It has a been a busy year in the rhythm game genre. The latest release Band Hero continues the Hero franchise moving from the rock/metal of Guitar Hero to the Top 40/Pop music genre. While the music tracks are rather good and cover songs from yesterday and today, however compared to Guitar Hero 5′s 90+ tracks Band Hero only has 65. Now after reading this review your going to say “Wow that just all sound familiar” and this review will be rather familiar as Band Hero is a mere copy of Guitar Hero 5, but with less songs and different graphical theming.
While Band Hero doesn’t do anything new, and many might say it should have been DLC for GH5, for those who didn’t pick-up GH5 or maybe never picked up a Guitar Hero game because they are Pop music fans, then this game is going to be great for you. The game looks amazing, the character models, animations and lip sync have come so far since Guitar Hero 3 landed on the Xbox 360. Many times there was so much going on, on the screen, between the bands rocking hard, to the fireworks and lights I found myself drifting from the falling notes and checking out the entertainment.
As I said the game plays exactly the same as GH5 and also has the exact same modes. Also similar to GH5 there are a handful of artist that lent their likeness to the game, including Taylor Swift and Adam Levine.
Career mode is identical as GH5, you play different venues, and each song has some type of bonus challenge, be it hit X number of notes on bass, or score X number of points. Gone is the fans and money, just like in GH5 and all you are trying to do is gain as many stars to unlock more steps in your musical career. I do miss the fans and miss the money aspect, as it added some flavor to the game, now its very dull and uneventful, while it feels great getting max stars on a hard song, it felt better seeing how many fans I gained. Besides career mode you have your normal local multiplay modes, play together or against others, and you can also jump on Xbox Live and play with or against your friends.
Obviously Band Hero focuses on bands, and you can plug in all the various plastic instruments around the house, guitars drums and mics. You can even go all drums or all guitars. As with GH5 Band Hero has a similar “no fail-mode” perfect for the weekend house party, just plug-in your instruments and let people jump in and out of their favorite Hillary Duff, or Taylor Swift songs. Besides Party Play, Band Hero does have one unique gameplay feature, Sing Along Mode. You won’t need to head out to the Karaoke bar on a Wednesday night, Band Hero can drop out the normal h.u.d. and go Karaoke style with just the lyrics for hours of enjoyment.
As I said the big selling point with Band Hero is the different genre of music compared to the past Guitar Hero games, its all pop/top 40 and fairly good tracks at that. GH5 was plagued with some less then stellar tracks, but I have yet to find a song I didn’t enjoy, even the Hilary Duff music is fun, and we all know we have at least one Taylor Swift song on our ipods and wouldn’t mind rocking out along side the blonde goddess. Band Hero is a great game for the tweens and with some of the oldies from The Village People and Marvin Gaye will keep parents enjoying the game as well. Besides house parties this is a great game for family game night.
Overall this is a solid game, for those that bought Guitar Hero 5 a couple months ago you might feel robbed a bit, but for those that need a new Hero game and even more so for those of young tween girls, this is a great game. If you have Guitar Hero World Tour and Guitar Hero 5 you can import your DLC into Band Hero for some extra enjoyment. Band Hero could have used a few more tracks, and there is no need for GH Studio as I don’t see many younger kids really getting into creating music. Band Hero will be a big seller this holiday season as its perfect for those younger gamers, and has music that is incredibly popular with both old and young. If you are a fan of Top 40 music and need a new music challenge give Band Hero a try.
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