HAS THE GUITAR HERO BACKLASH BEGUN?
Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 1:12pm by Vince NeilsteinThe U.S. has reached the saturation point with Guitar Hero, the video game franchise that makes teenagers and wanna-be heshers everywhere feel like rock stars by pushing buttons on a plastic guitar. The peak arrived last Spring/Summer as the past couple of years of Guitar Hero fervor climaxed with the near-simultaneous release of Guitar Hero 3 and Rock Band. You couldn’t go to any store without seeing it, any news site without reading about it, or anyone’s house without playing it. Guitar Hero even invaded bars and entire events were organized around it — in short, it was a cultural phenomenon. Perhaps the peak was a Southpark lampoon, the ultimate stamp of pop-culture relevance.
Here we are in March 2008, and the backlash has begun. Plastic guitars sit in corners of my friends’ apartments rarely used. Occasionally the ‘Hero comes out for some drunken fun, but for the most part this trend seems to have passed; people have had their fill. And frankly, I have to agree that at this point Guitar Hero seems quite passé. But Activision / RedOctane / whoever is making these things these days doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo; they’ve announced a portable “On Tour” edition for the hand-held system Nintendo DS. Talk about overkill. I’d be way more satisfied with the below ad if at the end they actually threw the thing off the side of the building.
Is the Guitar Hero fad over or does it still have some steam left?
-VN
this is definitely the “virtual boy” of ideas for the franchise, but i don’t really see any backlash going on unless you’re uptight about being a “real” musician like “Dave Mustaine” ha! Same way Call of Duty isn’t meant to make you a real soldier, GH and RockBand are designed more along the lines of fun…
with that said though, again, this is the virtual boy of the franchise…wtf with having to cross your arms to play?…and how “portable” is it to carry around a bulk attachment for the GBA slot? I’d rather lug around a bag w/ the games/a PS2/and the guitar controllers and look for a tv to plug it into if im “on tour” :P
I forgot to mention at the 1349/Enslaved show during SXSW at Kenny Dorham’s Backyard, there were GH reps pushing their…wait for it…cell phone version. I shit you not.
i don’t know if this is representative of the fad being done, but my experience was playing the hell out of gh1 and gh2, and being bored with the concept by the time gh3 rolled around. the drumming and singing reinvigorated rock band for me, but it didn’t last. i haven’t touched a plastic instrument since early january.
These types of games will not stop anytime soon. The DS and cell phone versions are dumb but I still like GH3 and RB when I can pull myself out of the COD4 coma.
I don’t get why people hate on this game so much… I mean, douchebags take it too seriously sometimes, but you could say the same thing about power metal. Truth be told, I don’t own a gaming console, which maybe changes things. But the experience I’ve had with it has been exactly that: dumb, drunken fun. If it makes a generation of mall emo fucks think they can play guitar, well, we all know that generation is a little unsalvageable to begin with. Who cares?
I think that guitar hero has it’s pros and cons. It definitely will never teach you how to play guitar. But bands like The Sword, Dragonforce, and Preistess would not be getting as much attention as they do now. Also this is introducing music that should not be forgotten to a new generation of inside kids everywhere. As crappy as the music industry is these days, GH is a lone highlight to say that music is not dead yet.
Personally I can’t wait for Guitar Hero – Limp Bizkit!!! My fingers are cramping just thinking about it.
The problem with Guitar Hero is that 3 sucked ass. The soundtrack was amazing, but the actual gameplay was bad, not to mention it was ballbustingly hard. And no, I don’t suck, but after beating Through the Fire and the Flames, rather than stopping and being like “WOOOT” I was just like “Fuck that, I’m never playing that damn song again”
Rock Band’s still going strong, and as the price goes down, I don’t see that changing.
ya, guitar hero is wayyyy over. the novelty has worn off and people have decided to put time into real instruments. plus guitar hero 3 sucked…except for fall of troy and an endless sporadic.
I never understood this game and at first I figured it was because I didn’t play guitar, then rock band came out and after ten minutes of plastic drums I was ALL SET!! I hope it’s over, but then again video games is nerd ship that sailed without me.
Judging by my son and his friends, it’s still very popular, along with Rock Band.
Dude, don’t kill it for me yet, haven’t gotten around to gettin’ GH3… fuck it… it’s a fuckin’ videogame, of course we’ll all eventually get over it, that’s the point, jeje… but to go as far as call it the “virtual boy” of ideas, c’mon man, that’s harsh, ouch, it’s not that fucking bad.
Ok that was way too much nerdy shit talk for me.
I LOVE video games but I just can’t get into Guitar Hero. I notice most people who actually play guitar (play well that is) prefer actually playing guitar to pretending like you are playing guitar. Weird, I know.
I don’t begrudge anyone who likes it since it gives them the chance to see what a person with a modicum of talent feels like for a few minutes; just not my thing.
Seriously you’ve got some angst in your post, did you even like guitar hero when it was out? I’d guess not. Perhaps you’re one of those “Pick up a real guitar you nub!” type people, i suppose you’d rather do the real thing than say… steal cars in GTA ?
I play guitar hero because its fun, i also play guitar. Love all things rock and metal, and stop being such a crybaby sissy fucking douchbag.
Horns up or shut up.
Anyone that says Guitar Hero is gone and passed is completely ignorant. I for one completely enjoyed every game and can’t wait for the next one and there are tons of people that feel the same way. The release of Rock Band has put the pressure on Activision to make the next GH even better. I don’t think you will see Guitar Hero disappear anytime soon.
Maybe the next ‘evolutionary’ step would be the new version would actually teach you to PLAY THE GUITAR!
Personally, I think a game teaching a kid to play a power chord and some pentatonic scales would be a hell of a lot easier…and productive.
(I mean, if you consider playing guitar ‘productive’)
If you gonna learn to twist your fingers into weird combos, why not just teach ones that actually correspond to music?
I dunno about being dead. It’s not there yet. But it’s going to be milked for everything it’s got. There’s the Aerosmith GH game to look forward to. Or not. And GH4. Plus whatever other add-ons are in the works. It’s spawned some other stuff. Sure, there’s Frets On Fire and Rock Band and the cheap knockoff toys with “amps” that are loaded with a few songs, but that’s not all.
Someone else has thought of making it portable, but in a truly craptacular way. Enter the Guitar Hero Air Guitar Rocker. It’s a belt buckle. It’s a toy. It’s something to get you strange looks and maybe a visit from the police for performing lewd acts in public.
What’s next? A headset that measures how accurately you headbang?
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