Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock (PS3) Review - PAGE 1

Guitar Hero's been having a rough couple of years with multiple hurried releases that come off as pricey songlist expansions that don't innovate much. This time, Neversoft and Activision opted for a single release that aims to put vocalists, guitarists, and drummers back to the series' roots with a rock-centric soundtrack while saving rock 'n' roll in Warriors of Rock.

The new guitar is a somewhat light but solid piece of hardware that has the same five frets protruding out at the top of the fretboard. The wiring is all housed within the fretboard so it gives the opportunity to replace the two pieces that make up the guitar's body for some customization. The slide pad seen in older guitars has been replaced with a compartment to insert batteries and hold the tiny wireless dongle for safekeeping. Overall, it's a quality guitar, but could use a slightly longer strum bar for a better grip and a quieter clicky noise so you don't wake the folks during night sessions. Take care with how you hold it because it's very responsive with its tilt sensor to trigger Star Power so you might end up activating it when you really didn't want to.

Warriors of Rock touts a plot-driven Quest Mode that's just outright cheesy and really adds nothing. Honestly, plot really has no place in a rhythm game when all that effort could be better used to improve gameplay, which is what Guitar Hero needs in the first place. Coming from Quest Mode, the Guitar Hero characters all have a unique ability to boost the player's performance in some way (multiplier boost, extra stars) and transforming them unlocks a better version of their ability which can be used to tackle the various challenges in Quickplay to unlock more stuff.  Unfortunately, all these transformations just make you play with a different scoring method each time and artificially inflate your score.

The songlist is aimed toward experienced players who want to continue pushing their skills to the limit with difficult solos and drumming out songs note-for-note. If you are a beginner, I strongly advise seeking old games like Guitar Hero 5 and World Tour to gradually better your skills and later import the tracks to be used on Warriors' engine. On the flip side, Warriors of Rock's songlist also isn't going to appeal to many audiences with alternative, classic, metal, rock, and hard rock dominating, so look elsewhere to find your pop, glam, indie, and punk tunes. There's nothing wrong with making things harder once in awhile but it's a risky prospect when you can't toss in some other mainstream stuff to match the toughness.

Navigating the menus presents its own inconveniences here. Unlike Rock Band, Guitar Hero makes you stick to your character and difficulty settings before heading into the songlist instead of after choosing a song. Changing your settings on the fly is the kind of thing you want to do for players who want to play on an easier difficulty so they can listen to the song and pick up on what'll have to be played on harder notecharts. I do like the extra bits of info like more precise difficulty meters and song length since it's alright to go a little stat crazy sometimes. However, Quest Mode lacks these all-important details so you're forced to either commit them to memory or blindly attempt songs that may be too easy or too hard for you so you'll hit some bumps trying to unlock stuff. Another thing that'll catch you off-guard if not known ahead of time is you're forced to perform an extra song with no warning after a character transforms, and there's no option to change the difficulty either.

Quest, Quickplay, and Party Play do their jobs fine so there's no problems there.  I was surprised at the amount of Competitive modes offered; I'm particularly fond of the Momentum rules where the charts adjust to your playing skill though anything that isn't Pro Face-Off feels like a very slight alteration to the same rule.  The GH Studio and GH Mix are back to let anyone create their own music or download tracks made by other players so having an alternative to paid content is nice if you can find something good.

At best, you could consider Warriors of Rock a big ol' songpack in a new interface to make use of. If you're looking for something innovative or a new way to play with your instruments, I'd say try again next year because this one's for the experts. The new guitar is great so definitely grab one if you've worn out your current plastic axe. Otherwise, try out Warriors of Rock with a rental or wait for a hefty sale.