Battle of the Bands - Page 1 of 5

Battle of the Bands

Home : Games : Articles

Guitar Hero III or Rock Band - which is right for you?

Beginning of the Road Trip

Since Harmonix' split from publishers Activision and RedOctane, a small war has been waging. Quietly, underground, Harmonix has been hard at work on its next big rhythm game, but Activision still owned the Guitar Hero franchise, and wasn't ready to let it go. With developer Neversoft behind the wheel, a storm was brewing.

Fast forward to today. The holidays are over, and you don't have either game yet, or just have one and want to know about the other. With the toilet paper long list of blockbuster games last holiday season, it's a wonder any of us survived and kept the shirts on our backs. But the battle of the bands wages on, and after the hustle of the holiday lineup behind us, we can sit back and watch the fireworks.

Okay fine, Guitar Hero 3 obviously loses the battle of the bands. It isn’t actually about the band at all, but that doesn’t mean it can’t compete with the 4-player Rock Band, new-comer and underdog. Which of these games reigns supreme? And which one is right for you?

Weapon of Choice

Guitar Hero is all about fast fingers. No matter which game in the series you’ve got on hand, they all do the exact same thing: numb your hands. That, of course, is half the fun, playing songs and really struggling to get the controls right. The axe given has to be a good piece of plastic, in this case, to not crumble from the button-smashing taking place in millions of homes worldwide.

GH3 brings a new guitar in the mix, the Gibson Les Paul. Not only is this baby wireless, it’s everything the X-plorer and more. The buttons are fashioned better for playing, the neck is detachable for easy storage, it runs on two AA-batteries and has a removable faceplate for designers. While there are only a few faceplates out to buy right now, the option is certainly nice to have, so long as it doesn’t follow the same path as the Xbox 360 faceplate idea.

The Les Paul functions absolutely wonderfully. In all our tests, battery life was well over 25 hours and seemed to go on forever. The strong whammy bar never goes loose and remained responsive, and it has yet to disappoint. There is nothing that could make the instrument better, with the exception of a good rechargeable battery kit and making the indentation on the yellow (middle) fret button a bit smaller so our fingers don’t actually callus from hitting it so hard.

The drum set and microphone give Rock Band a huge edge over Guitar Hero, and giving us a chance to learn to play the drums. For real.

Rock Band has a different approach; quantity over quality. That isn’t to say that RB’s instruments are made poorly, but there are some serious design flaws that are more problematic than the bundle’s price indicates. The only instrument without flaw is the microphone, which also happens to be unnecessary because singing can be done with a headset. But there’s no doubt using an actual microphone is much more appealing for a team playing together, and it ain't easy using a cymbal with your teeth.

The guitar has a few problems. Its fret buttons are very plain, and practically imbedded into the guitar neck. Modeled on a Fender Stratocaster, it may look more like a real guitar, but it feels like a toy in comparison to the Les Paul. This may have to do with the weight difference, since the Les Paul crams more for batteries and wireless connectivity.

There’s an effects pickup switch that allows different sounds to come from using the Whammy bar and while in Overdrive (like Guitar Hero’s Star Power), which sounds good on paper but works like crap in practice, at least for the Whammy bar. Playing a great song is awesome, but making the music blur to one of four different sounds isn't tasteful in the slightest. It works better in Overdrive for some songs, but is generally a gimmick that simply does not last except for the most hardcore of gamers.

Five additional fret keys are also placed at the base-end of the neck, meant for guitar solo’s (we’ll get to that in a minute). Also a good idea, but the buttons are placed too close to each other, making it difficult to change finger placement because of the size difference between the main five notes and the solo notes. And, because the way the buttons are made, inside the neck instead of sticking out like the Les Paul’s, it’s too hard to hit the right note immediately after a solo.

It’s also one whole piece. It’s kept together by 35 screws, 11 of them placed on the front like the real Stratocaster. The enlarged Whammy bar is way to big, flimsy, unresponsive and even kind of useless. Because the power meter is so large in RB, it using the Whammy bar does very little unless Overdrive is active, in which case it keeps the meter in place while gaining double the points.

What's really harsh is the Stratocaster’s placement of the Xbox button, just beside the whammy bar. For those who actually use the whammy bar, this means about 5% of the time you’ll hit the button and, of course, go into the lovely dashboard or the PlayStation pause-shutoff screen. Not exactly what you want in the middle of a note.

Stratocaster vs. Les Paul. Fender and Gibson made two excellent instruments, though GH3's controller is better suited for gaming.

Finally, there’s the drum set. The drums are clearly well designed, though it has the same issue with the placement of the Xbox button. It’s too easy to accidentally hit it while slamming the drum sticks on a heavy set. Otherwise, it’s responsive and comes apart for easy storage. It's also superbly loud, which has gotten some people in trouble and third party peripherals into the market.

What really sets the two games’ controls apart is their usability for other games. No, don’t plan on playing Call of Duty on the guitar, but if you’ve got the Les Paul, you can play any Guitar Hero game, as well as RB (so long as you don’t own the PS3 version). But if you’ve got the Stratocaster, it’s RB or bust.

Verdict: Guitar Hero 3 rocks out! Easy to move, clean design, upgradeability and usability make it the master of disaster. Rock Band's peripherals lack polish and usability, and PS3 owners won't be happy until Harmonix and Activision make nice or third parties step in with other products.

12 3 4 5 Next >>

Recently added articles:

July 2, 2008

A Quality Assured Interview
Matt Warner shines some light on one of the video game industry's most dreamed about jobs, the video game tester.

June 29, 2008

Play N Trade Lets People Play Games All Day
We investigate a new chain of video game stores that provides heaps of consoles for people to test the latest games in-store.

June 26, 2008

The Reset Button Returns - Now With Longer Cutscenes
There are lots of strange happenings in the world of gaming, time for GWN's lovable (if only a little psychotic) game columnist to fire off a few rounds.

4 Games We Want Hideo Kojima to Work on After Metal Gear Solid
We take a look at four Hideo Kojima games that we would like to see resurrected.

New Book 'Game Boys' Gives Gaming the Sports Treatment
Team 3D vs. CompLexity - a Yankees vs. Red Sox for the new millenium?