Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock (Review)

Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock Review

Lacking in innovations and fun, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock only get a C+ on the user rating

Why did we play the original Guitar Hero? Because it was fun, just challenging enough, and it had a solid song list. Getting better never felt like a chore, but rather an enjoyable and accessible experience. Newbies could jump in and have a great time while more experienced players could work on shredding to their heart’s content. Everyone could have fun, regardless of their skill or commitment to getting better.

And that’s what’s so frustrating about Warriors of Rock: it seems to have forgotten that music games are supposed to be all about having fun.

Granted, the largely unchanged multiplayer is still fun. The jump-in, jump-out Party Play mode is still around, and works just as well as it did in Guitar Hero 5. Though, strangely, some songs in both Quickplay and Party Play are locked until you reach a certain point in the main game.

The Quest Mode, while it has the potential to change up the generic “play songs in increasingly larger venues” formula, falls flat. There’s not much of a story, and what is there is told through a cheesy voice-over from Gene Simmons, but no appearance from the man himself. And though the game has a very heavy metal-inspired aesthetic, there are relatively few songs that actually adhere to that imagery. That stylisti disparity makes the career mode feel like a desperate attempt to gain credibility with too many crowds, but it ends up spreading itself too thin. The story even starts with Johnny Napalm playing at the legendary punk club CBGB, a venue not exactly known for its metal roots. Unfortunately, this is only the first of a long series of missteps that brings the campaign down.

Previous Guitar Hero story modes have benefited from offering leniency in letting you choose what songs you play to advance your individual career, and that worked well. But with the character-specific setlists in Warriors of Rock, you’re forced to play through each and every genre, with little choice in skipping songs that may not appeal to you. You perform in each venue as a specific character, each with their own special ability, ranging from the larger Star Power multiplier for Pandora to Judy Nails’ ability to earn extra stars for overflowing her Rock Meter. But these powers don’t add much fresh or new; in the end, Quest Mode isn’t anything more than a renamed, but equally staid, career mode.

The biggest hurdle for Warriors of Rock, however, is its imbalanced accessibility. The inclusion of a medley-style version of Rush’s 2112 is nice fanservice…if you’re into the band. But for everyone else, the overly complex songs simply aren’t fun. And, personally, I feel this trend extends across the entire setlist. It makes sense to include, say “Holy Wars? The Punishment Due” by Megadeth for hardcore shredders; it’s tough and arguably great fun if you’re into earning that 100% on expert. But for a game genre that’s pretty much switched entirely over to being more party-oriented (with good reason), it’s feels limiting to tailor so much of the game specifically to the minority.

To put it simply, there aren’t enough songs for casual players to fill up an evening’s worth of entertainment. Sure, you’ve got Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man”, and some of the deeper cuts from lesser-known albums may surprise you, but after the eclectic mix of tracks in World Tour, Guitar Hero 5, and Band hero , it seems an odd choice to not include more big hits and well-known classics. For example, why use The Ramone’s cover of “Theme from Spider-Man” when everyone knows any number of their other hits and would have a much better time playing them instead? Better yet, why not include both?

Warriors of Rock seems to have forgotten why its predecessors were so well received: the songs were fun to play — they were, for the most part, catchy and memorable. That’s not a knock against, say, Children of Bodom’s “If You Want Peace? Prepare for War” or Dillinger Escape Plan’s “Setting Fire to Sleeping Giants,” I even happen to be a fan of the latter. But if I wasn’t familiar with those bands, I can’t imagine having fun playing or singing their songs for the first time. And they definitely don’t hold up as well to repeated performances.

So while playing with your buds (as long as they have similar musical tastes) is still an enjoyable experience, you won’t get the same mileage out of Warriors of Rock as previous Guitar Hero games. It could have been made somewhat better by more accessible, easily relatable songs, but with an otherwise lacking career mode, everything about Warriors of Rock reeks of regurgitated design decisions and a desire to simply make as much money as possible without really trying to add anything new.