Since the very first Guitar Hero game in 2005, Activision and RedOctane have been the leaders of the music game industry, until, 2 years after the Guitar Hero release, Rock Band was released into America.
The developers of the original Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero 2 games were Harmonix, but after they completed their second Guitar Hero game, they moved onto a new publisher, MTV Games and EA. After the old developers, Harmonix left, new guys Neversoft moved in and started to create a new game, Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock, this was then released in the later part of 2007. The game proved to be a great success, until later that year Harmonix came back into the business with Rock Band. This game features a whole ne range of instruments, guitar, drums, bass and a mic.
After a year of Rock Band being released, the competition started again. Both EA and Activision released their new games within the same month, November 2008. Activision has Guitar Hero World Tour and EA have Rock Band 2, let the battle commence.
From Guitar Hero's view, it was a whole new game for them, they had to create a whole new range of instruments, but once they were done, it was clear that they hadn't cut any corners. Their new guitar has a brand new touch sensitive bar to allow easy finger tapping during song sections, their new drums also feature 5 pads and a foot peddle instead of the 4 pads and foot peddle on the Rock Band drums. Aswell as a whole new range of instruments, the game features a music maker where you can create your own songs and then share them to other music lovers.
On the Rock Band 2 side, they haven't changed their instruments much. Harmonix have made 2 improvements to their new drums, they have changed the foot pedal to metal to make it stronger, they have also changed the drum pads to velocity sensitive, this means as you hit the pads harder, you get a louder sound in game. Apart from those few changes, they haven't changed their instrument range.
On the game side of things, Rock Band don't have a music maker, however, they do have one thing that Guitar Hero does not; a huge selection of downloadable songs on top of their 80+ song set list. This also gets better, if you have previously bought any Rock Band 1 songs, they are all compatible with Rock Band 2 and they all appear on your setlist when you load up the game. Another great advantage to Rock Band 2 is that for a small fee of less than $5, you can transfer almost every Rock Band 1 song onto Rock Band 2, giving you a setlist of over 150 songs.
Now comes the difficult decision, after each game has had its advantages listed, it comes to deciding which ones you should spend your money on. With all the economic problems, many people won't have the money for both games, plus the space for 2 sets of instruments.
With both games instruments being compatible with either game, many people will leave it down to the set list or the features within the game, some people may go for Guitar Hero for the music maker and suited up instruments, whereas some people will go for the chance to have a massive set list on Rock Band 2.
I personally prefer Rock Band 2 simply because of the set list and I prefer the layout of the screen, but as for which one will become the top player in the music game industry, it's an open stage.
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December 11th, 2008 at 10:15
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