I can certainly say one thing about Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock—they picked some great artists to feature in the game.
Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine wrote an exclusive track, titled “Sudden Death,” for the game to be featured as the final battle between the Demigod of Rock and The Beast.
Seems like Activision have cut loose the full force of upcoming rhythm game Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, and I have to admit, even I’m a little impressed by it. Anthrax, Megadeth, Muse, Rush and more after the cut!
Activision has let loose some more tracks for Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock and includes some pretty rockin’ tunes if I may say so myself.
Activision has unveiled a UK release date for the latest installment of Guitar Hero, Warriors of Rock. You’ll see it in the UK on September 24th, and as we already know, there’s a US release date of September 28th.
…hey, wait a minute!
The latest issue of Nintendo Power is apparently set to reveal Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, which will go back to more “shredding” rock and roll, after the broad appeal of the latest GH games. The biggest news, however, is about the games’ story mode.
The story will be narrated by Gene Simmons, of Kiss fame. Quoting Kotaku on the synopsis:
“The Beast defeats the demigod of rock and the demigod of rock is entombed in stone and his legendary guitar is banished,” Bright said. “[The guitar] is the source of his power. And so you are going through and assembling an army of warriors to be able to defeat the beast. Along the way, you’ll have to recover the legendary guitar…”
Wow. I, uhm… Wow.
via Mix’n'Mojo
According to the game’s listing on Amazon, Guitar Hero 6 will receive the subtitle “Warriors of Rock”. The game is set for release on September 21 for PS3, Wii and Xbox 360.
The new Guitar Hero game will be going “back to basics”, with a larger focus on rock music. Maybe that’s the reasoning behind the name? That or they wanted to cash in on the fans of Brütal Legend.
Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos has said that Rock Band 3 will be a “big step forward” for the series when it launches later this year.
In an interview with Gamerant, he also said that E3 will be a grand reveal for the innovations that Rock Band 3 is bringing to the table.
Tread warily, gamers, for the Prince of Darkness (no, not Ozzy Osbourne) is now using video games and their publishers as conduits to capture and corrupt your soul, ensuring your one-way ticket to Hell.
At least, that’s what an author in the Philadelphia family paper The Bulletin says.
Activision boss Bobby Kotick said during his DICE keynote last night that he regrets not purchasing Harmonix.
“When we were buying Guitar Hero and buying RedOctane, the makers of Guitar Hero, we knew about Harmonix,” he said. “We had always known them as sort of a somewhat failed developer of music games.”
“They always had really good ideas, but nothing that was really commercially viable until Guitar Hero and at first we thought, ‘OK, it’s a good piece of software, but if we gave it to Neversoft, they’re going to knock the ball out of the park with this.”
And Neversoft did achieve great success with Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, because it was the first game ever to rake in over $1 billion.
However, Kotick did say that had Activision purchased Harmonix itself, Guitar Hero’s landscape would have been completely different from what it is today.
Meanwhile, Harmonix is working steadily on Green Day: Rock Band and another title which may or may not be Rock Band 3.
Activision, relatedly, has already announced that a new Guitar Hero game will be out before the end of the year.
Thanks for the heads up, G4!
Well, it wasn’t just Neversoft and Radical that felt Activision’s layoff tremors–Luxoflux and Underground Development (companies involved with the making of Guitar Hero: Van Halen and BMX XXX) have had their doors closed completely.
But not only were those two companies closed, RedOctane (whom you might know as the company responsible for Guitar Hero peripherals) have had 30 to 40 employees let go and the remaining employees are now answering directly to Activision.
All this may have something to do with Guitar Hero CEO Dan Rosensweig’s quitting a few weeks back.
Reportedly, Neversoft may be reducing its staff with the release of Guitar Hero 6 this year.
After releasing 25 Guitar Hero SKUs last year, Activision have announced that they are going to cut back the number of releases in 2010. Mind you, 25 items seems like a lot, but that’s counting each system a title was released for individually.
Scaling things back, Activision hopes to have ten or less Guitar Hero titles releases this year, maybe even limiting the titles to a single console.
One of the surefire titles to be released, however, is a Guitar Hero game application for the iPhone.
Activision has just announced in a press release that Xbox 360 Avatars will be usable as playable characters in Guitar Hero 5. If you don’t think this is the coolest thing ever, shame on you.
You can see the avatars in action in the video below, courtesy of Blur!
The full press release is after the cut.
I remember quite vividly when Guitar Hero first burst onto the scenes here in the UK. I’d never seen it before, and it was launching here sometime after it had already become hugely popular in the US – so I’d heard all about it on gaming message boards, with the US hardcore raving about the new, revolutionary rhythm game.
At first I found it fiendishly difficult, but after some time I’d worked my way up to hard and then even expert – and I was having amazing fun. I was in love from there, and I’ve been with the rhythm genre for many years since.
In recent years my allegiance has switched to EA, MTV and Harmonix’s Rock Band franchise – but perhaps a collection of the tracks I love most from the first three Guitar Hero titles is enough to draw me back?
According to Activision CEO Mike Griffith at the company’s pre-E3 conference yesterday, Guitar Hero has made the company over $1 billion in revenue.
He went on to say that the install base has surpassed over 15 million and that the company is looking to increase those numbers even more in the future. Guitar Hero 5 apparently has more than 20 top 10 hits in its tracklist.
Looks like this is one franchise that isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
Tony Hawk Ride was announced a while ago and will be coming out with a brand new peripheral, in order to allow players to really immerse themselves in the skating gameplay. But in this age of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, do we really need more peripherals?
Guitar Hero 5 even allows 4 player multiplayer with any chosen instrument. That means you can play head-to-head with 4 drum kits! Does anybody want to buy 4 drum kits?
In the older days of gaming, a peripheral could sometimes be the proverbial touch of death for a game. Sure, it might not apply for Duck Hunt on the NES, but consider all the crap peripherals Nintendo came out with during the NES era: The Power Pad, the Miracle Piano, the Super Scope, R.O.B., and who could forget; The Power Glove… Then again, Nintendo did survive said onslaught of mediocrity.
Yet peripherals seem to lead to massive success these days. Wii Fit, Balance Board included, has sold over 17 million copies worldwide, and Guitar Hero and Rock Band are still massive audience pleasers. So I ask you:
- Do we need more game peripherals?
- Are developers too quick to jump on the peripheral bandwagon that Guitar Hero kicked off?
- What kind of game peripheral would you like to see in the near future?
- What kind of game peripheral do you NOT want to see in the near future?
