Jan 03 2009
Guitar Hero: Modern Hits
Guitar Hero: Modern Hits information leaked thanks to the ESRB’s magical ability to spew information about games the developers don’t quite wanna let out yet. The reason I infer they didn’t quite feel up to letting it out yet was because they hadn’t TOLD US YET! Oh well, in this technological day and age just about anyone can find out just about anything, yes? Here’s the thoughts I had upon simply seeing the title (we’ll get to various other ramblings later). Modern Hits are, shall we say, not exactly Guitar Hero songs. Sure every 17 years or so we get Chinese Democracy, but not too many “hits” today are exactly big guitar songs. The thing I fear is that it’ll lose a bit too much of it’s fan base. Guitar Hero is based in fantastic metal, explosive solos, majestic music, and memorable guitar parts. Artists like Iron Maiden, Guns N Roses, and Motley Crue (forgive my lack of Umlauts) graced the games. And, unfortunately, todays modern hits have cast the guitar asunder for synthesizers in the like of Metro Station and poppy songs like Hannah Montana. And while I’m all for a little diversity in Guitar Hero, I’m not sure I can survive going from, say, November Rain to Shake It. Now, a few modern hits are worthy, such as Fall Out Boys rendition of Beat It, another DragonForce song (although not quite a hit), some My Chemical Romance (although Guitar Hero 2 for XBOX360 just about ravaged every song they had worth putting in a GH game), or something from Chinese Democracy. What I’m saying is that Guitar Hero is starting to scrape the barrel. We saw it with 3, and we can see it start to happen again. Until musicians start making more bold and intricately memorable music, games like Guitar Hero are only going to go so far! Hell, Rock Band had to throw in the whole band to try and save the franchise. It’s nothing to immediately worry about, but it is an impending doom. It’s only a matter of time before we’re all playing with plastic guitars to *shudder* 50 Cent because their target demographic shifts. Now my next problem. The DSi is coming out very soon. And it doesn’t have a GBA slot. So, if the Guitar Hero plug-in goes into the GBA slot, we have a problem. As soon as the DSi comes out, this new Guitar Hero becomes obsolete to the new DSi. Sure, people with their old DS won’t care, but a lot of people are going to get a DSi and not be able to get Guitar Hero Modern Hits. And not a lot of people are willing to put a lot of money into extra plug-ins with even more bulk and more money, especially if the game doesn’t deliver extensively. I worry for Nintendo anyway. The DSi seems like, while it has fun cool functions, it’s a farcry from what’s necessary for Nintendo to completely save itself. Of course, who knows if they can, or even if they’re trying! I love Nintendo dearly, I swear I do. But I just think Nintendo ought to voluntarily pull itself out of consoles, and release really awesome peripherals and really awesome games for the Playstation or XBox systems. They’re just not capable of holding their own as a console company anymore. It pains me to say it, but that’s how I feel. Me? Oh, I’ll support Nintendo, buy games, play my Wii as religiously as I do, and dink around with my DS a lot. I just know that all I’m really doing anymore is using a glorified toy. One that, for fifty bucks, I could use to plug into my XBox for the same effect, but with a much wider range of games and better graphics. And who knows, in the long haul, maybe that’s what they’re doing. It’s just taking them a while. But, alas, these are merely my ramblings. I just used Guitar Hero as the catalyst haha!
