With several years now under our belt since the release of the first few Guitar Hero titles, we now know that everything since Guitar Hero III was unfortunately a downhill slide, starting with this title. Don’t be confused, though, as any game compared to Guitar Hero III’s sales will look paltry in comparison. Guitar Hero World Tour still generated massive sales, handily eclipsing Rock Band 2′s sales, which was only released domestically and on a staggered scale across the consoles, in 2008.

Released in fall of 2008, Guitar Hero World Tour expanded upon the previous title, with Neversoft continuing their development of the franchise. The game was released on the Xbox 360, PS3, PS2, Wii and PC & Mac, with the porting of each handled by Activision-owned studios Budcat Creations, Vicarious Visions and independent studio Aspyr Media. The formula of this title borrowed liberally from Rock Band by adding in vocals and drums, and cemented bass as a standard chart in each song. Despite mostly positive critic reviews, many pointed out that Rock Band’s latest iteration included a layer of polish that provided a more engaging and fun experience.

The title retained the core gameplay established in previous titles, as well as inclusion of famous musicians such as Hayley Williams, Jimi Hendrix, Ozzy Osbourne, Zakk Wylde, Billy Corgan, Sting, Ted Nugent, and Travis Barker. However, the game wasn’t content with simply adding a few new instruments charts.

A Beginner difficulty was added to supplement the Easy, Medium, Hard, and Expert levels, which allowed players to strum any note, hit any drum pad, and sing any note for successful completion on the songs’ simplified charts. Also new was the Create-A-Rocker module, that allowed players to customize both their players and their instruments, instead of just using the stock characters from previous games in the franchise. Wii players were also given the option of importing their Mii character for use in the game. The most significant addition was the inclusion of “GHTunes,” a “music studio” interface which let players create and share their own music in the game.

The peripherals for the game also had some features different from their competitor franchise. The new guitar included a “touchpad” across the neck for sliding during fast solos on “Slider Gems.” The drums literally one-upped Rock Band by including five pads and a kick pedal, improving on Rock Band’s four drum pads. The World Tour drumkit also had a MIDI input port on the back, allowing users to connect a MIDI-capable drum kit for use.

Guitar Hero World Tour came with a massive setlist of 86 songs, with no cover songs, unlike previous titles. Two of the songs (Motorhead – Overkill and The Sex Pistols – Pretty Vacant) were re-records of previous studio versions. Similar to Guitar Hero III, songs were specifically written and recorded for the game’s boss battles by Zakk Wylde and Ted Nugent.

The game was released just over a month after the Xbox 360 release of the second Rock Band game, and as such the two titles shared FOURTEEN songs, not including previously released Rock Band DLC:

• The Allman Brothers Band – Ramblin’ Man
• Blondie – One Way or Another
• Bon Jovi – Livin’ on a Prayer
• Dinosaur Jr. – Feel the Pain
• Fleetwood Mac – Go Your Own Way
• Foo Fighters – Everlong
• The Guess Who – American Woman
• Jane’s Addiction – Mountain Song
• Jimmy Eat World – The Middle
• Lacuna Coil – Our Truth
• Modest Mouse – Float On
• Silversun Pickups – Lazy Eye
• Smashing Pumpkins – Today
• Survivor – Eye of the Tiger

As noted in previous Setlist Checklist posts (and all future posts, as well), Rock Band 3′s setlist creation tool allows us to create, save, and share setlists, so we have included a Rock Band 3 setlist below that you can save to your profile if you would like to check out any or all of the songs! And as the holes are continually filled in by Rock Band’s weekly DLC releases, we will update this post, and keep it linked in the FAQ page above, for future reference.

The setlist for Guitar Hero World Tour contained a wider range of music than in previous titles, particularly to emphasize the new instruments added to the franchise, however critics found that the setlist contained very few standout hits, and that the inclusion of a number of foreign-language and difficult-to-recognize songs weakened the overall list.  There was no segregation between main setlist songs and “bonus songs” as seen in previous titles.

Of the 84-song setlist (though ignoring the two boss battles), 44 are currently available in Rock Band, which is roughly 52%, higher than Guitar Hero III’s record previous record of 45%, making Guitar Hero World Tour have more songs featured than any Guitar Hero game covered thus far in the Setlist Checklist feature.

We’ve included the full list after the jump (it’s a LONG list)…

Read the rest of this entry »

Rock Band 3 made a prominent appearance in last night’s episode of NBC’s new show Up All Night. Despite the many continuity errors (Will Arnett’s playing Pro Drums with no cymbals, odd “Failed” screen at the end of the clip, etc.), it’s pretty cool to see the game featured so many times during the show. Check out the clip of the show featuring Rock Band via Hulu below. (I recorded the show and was going to put the clip no YouTube, but I have a feeling NBC wouldn’t like that, so you may have to sit through a short ad.)

This week, we had one of the Harmonix holiday livestream artists released as DLC, and if we follow the pattern from the last time we had an early announcement of three artists, this week should feature music from an artist not previously announced. Let’s see if the pattern holds true…

• The Edgar Winter Group – Free Ride
• The Edgar Winter Group – Frankenstein *
• KoRn – Freak on a Leash
• KoRn – Falling Away From Me 

* Denotes Pro-Guitar/Bass chart availability for $.99.

[Official announcement]

This week I have delved deep into the history of Rock Band. I featured Juke Box Hero a few months ago, so I thought I would feature another early excellent cover as this week’s article, so we’re highlighting My Sharona by The Knack.

The Knack is a new wave group formed in 1978, and were active all the way up until 2010, when lead singer Doug Feiger lost his battle with brain and lung cancer.  They released seven studio albums, but only six singles, with only this song reaching the top of the charts, so it’s easy to see why the band was labeled a one-hit wonder.

My Sharona is featured on the band’s debut album, Get the Knack. In addition to the success of the single, the album also reached number one, and was named the number one song of 1979. For Rock Band, the song was  released in one of the first waves of DLC for the platform, way back in November 2007. It was also one of the songs that receive a Pro-Guitar upgrade when the Fender Squier was released, which almost certainly guarantees we will never see an original version of this track.

For those of you who don’t like covers, rest assured, this is one of the best covers in Rock Band. This is one of my favorite tracks, as all the instruments are extremely fun to play. The 5-tier guitar is a very fun chart, with not one but two guitar solos, which will be some of the best guitar solos you will play. You will question the 5-tier difficulty until you get to the final solo, which is surprisingly difficult. The 3-tier bass plays a very important part of keeping the song in time, more-so than many other songs, where the bass sometimes gets lost in the mix. The 2-tier drums (which I think isn’t quite high enough) is probably one of the most unique drum charts in Rock Band. You will certainly like this one on Pro drums, because there is a lot of toms and cymbals! The 0-tier vocals are quite easy to sing, and include plenty of tambourine sections.

If I haven’t convinced you yet to buy this track, here’s the full band playthrough (Pro Guitar/Pro Bass charts included below):

And here’s links to the Pro Guitar and Pro Bass charts.

I would appreciate it if you would have a look at my growing fansite, The Tribute Pages which features tributes of video games (including Rock Band 3), TV shows and movies. Thank you!

Unless otherwise noted, all songs are $1.99.

• Go Radio – Any Other Heart
• Halfbrick Studios – Pirats ‘Til We Die *
• Rival Sons – Torture
• Vangough – Estranger *
• Winds of Plague – California

* Denotes $.99 pricing.

ROCK BAND NETWORK 1/17 PS3 PLAYLIST

[Official announcement]

Unless otherwise noted, all songs are 160 MSP ($1.99). Songs not linked below were not included on RockBand.com at time of publishing.

• The Break Down – Touch the Mic *
• Chaotrope – Elysian *
• Chaotrope – Extropy/Entropy *
• Chaotrope – The Hourglass Paroxysm – Part I *
• Cold Steel – Inside *
• Deadlock – Martyr to Science (2x Bass Pedal)
• DRUOX – Console War *
• DRUOX – Console War (2x Bass Pedal) *
• Ghost Brigade – Clawmaster
• Lemon Demon – BRODYQUEST
• Mafia Track Suit – Fairweather Stranger *
• Misery Index – The Carrion Call (2x Bass Pedal)
• Miss Crazy – Mow
• Morbid Angel – Existo Vulgoré
• Nordheim – Beer, Metal, Trolls and Vomit! (2x Bass Pedal)
• Pan.a.ce.a – Too Little Too Late *
• Raggedy Angry – Superjet *
• Rishloo – Keyhole in the Sky *
• Ultra Vomit – Mountains of Maths

* Denotes 80 MSP ($.99) pricing.

ROCK BAND NETWORK XBOX 360 11/12 PLAYLIST

[Official announcement]