If you've been watching any gaming news lately you know that the next iteration of the Guitar Hero franchise will include drum kit and microphone peripherals alongside the standard guitar.  This is an obvious attempt to stay current with Rock Band stealing the show in the music game category as of late.  My question is this - how many plastic instruments do we need?

I never bought Rock Band.  In part, it was hard for me to justify paying $170 for a game, plus even at that point I didn't want to mess with setting up and dismantling the drums.  Not only that but the guitar wasn't exactly well-received, a lot of people said it didn't compare to the Guitar Hero guitars, and so I said forget it.  I realize the game is very popular and it has to be good to have garnered such a following, but I just wanted to say first that I skipped it for those reasons.  Maybe that's why I'm writing this post.

I'm already kind of tired of managing the 2 massive boxes (and their associated guitars) I have from Guitar Hero 2 and 3 so, for me, the concept of adding an entire band's setup into the mix is kind of annoying.  I remember contemplating buying the guitar with Guitar Hero 3 (and not just the game) and my justification at the time was "Sure it costs a little more but it's wireless, longer, more comfortable to use, and it is cool looking.  What more could they add to it in the future?  This one should last me for all future Guitar Hero games!"  Well it turns out that both Harmonix and Red Octane can keep coming up with ways to sell us new guitars, either because they have 5 extra fret buttons at the bottom for solos or because they're packaged with two other instruments you need to purchase to get the most out of the game.

The sad part is that another reason I skipped Rock Band was because I like the Guitar Hero franchise more, plus I think their song selection is generally better.  I was pretty excited to see what GH4 had in store for us.  It does have some cool features, my favorite of which is the "create-a-song" element which finally lets users make their own songs to play.  That's a feature I've been wanting since I started messing around with Frets on Fire for the PC - the nice thing about FoF is that you could find virtually any song you might ever want since they provided tools to create songs.  Then I heard about Guitar Hero World Tour, find out that they're going after Rock Band with the whole band setup and I wasn't really surprised.  It makes sense, they're just trying to stay competitive.  I wasn't really happy with the switch, but it wasn't a shocker.

The final nail in the coffin came when Gamestop listed the price for Guitar Hero World Tour.  One-hundred eighty nine dollars (US).  That's a $20 premium over Rock Band for (as far as I can tell) no reason.  I honestly don't really have anything else to say now that I think about it.  I was just kind of disappointed with the whole situation.  The only way I'll be purchasing either Rock Band or Guitar Hero World Tour is if they promise that from here on in the current set of peripherals will be completely supported in their follow-up games.  What I mean by that is they won't be adding anymore fret buttons, and extra toggles or switches, a second whammy bar, or new instruments for the Jazz Band sequel they're thinking of doing.  Will it happen?  Not as long as money is valuable.  Will I end up caving and purchasing either RB or GH in the future?  Probably, but at least I can look back at this post and think I had the right intentions once!

Also if they make a Folk Hero game with all songs from The Dubliners, Christy Moore, Wolfe Tones, Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly I'll totally buy 10 copies even if there was 20 peripherals.  I mean come on, Bagpipe Hero?  Fiddle Hero?  Tin Whistle Hero?  You know you can't stop that!