Music games are officially back. After a brief hiatus (OK, five years probably isn't really that brief), the plastic guitar strumming, rhythmic button mashing, perfect party fodder games will be crashing back onto the scene this year, as both Rock Band and Guitar Hero make their triumphant returns. While Rock Band 4 is taking an incremental upgrade approach, polishing the guitar/bass/drums/vocals approach that's made it such a hit, Guitar Hero seems to have gone back to the drawing board, presumably after realising that the rumoured Guitar Hero Motley Crue would have been a terrible, terrible idea.
Sporting a brand spanking new guitar with a 3x2 button arrangement, and a rather weird "first person" view, where you'll play your tunes to a real (recorded) audience, and play along with real (recorded) band members, if you can say one thing for Guitar Hero, at least it's trying something different. Here's hoping the changes pay off.
Rock the world, for real!
With the release drawing ever closer, Activision have decided to start slowly teasing us, with a drip feed of song announcements for the game. On every Tuesday over the next few weeks, the company have promised to release details of another batch of songs for the game, until they've lifted the lid on the full song list. To get us started, they've given us a mega batch of 20 tracks, some of which you'll know (Judas Priest - Breaking the Law), some of which you probably won't know (Broken Bells - Leave it Alone), and some of which you think you probably don't know, until you hear them - like The Lumineers Hey Ho, which few people will recognise by name, but everyone will know as being "that one off that advert". Well, almost everyone.
Here's the complete Guitar Hero Live song list as it stands - with potentially a little bit too much indie stuff at the moment, and a few too many songs that don't exactly have memorable guitar parts. Still, there are some good songs in there - and you can guarantee that Alter Bridge track is going to be one of the hardest songs on the game:
- Judas Priest - "Breaking the Law"
- Pantera - "Cowboys From Hell"
- Alter Bridge - "Cry of Achilles"
- Rage Against the Machine - "Guerrilla Radio"
- Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Higher Ground"
- Sleigh Bells - "Bitter Rivals"
- System of a Down - "Chop Suey!"
- Black Veil Brides - "In The End"
- The Pretty Reckless - "Going to Hell"
- Broken Bells - "Leave it Alone"
- Alt-J - "Left Hand Free"
- The Rolling Stones - "Paint it Black"
- My Chemical Romance - "Na Na Na"
- Fall Out Boy - "My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light Em Up)"
- Green Day - "Nuclear Family"
- Pierce the Veil - "King for a Day (feat. Kellin Quinn)"
- Blitz Kids - "Sometimes"
- The Black Keys - "Gold on the Ceiling"
- The Killers - "When You Were Young"
- Gary Clark Jr. - "Don't Owe You a Thang"
- The War on Drugs - "Under The Pressure"
- The Lumineers - "Ho Hey"
- Ed Sheeran - "Sing"
- Skrillex - "Bangarang"
