have flooded the market with way too many Guitar Hero games. I really enjoyed their first effort in Guitar Hero 3 as it kept what I loved about the three games in the series that Harmonix put out, the great music. I think Guitar Hero 3 had one of the best song lists of the entire series.

However since then Activision has put out an ungodly amount of Guitar Hero games in the course of just about two years. We’ve had Guitar Hero 3, Aerosmith, World Tour, Metallica, Smash Hits, Guitar Hero 5 and being released soon Van Halen. Not to mention the three games for the Nintendo DS. That comes out to ten games in a two year time frame. That in my opinion is overkill.

Harmonix is not entirely off the hook here either. They have put out three Rock Band games with two more coming very soon. Two of those games are on consoles and the other is on the Sony PSP. That will come out to five games in the same amount of time. Not entirely overkill but probably not necessary either. I tend to prefer the Rock Band games over the newer Guitar Hero titles and I don’t want to see Harmonix fall into the same trap as Activision.

2: Lack of Downloadable Content

This pertains to the Guitar Hero games, There is not enough DLC for these games. It seems like instead of supporting their games Activision would rather just put out another game entirely than simply offering DLC. There is just not enough DLC in the Guitar Hero games. One reason I prefer DLC to a new game is that I can play these new songs on an existing game as opposed to having to switch game discs if I get a craving to play something not on one of the games. I think all the DLC I have for Guitar Hero 3 and World Tour is maybe ten tracks tops. They have released more than that but compared to Rock Band the content is very slim.

Rock Band has DLC nailed and the content works between both console games in the series.

3: Song Lists That Suck

Both Guitar Hero World Tour and Guitar Hero 5 feature the worst song lists I’ve ever seen in any music based game. Activision is trying to appeal to a larger audience with these games and they way they are doing that is by adding variety to the song lists. However a lot of the songs they choose are either really bad, from fairly unknown bands, or have no place in a Guitar Hero or Rock Band game. To put this into better perspective between World Tour and Guitar Hero 5 there are maybe a total of ten songs I like. That is only ten between two games with fairly large song lists. However I can easily choose ten great songs I like from Guitar Hero 3.

Harmonix does this also but not to the extent that Activision does. There have been songs in both Rock Band games that I really don’t like but they are far less frequent that in the newer Guitar Hero titles. Also in Rock Band you have the option in nearly every venue you play to create your own set lists. It does help that in World Tour and Guitar Hero 5 all the songs are unlocked from the beginning for quick play modes but you still need to play through a ton of songs you may hate to progress in the career mode.

This is why in my opinion Guitar Hero 3 was the last good game in the series. It did feature some pop songs but they all had decent guitar work and/or a good guitar solo. Basically if they’re still going to call it Guitar Hero put in songs that use better guitar work than 90% of the songs in World Tour and Guitar Hero 5.

By trying to appeal to everyone they end up alienating the fans who have been playing the games since the beggining. If they want to market these games to a larger audience they need to find a better way to balance out the content.

4: Pointless Unlockable Content

The unlockable content in original games was good. Costumes, new guitars and songs that didn’t really fit into the main theme of Guitar Hero. The first two games had some very good songs to unlock that were songs by the bands that Harmonix employees play in or they might know about and want to share.

In the the newer Guitar Hero and Rock Band games there are several unlockables that are entirely pointless. for example you can unlock new tuning pegs for your guitars in World Tour. Now I can understand unlocking a new guitar body because that is very visible on the screen, but come on something as small as the tuning pegs is hardly going to be noticeable when you’re playing the game. Or all the various clothing in both series. I’m more willing to forgive the clothing because you can use it to customize your character but in the end are people really going to be plying that much attention to this kind of thing? Probably not because they will usually be concentrating on the notes coming at them or the scrolling vocals.

Conclusion

I still love music games but right now the market is flooded. I think these companies need to go back to basics and think about what made the originals so great. Constantly pumping out new games in not the answer in my opinion. The more games in these franchises I see the more it makes me start to not like them.

Still not nearly as much as Rock Band. Also the DLC for Guitar Hero 3 was pretty minimal.

Rydog wrote:

I agree, I have played plenty of Guitar Hero but still don't own any of them. I think it's a shame that I would have to spend a couple hundred bucks on 7-8 games to get the 30-40 songs that I would want. I think they should sell instruments in store and then let you buy any song you want as DLC for a buck or two (maybe they do, but IDK) Your right though every time I turn around there is a new game to get, and the GH 5 didn't look like it was selling that big at Best Buy,

The set list for Guitar Hero 5 is pretty bad, same with World Tour. Like I said in the article there are maybe ten songs between both of those games that I like.

Nice observation there Greg, I completely agree. I want a little challenge in my games but I don't need the songs to be insanely difficult to have a good time. This is why I love Rock Band. It can be challenging but it is more about being fun.

I've only tried the Guitar Hero online play on a few occasions and it has been poor all the time. In Rock Band 2 I can find my friends and get into a game very quickly. It took forever to find games in Guitar Hero 3 and World Tour and when you did find one you would most likely get disconnected and it would go back to the main menu.

Guitar Hero has a place in my heart(the first three) but the newer ones soon won't if they continue putting out games like World Tour and Guitar Hero 5 with terrible song lists.

Slayer1 wrote:

Does anyone remember Frequency and Amplitude? Aside from MTV music Generator these games paved the way for Guitar hero and you can't even find them anymore :@

Both Frequency and Amplitude were developed by Harmonix, the creators of Guitar Hero. I still have and play Amplitude quite a bit.