Battle of the Bands

No one can deny that Guitar Hero III got beat out by Rock Band, so this round is over and Activision is aware that in GH IV they need to step up to the competition and offer everything the Rock Band has to offer, and do it better. This is great news for the gaming community, because competition in the end equals a better product for the consumer. So with the next installment of the Guitar Hero series, “Guitar Hero: World Tour”, it will no longer only be a guitar game (despite the title.) It will also offer drums and vocals just like Rock Band has. So now they’ve match Harmonix’s offer, now where is the raise?
Well Activision is claiming that you will be able to record your own tracks. Now I’m not exactly sure what that means. Does it mean you can record when you sing and play the songs on the game or can you make your own songs for the game. The first one is a bad idea because record companies are going to get flooded with these crappy “demo tapes” from Guitar Hero recordings. But if it’s the latter, that’d be sick! Now in order to one up the drum set from Rock Band, GH:WT will have 3 drum pads, 2 symbol pads, and a foot pedal. When I saw this I was somewhat relieved because my inner OCD always was bothered by the lack of a symbol. But is this a good or bad thing because there will now be an extra target to hit and drums on Rock Band is already pretty difficult.
Hold up, wait a minute! What if there were 6 drum pads and a foot pedal? That would be insane! And Konami is the company insane enough to do that. On May 14th they announced that they would be developing their own garage-jamming genre of game, “Rock Revolution”… really original name guys… But that many drum pads seems like too many for a video game. And a 3rd candidate in the race for the president of the Rocking States of America is not going to work out. Plus the trailer makes the game seem like it has a “squishy” interface and disappointing graphics, and I rarely complain about graphics. I have a feeling this title will be knocked out early on.
But there is still no news from Harmonix on their next installment of Rock Band. And maybe there won’t be, maybe they’ll just ride their tidal wave of DLC money for the rest of time