Read my Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock<\/em> guitar controller companion review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve said many times before, the Guitar Hero<\/em> series has been rolling steadily downhill since Harmonix left it behind to join forces with MTV Games and kick start the rival Rock Band<\/em> franchise. That\u2019s not to say the Guitar Hero<\/em> games have been poor, because they haven\u2019t. It\u2019s just that there have been so many of them in such rapid succession that the series has, in recent installments, drifted away from being the campy, stick-it-to-the-man tribute to rock n\u2019 roll it used to be and has gradually become a stale, sterile money-making machine bereft of the heart and soul it once had.<\/p>\n

Warriors of Rock<\/em> finally puts the heart back into Guitar Hero<\/em>.<\/p>\n

How so? It all starts with the music, my friends. Now, musical taste is something that is personal to everyone, so I can\u2019t tell you that you\u2019ll love every song of Warriors of Rock<\/em>\u2019s 93-song track list. That\u2019s for you to decide by skimming over the complete set list<\/a> and seeing if there are more good songs than bad, according to your tastes.<\/p>\n

What I can tell you, though, is that the Warriors of Rock<\/em> soundtrack is the most fun to play \u2013 and it\u2019s not even close if you ask me. I\u2019ve never been a rock guy myself, as far as following bands and buying and listening to rock music. So, there isn\u2019t a song in Warriors of Rock<\/em> that I\u2019d ever want to throw on my iPod or anything like that. But I don\u2019t play Guitar Hero<\/em> games to examine composition or lyrical content on a more personal level like I do with music I choose to listen to on my own time. I play Guitar Hero<\/em> strictly for guitar-shredding gaming entertainment, and from top to bottom this game\u2019s set list is a blast.<\/p>\n

Lately, the series has adopted a broader, almost more of a pop-influenced range of songs, but that\u2019s not the case here. Warriors of Rock<\/em> covers a diverse spectrum of styles within the rock genre, and it does so without straying away from the rock path with, say, a song like Stevie Wonder\u2019s \u201cSuperstition,\u201d as was featured in GH5<\/em>. <\/p>\n

Warriors of Rock<\/em> returns to its rock roots, rekindling that indescribable rock spirit other recent Guitar Hero<\/em> titles have lacked with iconic tracks from bands\/artists such as Alice Cooper, Queen, Black Sabbath, DragonForce, Megadeth, KISS, Pantera, Foreigner, The Rolling Stones, Rush, Slayer, Aerosmith, Jethro Tull, Neil Young, Styx, Twisted Sister\u2026and the list goes on. And even the game\u2019s pop-ier tunes, like R.E.M.\u2019s \u201cLosing My Religion\u201d, Nickelback\u2019s \u201cHow You Remind Me\u201d, Linkin Park\u2019s \u201cBleed It Out\u201d and The Offspring\u2019s \u201cSelf Esteem\u201d, have rhythms, beats and hooks that are simply fun to play in the context of a rock video game. Then, of course, there is The Ramones\u2019 version of the Spider-Man cartoon theme song, which is pure awesome.<\/p>\n

This re-sharpened rock edge also carries over into the game\u2019s new Quest Mode, which ultimately plays out like a typical Guitar Hero<\/em> career mode, only in the guise of an RPG with an absurd storyline suitably narrated by the deep, disembodied voice of KISS front man Gene Simmons. The Quest Mode has you playing as eight rock avatars from Guitar Heroes<\/em> past on a quest to restore the Legendary Guitar and free the Demi-God of rock in order to save rock from The Beast. Along the way you play through songs as each character until you\u2019ve amassed enough stars to transform them into mutated rock warrior gods, each equipped with a unique power, such as a higher max score multiplier, a faster filling Star Power meter, Star Power that fills on consecutive note streaks, shields that keep your note streak alive after a missed note, and so on. Then, once you\u2019ve freed the Demi-God and The Beast has been slain, all of the warriors\u2019 powers combine and you are let loose to go back and \u201cdominate\u201d every song in the game up to a maximum of 40 stars each.<\/p>\n

If all this sounds silly, that\u2019s because it is \u2013 and that\u2019s why it is so great!<\/p>\n

The rest of Warriors of Rock<\/em> is pretty much stock Guitar Hero<\/em>. The core gameplay is unchanged; you can still jam out with your choice of guitar, drums or microphone; the character and song creation tools are essentially the same; the nifty Party Play mode established in GH5<\/em> returns; and the standard suite of multiplayer modes are in place for four players locally or up to eight players online.<\/p>\n

One mode that has been tweaked around slightly, however, is Quickplay. Quickplay+, as it is now called, is linked into a star leveling-up system, complete with online leaderboards. Every song in the game, as well as those purchased as DLC or imported from other GH<\/em> titles, has a series of challenges to complete for stars in addition to the six stars you can earn simply based on your performance during the song. These challenges include things like keeping a maximum multiplier going for set periods of time, achieving long note streaks, reaching high score milestones, and so on. And for every 10 stars earned, your rank profile increases by one level and you unlock a piece of bonus content (character creation gear, stage venues, art galleries, etc.).<\/p>\n

Together, the new Quest and Quickplay+ modes give Warriors of Rock<\/em> a constant sense of progression and accomplishment. Every time you play a song, you feel like you are building towards something, that you are doing more than just playing a song for a high score. For me, that sense of accomplishment has translated into nonstop play sessions for the first time in a long while. Save for the time when I got the very first PS2 Guitar Hero<\/em> game and literally pulled an all-nighter playing it with friends (and kept playing it for weeks and weeks thereafter), whenever I get a new Guitar Hero<\/em> I usually cruise through the career modes in a couple days, maybe return to replay a few favorite songs, and then move on and wait for the next installment to come along. However, with Warriors of Rock<\/em> I have spent a week and a half obsessively playing through the Quest mode, going back through to \u201cdominate\u201d every song, and replaying many of the same songs again and again in Quickplay+ to build up my ranking (I\u2019m up to level 16 right now, if memory serves) — and I don\u2019t see myself stopping any time in the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

Again, the music gets most of the credit for that, as I certainly wouldn\u2019t be replaying songs two, three, four or more times if I didn\u2019t enjoy playing them. But I also love how every time I replay a song I seem to achieve a new personal goal and earn some new piece of unlockable content.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve grown pretty ambivalent towards the Guitar Hero<\/em> franchise and music games in general over the years, part of me always expecting to enjoy myself, part of me always expecting to become bored after a few play sessions. Warriors of Rock<\/em> has, unexpectedly, sparked my interest in the genre all over again and reminded me why I fell in love with Guitar Hero<\/em> so many years ago. I\u2019m not sure where the series can possibly go from here, but for now I will happily appreciate Guitar Hero<\/em> as the Demi-God of rock video games once more.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Pros:<\/strong>
\n+ Most entertaining collection of on-disc songs yet
\n+ New Quest Mode is silly fun
\n+ Quickplay+ is very addictive and rewarding
\n+ Brings Guitar Hero back to its roots<\/p>\n

Cons:<\/strong>
\n– Nowhere left for the Guitar Hero franchise to go after this, but rest assured it will continue to be milked<\/p>\n

Game Info:<\/strong>
\nPlatform: Reviewed on PS3, also available on Wii and Xbox 360
\nPublisher: Activision
\nDeveloper: Neversoft (PS3, X360), Vicarious Visions (Wii)
\nRelease Date: 9\/28\/2010
\nGenre: Music\/Rhythm
\nESRB Rating: Teen
\nPlayers: 1-8 (1-4 locally, 2-8 online)
\nSource: Review copy provided by publisher<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/p>\n

[nggallery id=1444]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Read my Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock guitar controller companion review here. As I\u2019ve said many times before, the Guitar Hero series has been rolling steadily downhill since Harmonix left it behind to join forces with MTV Games and kick start the rival Rock Band […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[106,850,2073,49,3,32,21],"tags":[6116,2044,696,699,6086,6079],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vgblogger.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7407"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vgblogger.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vgblogger.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vgblogger.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vgblogger.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7407"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.vgblogger.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7414,"href":"http:\/\/www.vgblogger.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7407\/revisions\/7414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vgblogger.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vgblogger.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vgblogger.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}