Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock

I love the Guitar Hero series and Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock was the sixth game in the series. It is fair to say that by this point the series was starting to run out of ideas. This is coming from a guy who has so much Guitar Hero/Rock Band equipment up in the attic that he often gets yelled at by his wife when she is up there and notices it! Anyway, this is not a bad game and it has some great ideas, I just feel that the series was running out of steam by this point.

The Demigod Of Rock!

I have to give them a lot of credit for trying something cool with the career mode (called Quest Mode here) in Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock. Look, the similarities to Brutal Legend are hard to ignore, but as a hard rock fan I thought the story here was great, even though it was on the same kind of path as Brutal Legend. The fact that the story is narrated by Gene Simmons is awesome.

You need to save The Demigod Of Rock from an entity called The Beast. The way that you do this is by recruiting people to your cause. You need to get eight people to help you in a final showdown with The Beast.

Rocking Like A Hurricane!

The gameplay of Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock is your typical Guitar Hero stuff. You can play this with the drums and other equipment, but I played through the game solo with my guitar. You need to hit the notes in time to the music and you can use various powerups to help you along the way. Finishing the song with the highest score is the aim of the game here.

The main game mode here is the Quest Mode. Here you need to recruit eight different warriors to help you fight the beast. I love the idea of this and the way you do this is by playing through a series of songs. Each character has a theme, punk for example and his songs will be punk songs. There is a tremendous section of the Quest Mode where you play through 2112 by Rush and it is probably the highlight of the entire Guitar Hero franchise in my opinion.

Whose Playlist?

Quest Mode is great, but the song selection in Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock is all over the place. Do not get me wrong, there are some amazing tunes in this game, but this was the sixth game in the series and by this point, the majority of the hard rock classics have been used in the series, sometimes multiple times. In this regard it was very hard for them to put together a truly epic playlist like the name “Warriors of Rock” should have had.

The aesthetic of this game is probably the best in the entire series. Look, I have mentioned Brutal Legend a few times here, and rather than say that they ripped the look of that off. I do feel that it is a case they were more inspired by the classic 80s heavy metal album covers than just trying to copy what Brutal Legend did.

Pros:

• The story of Quest Mode is fantastic
• I loved the style of the game
• The 2112 Rush section is worth playing this game alone for
• If you liked past Guitar Hero games, you will like this

Cons:

• The formula was starting to get a tad stale by this point
• I feel that they should have had a more star-studded line up of hard rock songs