Two new music video games are giving rock-star wannabes a chance to live their fantasies. Building on the success of the first Guitar Hero, both Activision’s Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock and Harmonix’s Rock Band will go head to head in stores this holiday season.
The participatory nature of both games and their departure from a standard shoot ‘em up game model should contribute to their success with both casual gamers and non-gamers. Developers hope to reach the hard-core gamers, but the profitability of these games relies heavily upon the larger casual demographic. Research by Activision found that first-time players account for 20% of Guitar Hero’s users. While Guitar Hero III and Rock Band will ultimately be available on all four main consoles (Playstation 2, Playstation 3, Xbox360 and Wii), reaching new gamers is the main goal of expanding to Wii, which already reigns in the casual game market.
Both Guitar Hero III and Rock Band are thought to be party games, spawning multiplayer duels played both online and offline. The games run pre-recorded rock classics like Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle” and Pearl Jam’s “Even Flow”, and players score points by singing, strumming or drumming the correct notes and rhythms. For instance, the guitars are equipped with fret buttons and a strum bar which both need to be hit in order to play a note. The more notes you hit consecutively with the correct rhythm, the more points you gain on your rock meter.
Guitar Hero III’s new features significantly improve upon the multiplayer action of its earlier versions by including co-op career mode, where players can face off against real musicians like Slash from Guns N’ Roses and Tom Morella from Rage Against the Machine. A battle mode has also been included, which allows rockers to gain attacks by hitting correct notes that may then be used against other players (such as the dreaded “lefty flip”).
Rock Band attempts to outdo Guitar Hero III by creating the full-on band experience. Instead of just a guitar controller, it provides a microphone, guitar, bass and drums. The game will also launch simultaneously with Rockband.com, a social networking site that will feature band pages, classifieds, leaderboards, blogs, forums and more. Think of it as MySpace for your fake band.
With a price tag of approximately $90 for both the game and a guitar, Guitar Hero III is more pricey than a normal console game, which runs for about $50. However, the cost is relatively low compared to Rock Band which runs $160 for the game, guitar, drum set and microphone. It’s also worth noting that while Rock Band is meant to be a 4-person game, the package fails to include the second guitar to act as the bass. The casual gamer may not be intrigued enough to form a full band for a higher price, when Guitar Hero III is available.
Regardless of how these two games fare against each other, it will be interesting to see how the video game industry reacts to the growing popularity of interactive music gaming and how first-time gamers respond to the latest incarnations. Now grab your plastic axes and rock on!
– Heather Mumm
1 response so far ↓
1 gurrll // Jun 29, 2008 at 7:59 pm
woo i love guitar hero
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