G4’s The Feed has the scoop that Ozzy Osbourne will be making a digital appearance in the upcoming Guitar Hero World Tour game. Ozzy will be joining the ranks of Aerosmith, Slash, and Bret Michaels by having his likeness singing along to your guitar riffs as you play through the game. In addition to his frightening visage, Osbourne also is lending the songs “Crazy Train” and “Mr. Crowley” to the track list. Guitar Hero World Tour will be hitting consoles in October.
Source: G4TV
There’s no denying that games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero have become hugely popular and successful over the past few years, due in large part to their wide variety of featured songs and ever increasing music libraries. Since shortly after its release, Rock Band has been adding songs weekly, and the various Guitar Hero games have been expanding their songlists via download and spinoff games as well. Some of these featured songs are the master tracks, taken from the original bands’ original recordings, while others are uncanny soundalike studio bands doing usually faithful covers.
Recently there’s been a trend toward both game series wanting to drop the covers and go for master tracks only in their song collections. This has caused some trouble lately, as The Who’s much hyped full-album released of Who’s Next was canceled for Rock Band and replaced with a greatest hits compilation due to the original master tapes for some of the songs being lost. And most recently, Led Zeppelin has refused to lend their master tapes out to developers for security’s sake, so their songs likely won’t be included in the upcoming masters-only Guitar Hero World Tour and Rock Band 2. Zeppelin is happy to license out their songs for cover editions in the games, though.
So this begs the question: How much do the master recordings really matter in music video games? Is it so essential to have the original master track that the developers should decline including otherwise awesome songs just because they now shun covers?
I, for one, wouldn’t mind at all having a cover of “Pinball Wizard” on my Rock Band. After all, I’ll be the one making the music when I’m actually playing the game, and I have no illusions that I actually am an original member of The Who.
Source: Evil Avatar
Guitar Hero: Aerosmith is the first band-specific disc release in the series, and the final list of included songs has hit the web. I still think it’s odd that a big portion of the included tracks are not, in fact, by Aerosmith. That aside, here are some of the highlights in the release:
The track list reveals that there also will be a guitar battle with Joe Perry, likely similar to the game-halting sparring matches from Guitar Hero 3.
Notably missing from this game are Aerosmith’s cover of “Come Together,” “Dude (Looks Like a Lady),” “Janie’s Got a Gun,” Cryin’,” “Amazing,” “Crazy,” and quite a few other songs that should have been no-brainer inclusions.
The full track list is available on Joystiq.
I’ve been pretty hard on Activision and Guitar Hero in the past, from their overpriced downloadable songs to their inflexibility with allowing Rock Band peripherals. But now I think they just might be setting a good precedent for the music game genre with their latest decision concerning the upcoming Rock Band-esque Guitar Hero World Tour. Unlike the Guitar Hero: Aerosmith release, World Tour will allow cross-game DLC. This means that any songs you’ve downloaded for your Guitar Hero III game will work with Guitar Hero World Tour as well.
No details or announcements have been made about the surely upcoming Rock Band 2, but having GHWT feature cross-game compatibility for downloadable content should send up a signal that Rock Band 2 will allow you to play your many Rock Band downloads as well. The folks at Harmonix are good at pleasing their fans, and I highly doubt they’d limit DLC compatibility in their next installment, especially now that the distinguished competition is allowing for it.
Source: Kotaku
Back in 2000, Metallica was at the spearhead of the anti-Napster drive and was instrumental in turning the music industry against free digital distribution. Now they’re jumping right into the latest music distribution paths, as they will be the next band after Aerosmith to get a specially featured edition of Guitar Hero. Activision has announced via their recent SEC filing that they have Guitar Hero: Metallica on track for release in the 2009 fiscal year, which would have it hitting by March 31, 2009.
Most likely, the Metallica game would be similar to the upcoming Guitar Hero: Aerosmith in that it would largely feature the title band’s tracks but also would delve into bands that were influential to Metallica or that have a similar style. Metallica previously has had songs and a track pack featured in Rock Band.
Source: Joystiq
Over the past few days, information has been pouring out about Guitar Hero IV and how it’s going to be ripping off implementing some of Rock Band’s core features. Among those features is the inclusion of drums (how is it still Guitar Hero?) and vocals. Game Informer magazine has the first shot of the new drum kit for GH4, which differs from its Rock Band brethren in that it includes a couple of raised pads to act as cymbals. One interesting tidbit from the Game Informer article is a statement from project director Brian Bright about how the GH4 drum kit differs from the Rock Band one:
“One of the things we really wanted to do was make it quieter than our competitor’s kit,” comments Bright. “The drums are loud as hell and it’s distracting. Everyone else in the room is like ‘Shut up!’ We also wanted to be able to send along velocity data. We know how hard you hit all six, including the pedal.”
Source: Joystiq
On May 8, Activision will be releasing a new downloadable pack for Guitar Hero III, featuring three tracks from Muse. The songs included in the pack are:
The pricing has not been announced just yet, but it should be $6.25 in keeping with the earlier GH3 song packs.
The new Def Leppard track pack for Guitar Hero III has gone up for download today. The pack includes the following songs:
On the XBox 360, the pack will set you back 500 MS Points ($6.25).
The official trailer to the next installment in the Guitar Hero franchise has been released. Here are the boys of Aerosmith in all their digital glory:
