Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock (Wii) Preview

The sixth (seventh? eighth? It's getting hard to keep track.) instalment in the Guitar Hero series features an 'in-depth' — compared to previous titles — story. Fate would have it that the demigod of rock and a certain beast are fighting against each other using the power of ripping it up on the frets. However, the demigod loses his guitar and chooses several warriors — which happen to be members of the regular cast such as Axel steel and Co. After picking the warriors, the demigod sends them all on an epic quest featuring some pretty brutal cut scenes that boast album artwork-inspired visuals voice acting by Gene Simmons, the freaky tongue Kiss legend.

Not only has the art style of the game been revamped, but when the characters enter ‘Warrior Mode’ their entire look changes. Jhonny Napalm now looks like some kind of mad and demented rockabilly hell spawn that rampages about the stage. An advantage of warrior mode? Each warrior gets their own specific powers such as the multiplier not dropping below 2x or a miss note shield to stop you losing your multiplier if you miss two notes consecutively. All of this is done so that players can boost the amount of stars that they can earn for each song. That’s right! The traditional scoring system for single player modes is gone. There will also be a quick-play plus mode in which you can combine warrior’s powers to generate as many stars as possible — the maximum being thirteen.

In addition to single player modes, Activision were keen to show off their new guitar peripheral. Gone is the conventional guitar, replaced by a more customisable model with the inner workings of the five buttoned plastic rock machine inserted into the neck (Wii remote and all). This allows not just faceplate customisation, but also the option to change the wings of the guitar. This means you could quite literally have an axe if you so fancied, or you could play with just the bare neck of the machine! On the multiplayer side of things, Warriors of Rock will feature the same seamless drop-in, drop-out game play with Mic, Drums, Bass, Guitar for the whole party to play. Sadly (or not?), however, Activision have excluded the DJ Hero accessory. Players will also be able to take on other bands from around the globe online with the new band Vs band mode.

Activision have narrowed down the breadth of the tracks on offer, focusing primarily on rock music and leaving other tracks to the likes of Band Hero(Side note: there won’t be a Band Hero this year). Warriors of Rock will feature over ninety songs with tracks from the likes of Slipknot, Muse, Black Sabbath and Queen. Activision have also upped the ante slightly and hired David Mustain from Megadeath to write a new final track for the game. This took several attempts as Activision wanted to ensure the track would be as challenging as possible — surpassing Dragonforce’s Through the Fire and Flames from Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock. Inevitably, where masters have been impossible to acquire for whatever reason, cover tracks are featured instead, but Activision have endeavoured to make sure that the majority of the ninety tracks are original masters.