Band Hero still has the elements that made Guitar Hero 5 enjoyable, but with a more female friendly soundtrack.
I think I’m pretty much done with Band Hero on the 360, so I’m ready to share my review. For those that don’t know, Band Hero was released by Activision last November and is basically Guitar Hero but with a more family friendly and female friendly tracklist. The game is headlined by Taylor Swift as a playable character, and is pretty much a carbon copy of Guitar Hero 5′s engine and features except for its Achievement design and tracklist. I never got around to reviewing Guitar Hero 5, so please consider this review as one that is most likely applicable to both games – they really just come down to whether you like the tracklist of either game.
The Soundtrack
In past Guitar Hero/Rock Band games I would enjoy a few songs and then not be so into the others. With Band Hero, I was a bit more excited to play it since it contained more “pop hits”. I think overall, there were more songs I enjoyed listening to (but not necessarily playing) in this game than any other Guitar Hero/Rock Band game, but the number was still probably less than a quarter of the tracks. While the game’s focus is on pop songs, the songs range from 1964 until the present, so there’s a lot of stuff in there that just wasn’t that enjoyable/recognizable for me. I think in the end, maybe I’m just looking for a soundtrack that contains various pop/rock songs from today’s “Now That’s What I Call Music” albums, but this is the closest I can get to enjoying it for now. There are definitely more girl friendly songs in this game, and my wife loved singing the Taylor Swift songs. As for me, it feels a little odd playing it solo, especially to fail to some Hillary Duff or Spice Girls song, but that’s something I’ll just keep to myself.
Party Play
I never got a chance to try out Party Play with Guitar Hero 5, but I was able to get it going this time around and felt it was very well done. The concept behind the mode allows you to just focus on playing, without worrying about setting up instruments, picking songs, going through some menu modes, etc. Before you even get to the main game menu, the intro will have random characters playing a random song, and if you want to play, you just hit the green button on your instrument. You choose your difficulty right there, and then jump right in. There’s no failing in this mode, and players can jump in and jump out at any time without stopping the progress of anyone else. If they pause the game to leave, it doesn’t pause for anyone else so they can just drop out and even pop back in without anyone else missing a beat. It’s really the perfect mode to play a music game at a party. As a hardcore gamer, in the past when I would have friend over to play other music games, I would have to set everyone up and sort of just hover nearby to make sure that everyone was ok figuring out menus and stuff. But with Band Hero (and Guitar Hero 5)’s Party Play mode, I can honestly just let it go and not worry about it. The Party Play mode will cycle through every song in the game randomly, so it’s almost like an interactive jukebox that your guests can just pick up and start jamming to.
Other Little Things I Noticed
One of my biggest pet peeves in previous music games is when you pick a male or female lead singer for your band and then you choose a song sung by the other gender, previous music games would always still have that male singing the female song. I always wondered, why the heck did anyone not think to just put in a random female singer instead? Finally with Band Hero (and maybe even Guitar Hero 5), it has been taken care of. Now the singer actually changes if the song is sung by a female!
I can’t help but feel like the Guitar Hero cast sold out when they showed up in this game though. Now they’re all sporting teenybopper-like outfits, and I think characters like Axel Steel and Clive Winston deserve more. But maybe it’s just a reflection of Activion also selling out with this game as it was one of the last Guitar Hero games to be released in 2009 – and there were 5 titles released!
I used the Rock Band 2 drumset to play this game, and didn’t enjoy playing drums in this game as much as I do for the Rock Band games. The most jarring aspect of using the drums is that you have to hit both the yellow and the blue (the middle two) drumpads to activate star power on the drums. For more difficult songs, you may have to constantly be hitting the red and yellow, so to figure out a good time to hit both the yellow and blue and then go back to the red and yellow is not easy. I found myself preferring to play with the guitar for this game while the opposite was true with the Rock Band games. Drumming is just more enjoyable in Rock Band but guitar play is tops for Guitar Hero.
Final Thoughts
While this game doesn’t have awesome guitar songs or even a ton of great rock ones, it does have a soundtrack that is quite family friendly and is probably the current best music game to own for guests of all types – especially girls. If you have female friends coming over, Band Hero is the game to fire up, as there are going to be more songs in Band Hero than any other Hero game that your female friends will recognize and be willing to sing. Of course, that doesn’t translate quite so well for a hardcore male gamer playing the game solo, but hey, I knew what I was getting into when I got this game. Guitar Hero 5 would probably be more appropriate for solo play. In any case, both Band Hero and Guitar Hero 5 are good music games, if you’re not sick of music games just yet.
Final Score: B [for both games]
