When I think back to the sixth generation console era, I think of plenty of times when my friends and I were all together in front of a TV playing multiplayer on either the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3. While there were plenty of standout multiplayer games at this point, and I’m looking at Halo 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in particular, there are two series I want to focus on. Where new entries in both the Halo and Call of Duty franchises have hit our screens over the past year, what we’re lacking is Guitar Hero and Rock Band!
We’re at a point in time where people are starting to dive back into their social lives. While last year marked the beginning of this return, 2022 will likely mark an even bigger return to form. Outside of video games, I love live music, and I’ve noticed concerts being far more packed over the past 6 or so months than I had five years ago. I have absolutely no research to say that the yearning for social interaction and a desire for music in our lives would make this the perfect time for a company like Harmonix, who brought both Guitar Hero and Rock Band into the world, to make a new entry for either game.
Given that the latest entry for both series came out in 2015, there could very well be some people who simply have no idea what these games are. Both games feature a highway of notes that flow down the screen, and your objective is to hit them at the same time they are played in the song. It’s a relatively simple concept, though the challenge can be increased by upping the difficulty to expert. These games always started out simple enough, giving the player relatively easy songs, but the difficulty curve was always waiting for you to progress far enough. I’m sure I’m not alone in hitting Dream Theater’s Panic Attack in Rock Band 2, or the infamous DragonForce song Through the Fire and The Flames from Guitar Hero 3!
I would have to say I spent more time in Guitar Hero 3 than I did any of the other games in that series, or in Rock Band, but my favorite of them all had to be Rock Band 2. Getting your friends together to have a full band, consisting of a vocalist, guitarist, bassist, and drummer, was an unmatched level of fun that simply hasn’t been replicated since. Even if we aren’t willing to find our way into social situations, access to the internet for gaming is as popular as it’s ever been, if not more. Getting together with your friends to play music, max out your score, and get constantly better would be incredibly rewarding!
The other thing about these games that made them so unique were the instrument peripherals used to play. Whether it was the guitar, the drums, or even the microphone, it felt absolutely necessary to play with these. Unfortunately, while the games have remained readily available secondhand, the peripherals aren’t quite as common, and when they are found, they tend to be fairly expensive. It’s an unintended but restrictive barrier to playing these massively fun titles that could be mitigated with a new entry. I would love to see a new guitar game, and I am absolutely positive that I’m not the only one.
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