It’s starting again. The music games are coming. Are you interested in getting involved with them again? With the instruments and the parties and click-click-click of plastic guitars? I think I am.
Which one are you going to get? Guitar Hero or Rock Band?
Me? I’m not 100% sold on Guitar Hero’s new changes. I’m also not sold on paying $500 for a full band Rock Band set. So it’s kinda tricky.
At this point I think I might just get the game, dig out my old instruments and hope they still work.
What about you?
Comments
49 responses to “The Big Question: Guitar Hero Vs Rock Band”
Need to throw rocksmith in as a 3rd option. Still the better game by a long shot.
It is but only if you have some degree of musical talent, and I agree it is a great learning tool. However Guitar Hero and Rock Band have always been more party games, I have gotten non-gamer friends to have a go and have fun at those two titles. Those same friends wouldn’t even try Rocksmith when they see they have to play a real guitar.
Yep, beats both rockband and guitar hero by a mile.
It is kind of like saying Microsoft Flight Simulator beats Xwing Vs TIE Fighter.
Rocksmith is kind of fun, but not really a game like RB or GH.
Fair enough, although I would never bother with RB or GH when I can pick up Rocksmith and actually learn/practice a song.
RB or GH are fine for getting a bunch of people drunk and button mashing controllers though.
Rocksmith is the better game, they serve different purposes though.
Different purpose. I love Rocksmith and I can’t say I’d go back to RB or GH after nearly two years with RS2014, but I can’t deny it’s got a completely different audience in mind. Including it here feels like throwing a light gun game into a list of FPS games – what happens on the screen is similar, but the input method requires a completely different set of skills.
Yeah, agree. I see Rocksmith more as educational software rather than a game.
The Rocksmith controller has way too many buttons.
I know Rock Band is better but for some reason I stuck with Guitar Hero.
Rock Band is indeed better, but they screw us over in the local market which means Guitar Hero wins by default.
Ive never played rock band, but i’m going to go with it because ive seen the catalogue.
I’ve played almost all the guitar heroes and the only one I really loved was 2.
Rock Band without question. As a DLC platform it was without peer. That said I wish DJ Hero had taken off. Loved that game 🙁
In terms of this generation… Is there a neither option now? Insanely high price vs low quality FMV game that ditched everything but the guitar?
I really feel there should be a neither option… to reflect those fans among us who feel screwed over by both.
Exactly this. I was pumped for new Rock Band, but that pricetag…
Not at all interested in what GH are doing this time round either.
And that new control scheme for GH… I watched videos for it, I saw how it’s played, I get it’s ‘more accessible’ but I don’t like it. At all.
So much this, GH looks too simplified and the songs don’t really excite me, but damn that price on the RB kit. I swear I bought the original RB kit for under $300, which is much more reasonable, but still exe.
Except with RB you can use the old instruments…
Rock Band has the track list that excites me while Guitar Hero is making changes that don’t appear to do anything.
Seems like a no brainer to go with Rock Band, as long as I can find decent priced instruments or can win the lottery.
I don’t think Guitar Hero’s changes are meaningless they’re just not super exciting. The guitar changes look like they actually want to address a core issue with the previous incarnations of the game. They’re also going back to just guitars which isn’t for everybody but overall is a positive change in direction for a series that lost focus towards the end. The only change I’m not into is the FMV stuff and when I think about it it’s not like I was super into the original Rock Band/Guitar Hero background sequences.
You’re right about Rock Band having the track list though. It’d be a lot easier to get excited about Guitar Hero if it ripped off a lot of the track based features of Rock Band.
I honestly don’t know what core issue they’re trying to address with the upper and lower buttons.
I can (could?) play on Expert, but the jump in difficulty/awkwardness of the fifth fret was a problem. It was a pointless barrier that didn’t really add anything to the game.
The problem was the easy and medium didn’t require you to move your hands. So new players were trained to play in a certain way and then had to relearn when they moved up to hard difficulty.
Another simpler solution would be to simply use all five buttons from the lowest difficulty.
This. Use all 5 from the getgo, just spread out the use of all 5 instead of how tightly packed they are when you immediately jump up to the top.
For whatever reason, they threw a single orange note (medium)/blue note (easy) into Arterial Black in GH2.
But it’s a party game. Using all five frets on easy or using green/yellow/orange is asking a bit much of casual players and a huge part of Guitar Hero/Rock Band’s success was due to the fact anyone could pick it up and learn to play within a few songs. It doesn’t seem smart to make Easy harder. Medium could probably survive a difficulty boost but I always found it was a good place for people who enjoyed it but weren’t really interested in going pro to just sit back and have fun.
I’m sure that would be better from a long term novice to expert progression perspective, but either way it only highlights that there is a problem with the fifth fret and while Rock Band is just throwing more of the same at us Guitar Hero is actually making an attempt to fix the problem. I think they deserve some credit for finally admitting the first generation of arcade hardware wasn’t flawless and using the generation gap to attempt to improve it.
Yea but the moving up and down the fret board replicates real guitar much better; if you don;t have to move your hand around than that takes out a massive piece of complexity that is present in real guitar as well.
It’s like, let’s make a racing game, but we’re going to do all the accelerating and braking for you, cause some of our players found that too hard.
I would of been happy with Rock Band but at $500 it can get stuffed at that price.
Gotta go with Rock Band. The local price is insanely high (it would probably be much cheaper to import, shipping and all), but since all previous instruments will work, that’s not a big issue.
And with all DLC carrying over (once they add it to the RB4 library), I’m going to have a pretty huge list of songs available from only buying the base game.
Early Guitar Hero. With only one instrument they could focus on songs that were fun for that instrument.
One thing I didn’t like with the later games was how hit and miss the songs were for certain instruments.
So I started with Guitar Hero, because you couldnt get Rockband in Australia. When I did get a copy of Rockband, I didnt like the interface as much. I have played every version of both games and they way I normally describe it is I like the GH interface, but wish it had the RB songs. I have also been playing Rocksmith, which is great, so it will be interesting going back to RB\GH
Rockband as for best series but Guitar Hero 3 as the best game from both series.
I thought GH3 was one of the worst, and really turned me off GH, since I got RB not long after.
For GH, I still maintain GH2 had the best setlist (even though it was largely covers).
Carry on Wayward Son, Beast and the Harlot, Possum Kingdom, Free Bird, Heart-Shaped Box, John the Fisherman, Mother, Shout at the Devil, Sweet Child o’ Mine, Push Push (Lady Lightning), Trogdor.
So many great songs.
GH3 had a great track list, but it really went overboard adding phantom notes and stupid shifts into expert tracks to make easy songs artificially hard.
Too expensive to get new instruments, BC is pointless for me since I’ve gone 360 -> PS4 so the old instruments (that I recently sold to buy the PS4) wouldn’t have worked anyway.
So… Neither?
Play your Rocksmith! 😛
used to play guitar hero but picked up rock band 3 and dlc about 6 months ago and would have to say rock band was definitely superior. the only problem atm is the ridiculous price in Australia fingers crossed Target sells it at a decent price as they have been pretty good lately if you compare the prices to EB games.
I’ve always preferred GH over RB. But with this lot I’m probably more leaning towards “neither”, since GH’s setlist doesn’t seem to be warranting a purchase. Interested to try it out though.
Neither. I’m more into Singstar myself 🙂
(I’m pretty bad at Singstar)
And there’s the fun of singstar, how bad can you sing and STILL get a good score!
Guitar Hero doesn’t appeal to me this time around, crappy song list and Rock Band means I’ll have to take a small personal loan to afford so the ‘revival’ of this genre will be shortlived in Australia I reckon
NEITHER. Basically because these games have a shelf life depending on how the stupid music licensing works. A game shouldn’t cost $500 and then neglect to tell you that you can only play the game for a maximum of 4 hours? eg. I know its more than 4 hours but WHAT IF!
I was kind of interested in Guitar Hero after reading the Edge article a while back… sounded interesting. But the simple fact is that I’m not going down the plastic instrument route again, so won’t be getting either one.
I’d absolutely buy Rock Band 4 (with $125 worth of JB HiFi vouchers) but I realized it’s only on the current consoles, not PS3 or 360…and Guitar Hero just does not appeal.
I don’t like how I’m being screwed over for RB prices. I do like that the 300-odd song collection I have will carry forward. I have spent more on RB DLC than two consoles.
Yes, I know I’m part of the problem. It would be even worse if Australians were allowed to but content off the Rock Band Network.
I’m surprised how close the polls are. Those polls pretty much represent my opinion; it’s close, but Rock Band inches just a little further ahead as my preferred game.
I’ll be picking up both, but what sets Guitar Hero Live back for me a little is the pretty great setlist that sounds like it would be a blast to play as a band – but only allows guitar (and now, apparently vocals). There are so many tracks that I would have liked to play on drums and harmonies – Cry of Achilles, King for a Day, Little Talks, High Road, The Lazy Song, Na Na Na, Cowboys from Hell, etc. – but instead I’m restricted to playing guitar, and on some of these songs, it sounds pretty boring and simple. But I’m willing to give these simple songs a chance as the new guitar is probably gonna have a bit of a learning curve for me.
Rock Band 4, on the other hand, is just more of the same stuff, which I am perfectly okay with. I’m digging the soundtrack and the new career mode sounds so much better than the road challenges Rock Band 3 gave us. Keyboards will be missed and not having online play at launch is a bit strange, but as a solo player who only occasionally plays with his mates, this has no effect on me personally. Plus, 4 Non Blondes! Now I get to do my best He-Man impression! Of course, the only thing holding me back is that insane asking price – there’s no way I can afford that at the moment. Hopefully the little dongle thing gets revealed soon. (That sounds creepy)
have you seen the prices for rockband 4 in australia? how can there be an argument?
None of the above!
I want my GitaDora damnit! xD
Rock Band is ridiculously overpriced in Australia, so I’ll stick with Guitar Hero.
Definitely Rock Band! I love singing, plus I usually bring my game to Beta Bar in Melbourne, cos I have an insane amount of DLC, which thankfully will carry over. I’m looking into import options though, cos it looks like you can get it for around $350 from Amazon if you’re happy to wait a week or 2 for delivery.