Well I’m going to start this off with the statement that I’m not afraid to admit when I am wrong. I’m sure you all read my “say bye bye to guitar hero post”. Basically it looks like Activision actually listened to the people on this one and made the smartest move they could have ever done and they decided to bring Guitar Hero back to it’s roots. I believe that Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock is going to help save Activision’s ass quite a bit after the failures known as Guitar Hero 5 and “Crap Hero”. Yeah, I said it. Basically just when you played Guitar Hero: Rocks the 80’s and Aerosmith and thought “well it can’t get much worse” they came out with GH5 and the pop hits aka Band Hero and totally turned me, along with 75% of the hardcore Guitar Hero crowd, off to the series.



One of my biggest complaints with the series was that ever since Guitar Hero 3 it seemed like they focused more on making the game mainstream by getting the big name pop stars like “Taylor Swift” instead of making the game challenging and fun. They also came up with the gimmicky slider bar for the GH World Tour and GH5 guitars which was a total flop as most people didn’t even use the touch bar since half the time it would malfunction causing it to go off on its own ruining your streak and became completely useless.



When it comes to Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock’s setlist it’s looking like they’re going back to the roots of GH1 and GH2 and bringing in some killer metal tracks and some awesome artists that are going to make for some decently hard and fun to play tracks. So far the following have been released:

AFI – Dancing Through Sunday
Anthrax – Indians
Avenged Sevenfold – Bat Country
Black Sabbath – Children of the Grave
Buzzcocks – What Do I Get?
Children of Bodom – If You Want Peace… Prepare for War
The Cure – Fascination Street
Def Leppard – Pour Some Sugar on Me
Dethklok – Bloodlines
Dire Straits – Money For Nothing
DragonForce – Fury of the Storm
Drowning Pool – Bodies
Fall Out Boy – Dance, Dance
Foo Fighters – No Way Back
Foreigner – Feels Like The First Time
The Hive – Tick Tick Boom
Jane’s Addiction – Been Caught Stealing
Jethro Tull – Aqualung
Kiss – Love Gun
Linkin Park – Bleed It Out
Megadeth – Sudden Death
Metallica & Ozzy Osbourne – Paranoid (Live)
Muse – Uprising
My Chemical Romance – I’m Not Okay (I Promise)
Night Ranger – (You Can Still) Rock in America
Nine Inch Nails – Wish
The Offspring – Self Esteem
Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody
Rammstein – Waidmanns Heil
The Rolling Stones – Stray Cat Blues
Silversun Pickups – There’s No Secrets This Year
Slayer – Chemical Warfare
Tesla – Modern Day Cowboy
The Cure – Fascination Street
ZZ Top – Sharp Dressed Man



I had a chance to chat with Herman Li of Dragonforce about GH:WOR a while ago and since his band has a song in the game he was wondering what my thoughts were on the game. He wrote “So do you think people will still care about the next GH or Rock band games? It’s getting repetitive now and saturated no?”. Of course after seeing the other artists that are going to be on here and knowing that this is only PART of the list I’m extremely confident that this will be one of the best selling Guitar Hero titles to date and difficulty wise will probably sit at a level comparative to Metallica or Van Halen with the fun factor of Guitar Hero 2 mixed in. I don’t think Herman needs to worry about their song being in THIS version of GH at least. So far Dragonforce has been one of the selling points for Guitar Hero 3 and Smash Hits especially since they had a 3 track downloadable content pack for GH3 that everyone couldn’t get enough of.

On top of the new incredible setlist Activision, of course, felt the need to introduce two new guitars into the mix. I was surprised to see that the new guitars are lacking their slider bar since that seemed to be the new thing that they were all excited about. Gizmodo had a write up about the new guitars and revealed that they will have one cutaway section with all of the electronics inside of the fretboard and neck which means you can change out the bodies or even play without a body at all which is definitely an interesting new approach.



This new concept comes with positives AND negatives however.



Positives:
-The guitars have a more edgy “hardcore” look
-The guitars will be easier to customize
- The guitars will have less problems with buttons going out now that the body/ fretboard can’t disconnect. Often times disconnecting and reconnecting the pieces too much would cause pins to not connect properly and fret buttons would start to mess up or stop working entirely after a while.
-No touch strip means that the game most likely wont have insane unnecessary slider solos in the songs. Thank goodness!
-The fact that the guitar is all one piece means you can’t break it down for travel anymore which means you’ll now have to check your bag instead of tossing it in the overhead compartment on the plane.


Negatives:
-The guitars are too small which will make it awkward to play if you are a person who plays sitting down with the guitar resting in your lap
-The awkward shape will cause a problem similar to the explorers for 360 where the guitar would tilt if you’re a standing up type of player
-The start button looks like it is big and easy to hit which means that the possibility of accidentally pausing the game is greater.
-Where the hell is the XBL button supposed to be? Basically there’s not much room in the neck/fretboard area for a guide button and I have no idea where they’re going to place it. No matter where it goes it most likely will be in an easy to hit area which is VERY VERY bad!

Overall I’m pretty impressed with everything I’ve heard about Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock so far. The set list is looking solid, the new look for the characters is pretty damn awesome and I can only imagine the death metal overhaul that the venues got. So far I’m saying good job Activision. I’m so happy that you have proven me wrong because I was fearful that the game that I once loved so much was doomed to fall into the fiery pits of pop hell. Thank you for taking the route of your fans and going back to the good music that we all know and love and making the songs harder so that we can once again shred on our dusty guitars. On behalf of all of the hardcore Guitar Hero 1 and 2 fans out there… I thank you.