Guitar Hero Update

It’s been a while since I posted about Guitar Hero. In fact, it’s been a while since I posted at all. Therefore, I feel it is appropriate to take a moment to brag about how my skills have improved. The last time I posted about Guitar Hero, I was talking about how I got 5 stars on “Number of the Beast” on Expert. This was, in fact, a big deal to me at the time, as it was extremely hard for me to do. Since then, I have gotten over 500,000 points on that very same song. I have also achieved 5 stars on all Guitar Hero 3 Career Mode songs, and also gotten the achievement for scoring 200k on “Cult of Personality” without using Star Power.

I have purchased and played through Guitar Hero: World Tour. I enjoyed the enhanced gameplay, especially the feature that allows notes to be played while a sustain is continuously held. The slider notes are great as well, as I’m a fan of the Hammer-ons and Pull-offs, and slider notes take that one step further, getting rid of strumming altogether :) World Tour fails, however, to amp up the difficulty until the last couple sets of songs. The only one I have yet to beat is “Satch Boogie,” thanks to its section of extremely fast slider notes. I have also yet to achieve 5 stars on “Trapped in Ice” by Metallica. The other songs, however, I found easy to master. I do appreciate the track list, especially “Hotel California,” a song I had not heard before playing it, but now greatly enjoy.

I bought Guitar Hero: Smash Hits last Wednesday and beat it on Thursday. I beat “Through the Fire and the Flames” for the first time on Thursday, and achieved 4 stars on Friday. Today, I achieved 5 stars on “Psychobilly Freakout,” and 5 stars on “Play With Me.” Now, I am only two stars short of a 5star full game, having 238/240 stars. The ones I’m missing are one from “Raining Blood” and of course, one from “Through the Fire and the Flames.” These are all on the Expert difficulty.

I loved Smash Hits, because it has many songs from the original Guitar Hero, which is not available for the Xbox 360, and I’ve never played it. The re-frets of the GH2 songs are excellent as well. Guitar Hero: Smash hits adds the function of seeing your progress on how many stars you’ve while you’re still playing the song, much like Rock Band does.

Guitar Hero: World Tour

Guitar Hero: World Tour is without a doubt the best music game yet. It combines the full-band experience introduced in Harmonix’s “Rock Band” game with the higher difficulty presented by Activision’s fretting team. Just take a look at Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.” It’s in both Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2, but in RB2, it’s much easier and is the first song in the career mode setlist, whereas in GH:WT it’s more difficult, and is in the third tier, not the first.

World Tour also integrates new features that make it closer to mirroring the actual guitar instrument: While already holding a sustained note, players are sometimes required to play other notes as well. In the Eagles’s “Hotel California,” there is a 4-note hammer-on sustain, where the player must press Green, then Red, then Yellow, then Blue, whilst still holding down the previous notes. The “slider bar” allows players to tap notes as an alternative to strumming, as well as “slide” notes in certain sections instead of pressing fret buttons.

The drums are amped up as well: In Rock Band, players cannot activate Star Power until the next drum fill. In GH:WT, the drummer can just hit both crash cymbals at any time in the song (Or the Yellow and Blue drums if they’re using the Rock Band drum set). They also get points for drum fills, unlike Rock Band, where the fill only serves to activate Star Power.

GH:WT solves the “I don’t want to play bass, it’s too easy!” problem with the addition of the sixth note: Open Strum. It takes the form of a line across the screen, much like the kick note for the drums, but it’s purple. To hit it, the player strums without holding any fret buttons. Keeping track of six notes instead of five makes the bass much more difficult.

In Guitar Hero: World Tour, famous artists make their way onstage. Blink 182’s drummer Travis Barker, Paramore’s singer Hayley Williams, famous singer Ozzy Osbourne, Singer/bassist Sting,  guitarist Zakk Wylde, and guitar legend Jimi Hendrix, among others, make their entrance to play their hit songs alongside the player’s avatars.

World Tour also features an amazing setlist, from classics like Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher” to modern hits like Linkin Park’s  “What I’ve Done,” World Tour truly embodies the many varieties of Rock.

Extreme Progress [GH]

I’m amazed at how far I’ve made it when it comes to my skills as a Guitar Hero player. Just over a year ago I was struggling to beat ‘Beast and the Harlot’ on Expert, and now I’ve almost beat TTFATF. I have 5 stars on every song in Career Mode on Expert, save but two songs: Raining Blood (4 stars), and Number of the Beast (4 stars). I just can’ t seem to get the last few points necessary for 5 stars on those songs! I also have trouble with some of the bonus songs, TTFATF not included either! For instance, “The Way It Ends” is REALLY hard… I haven’t beaten that on either… All in all, though, I’m pretty impressed with my own skill, and am suprised that I got so good with so little effort. Most people I play with think that I practice for hours every day, but I really only play 4-5 songs just for the fun of it most of the time! On Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, I have 5 stars on every expert song, and I’m not sure about GH2, cos my little brothers broke the disc… again. I’m getting ANOTHER copy tomorrow after I get my paycheck lol…

GH: World Tour

I haven’t gotten to play World Tour much, but I like what I see. My friend got GH:WT for Christmas, but only has the Guitar, so I stopped by his house to play it for about an hour. They’ve got a [i]big[/i] selection of songs to play and all of them are great. The slide bar is hard to master and I haven’t gotten the hang of it. I like the new feature where sometimes there is a sustained note with other notes you have to play while keeping the first sustained, as well as the fact that GH followed Rock Band with the ability to gain Star Power while you already have Star Power activated. Expert has moved up a notch on many songs, thanks to the addition of the slidebar, and I think it will be quite a while before a large majority of players have very many 5 star performances on the harder songs! I can’t wait to play it more and would love to try out the drum set.