Battle of the Bands
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Guitar Hero has always had a song set anyone could rock out to. At least five or six would insert themselves into player’s heads and never leave, forcing them to play that song at least once each time the guitar was picked up. But with original Guitar Hero developer Harmonix now working on Rock Band, does that move with the developer or stay with the name?
There’s no good answer, as there are clearly huge differences between motive. RB needs songs with good parts for not just the guitar, but bass, drums and singing. Sure, GH3 has bass as well, but it’s always about the guitar, man! Only a few songs go full out with the bass in GH3, where RB needs to have something for everyone.
RB, however, never left us scratching our heads about a song choice. Sure, there are some songs that make you shiver with memories of a worse time, but that’s to be expected. The same happened for Guitar Hero’s 1, 2 and Rock the 80’s.
Before we hit up which songs are hits and misses, let’s take a quick look at the statistics. Only seven out of 45 songs in RB, not including the extras, aren’t master tracks, which is incredible compared to GH2. That's a 75% increase in master tracks! GH3, however, has 27out of 46 songs that are master tracks, over double the covers from RB. And to make matters worse, even one of GH3’s bonus tracks isn’t a master track, which completely misses the point.

The graphics Rock Band displays aren't excellent, but compared to the competition its Led Zeppelin vs. billy bob down the street.
Both games have some great hits, but RB doesn’t have any songs that don’t belong or are out of place. Everything fits perfectly, and no matter who’s playing, everyone walks away happy. GH3, however, has a few songs that just beg players to say “huh?” Honestly, as a game based around awesome riffs and great melodies, it’s hard to imagine how a song like “Before I Forget” (by Slipknot) made it into the game. The majority of it is just hard strumming to make no actual note sound. I mean, what the hell? Not that it's a bad song, but there are certainly better songs, even from the same artist, that could be used for the game. Their choice was putrid.
The songs in GH3 also don’t have any significance to one another. They are kind of just put together with seemingly no thought put into how well they go together. Some work out fine, like playing “Even Flow” after “My Name is Jonas”, but others like playing “The Metal” and suddenly having an encore of “Pride and Joy” just does not go well together.
Winner: Rock Band makes some noise! Carrying more master tracks, a better set list and an overall unity in tunes, it makes for an excellent playlist.
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