September 16, 2008

  • We gamers already have a video game console war with the Playstation 3 battling it out with the xbox 360 (Wii don't count!). Then there's the handheld console war with the Nintendo DS and PSP going at it. Now, are people ready for another gaming war? This time its a war of rock band music games, between Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero : World Tour, and Rock Revolution.

    Rock Band 2 recently came out for the xbox 360, and it's really the fault of it's predecessor that we even have this "war." For several years now, it's been all about Guitar Hero that most people associate rock music games with (nevermind the "Bemani" games from Japan), but it focused primarily on just the guitars (lead, rhythm, bass). Harmonix; who was the original developer for Guitar Hero, left that franchise to pursue a music game that involved the drums and vocals to go along with the guitars, and so "Rock Band" was born. Activision; publisher for GH, did not like the fact that Rock Band was encroaching on Guitar Hero's dominance over the music rhythm game genre. Then enter Guitar Hero : World Tour, that now also includes drums and vocals to go with guitar. On the other end Konami is going "we really started this whole craze in the first place" and will now be releasing Rock Revolution, which has guitars and drums but no vocal portion.

    Full disclosure here on my part, as I am picking a side, and that's with Rock Band 2. Biggest reason is because of the songs available for it, as well as the success on how they've handled downloading new music to the game. My combined collection of Rock Band 1 songs, downloaded music, and Rock Band 2 songs, means I currently have over 250 songs. By the end of 2008, there are suppose to be about 500 songs playable for the game, and that's pretty darn impressive. Right now, the only thing I'll give Guitar Hero : World Tour credit for is that their standard drum kit looks better than Rock Band's standard drum kit. GHWT also has a music creator mode that has potential to be really good, but it doesn't include vocal work on it, which makes me not so excited for that feature anymore. In the corner of Rock Revolution.... well let's just say that it has an uphill climb to compete with Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

    Competition breeds innovation right? Well yeah I suppose that's true,
    but because of the one particular nature of these games; being the
    licensed songs and game instruments, the question of whether the public
    even wants competition is in the air. As was the case with myself, people are choosing sides, saying
    that one has better songs available than the other, one has better
    features, one has better instruments (moot point, due to cross
    compatibility between the games' instruments), etc etc etc. Ofcourse it comes down to preference, but some people are treating this "war" too personally at times. This
    wouldn't be such an issue if it wasn't for the fact that these music
    rhythm games are so similar to each other, that buying more than one of
    them feels like over spending.