Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock

The Short


Pros
- Has "2112" by Rush in its entirety
- Has "Wish" by Nine Inch Nails
- Has "Uprising" by Muse
- Returns to Guitar Hero "roots" with harder guitar parts

Cons
- Does nothing to improve the Guitar Hero/Rock Band formula
- No harmonies
- Career mode where rockers turn to "beasts" is unbelievably stupid
- Weak setlist that is completely all over the place
 - Good batch of discs shipped with unreadable errors; buying this game used is dangerous
- Still has a poor selection of DLC
- Incompatible with wireless "Lips" mics on Xbox 360
- Lack of innovation has staled the formula
- Charting of the notes is really poor; sometimes what you play doesn't even match the song
- Character customization and unlocks are poorly implemented and paced
- UI for star power/multiplayer is still inferior to Rock Band

The Guitar Hero characters are back and stupider than ever before

The Long


Let me get this off my chest first: I really like Rock Band. So if you think this review is just a huge biased mess I suppose I will admit there is some truth to that. That being said, I really like the Guitar Hero/Rock Band types of games. Something in me clicks with strumming plastic guitars, pounding on toy drums, and singing my lungs out for points. I don't really prefer the Guitar Hero circles over the Rock Band bars; I can read both and play both with about the same level of consistency. So when a new plastic band game comes out it really boils down to two things: the setlist and the improvements over the previous iteration.

Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock fails on both these notes, taking everything that was innovative about Guitar Hero 5 in a lazy, weird turn.

I've been playing the series since Guitar Hero, and have played every single iteration of both the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games (except Guitar Hero: Van Halen. Screw that hunk of crap). From my standpoint, it's been interesting to see where each series diverged. Rock Band took a risky jump with the whole "band" thing, while Guitar Hero played it safe. Of course, Guitar Hero quickly followed Rock Band' s band style of gameplay, with the not-very-innovative Guitar Hero: World Tour. They really picked up the pace, however, with Guitar Hero 5. They added challenges for each song, an easier way to get directly to the game, improvements in the UI, and lots of other features. It was hardly as innovative as, say, Rock Band or Rock Band 3, but it was certainly welcome improvements.

Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock drops most of these improvements for no reason other than to push it's stupid, Brutal Legend-knockoff career mode.

When all else fails, add Night Elves

Warriors of Rock is basically like Guitar Hero 5 only stripped down. The challenges are technically still there in quickplay, but they are less extensive and less important. They also return to having you "unlock" songs, which was the bane of last gen's music games. You unlock these songs (like Rush's "2112," which is awesome) by playing through their stupid career mode. Here, I'll break it down for you.

Basically every Guitar Hero character (who were, ironically, created by Harmonix as parodies of stereotypical genre rockers) has their own setlist. You have your typical punk rocker, your classic rocker, your nu-metal guy, your classic rock guy, etc. They also each have specific "powers" that are pretty much stupid: some people have higher multipliers, others get more starpower, etc. Once you play through that one song on their setlist you like and the other six you don't, you play an "encore." This is where you rocker turns into their "TRUE ROCKER FORM," which is basically the stupidest...you know what? How about you just watch it. I paired it with one of the few good songs in the game (Muse's "Uprising") to help dull the pain.

I will admit, I wish this song was on Rock Band. MOAR MUSE

That's it. Then they become stupider looking than they did before, and you repeat this like twenty times to unlock all your rockers. Luckily, they give you a break to play through 2112 back to back (which is cool...except it's on Rock Band now with harmonies and keys so...) which is pretty sweet. 

The story itself is just straight stupid. That's what I'm getting at. Some demigod of rock was imprisoned? Need the "holy axe" to defeat the "beast?" Really? This is only more funny given the history of what happened with Brutal Legend, a game that also took the idea of making a story based on the concept of heavy metal (except Brutal Legend was actually clever and hilarious) and Activision (Guitar Hero's company) first cut funding to the project and then, when Double-Fine (the makers of Brutal Legend) took it to a different company and then got killer reception at that years E3, Activision tried to turn around and sue them in some attempt to prevent the game from getting released. Sour grapes much? And then you have this, a poor-man's knockoff, and the whole thing comes full circle.

But hey, Rush. 

I'd talk more, but there really isn't much more. It's still the same Guitar Hero game they've been pumping out for years. Yeah, it has Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," but why would you play it on this when the Rock Band 3 version has harmonies and keys? Sure, if you are a metal-head (or a nu-metal head, rather) you'll find a lot to like in this setlist, but a vast majority of the songs were already available for download on the Rock Band platform. I'd much rather pick and choose the songs I want to play than throwing down full price for a disc that only has 7-8 songs I actually care about. 

But hey, it has this heavily censored version of NiN's "Wish," which Rock Band doesn't have (yet)

And that's where this game falls flat. They pushed their stupid "Warriors of Rock" part while completely ignoring the rest of the gameplay. There is nothing here that improves on the previous iterations, and in truth it's more of a step back than anything. This was further evidence by the fact Activision retired the brand shortly after this game was released. 

I really wanted to like Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock. Like I've said, I get a lot of satisfaction out of these types of games, either alone or with friends. But nearly everything in this game was a misstep, and looking at Rock Band 3 there is really no competition anymore. You can't even export the Warriors of Rock songs to play on the better platform that is Guitar Hero 5. So unless you really dig this game's setlist, you'd be better off avoiding it completely.

And as an added bonus, lots of the first-run press of discs give unreadable errors on the Xbox 360 version. So I went through four discs before finding one that sort of ran, and then the game still ended up being horrible. Awesome. 

I got this game for free as part of a "buy one, get two free" music game deal on Gamestop, and I still traded it away on Goozex because I didn't want it in my game library anymore. If you really, really want to play the songs in the setlist I'd say borrow it from a friend or rent it. If you have to own it, don't pay more than $5. If I were to give it a star rating, it would be one out of five. This isn't the absolute worst in the Guitar Hero series, but it certainly isn't for lack of trying.