Fall Heroics: Guitar Hero 5, Band Hero, and DJ Hero coming in Autumn
Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 5:25pm by Sean B.
Wake up simulated music junkies – today is your day! Activision announced their fall lineup today, dishing out details for Guitar Hero 5, DJ Hero, and the family friendly Band Hero. In a press announcement the Guitar Hero crew bragged that Guitar hero 5 and DJ Hero would “transform how consumers engage with music,” by expanding the genre with “fun-to-play” experiences and innovative new technologies, all backed up by a wide array of music’s hottest artists!
The last big innovation this genre saw was the addition of a microphone and drum kit – so what does this turntable peripheral have to offer? Why Guitar Hero 5 over World Tour? What’s “Band Hero” anyway? Let’s dive in and see what’s what.
The company’s groundbreaking DJ Hero expands Guitar Hero’s signature social gaming to all-new consumers with the addition of diverse music genres including hip-hop, R&B, Motown, electronica and dance. Introducing an all-new innovative turntable controller, DJ Hero transforms players into DJs who rule the club scene by creating original mixes of popular songs and music from the world’s most exciting artists and DJs.
Guitar Hero has come long way – and after getting the full band effect, it can be hard to imagine what’s next for the series besides new songs that could probably just be downloaded anyway. These days there is more to a music game sequel then just adding new songs, outfits, and venues. Guitar Hero 5 and Band Hero aim to make the series a little more accessible:
Letting fans continue to fulfill their rock fantasies, Guitar Hero 5 features the hottest rock and roll artists today as well as classic rock bands and gives players an unprecedented level of control over the way they play the game with the ability to drop in and out of songs and change band members, instruments and difficulty levels on the fly.
Dropping in and out at will? Changing difficulties and instruments on the fly? Count me in – nobody likes to restart a song just because your little brother can’t keep pace in expert mode. Besides, that kid should be playing the family friendly Band Hero anyway. Oh yeah, about that:
The franchises’ first E10+ rated console game, Band Hero delivers an exciting music collection featuring top-40 hits designed to expand the experience to a new genre and appeal to a broad family audience who can play together on the guitar, drums, bass and microphone. The game builds upon Guitar Hero’s easy-to-play, difficult-to-master signature gameplay and allows novice players and expert fans to join together on their favourite songs.
It may be the marching band geek in me, but the title “Band Hero” had me dreaming up plastic trombones and clarinets. No, I’m afraid we’re a far cry from brass and woodwind – “Band Hero” aims to introduce the “hero series” into the family friendly environment.
Head to the last page to check out the full press release, and let us know what you think in the comments: Are you excited about DJ Hero, or underwhelmed? Are the new features in Guitar Hero 5 worth the upgrade, or would you rather have had more downloadable songs? Are you looking forward to a family friendly Guitar Hero to share with your kids? Let your voice be heard!
Pages: 1 2
May 7th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
ugh- ive stopped reading things that have these ‘pages’- they’re annoying. drive page views through content, not contrivances, please.
May 7th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Yeah, what’s with the new page system? This is the bullshit GameDaily does, not Infendo.
May 7th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
Remember when you used to be able to click on a Gonintendo article and read everything after the jump? I miss that. What’s up with the pages, Sean?
Anyways. I definitely wanna try DJ Hero even though the “hero” games have all kinda gone stale for me. I still want another EBA or Ouendan before I even think about picking up a Guitar Hero title.
May 7th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
I can’t wait to lay down some $#!t as Mix Master Mike or something.
May 7th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
The DJ controller looks neat, but I learned my hard lesson in buyer’s remorse when I bought “Guitar Hero: Word Tour.” It was fun…for a while. But the format grows stale after a while. So no, I won’t be picking this up, and I can probably say the same of any future Guitar Hero or Rock Band products.
As a side note, dear Jesus, why does there need to be three Guitar Hero games in the span of one year? Add to that the Rock Band games coming out (The Beatles Rock Band and Rock Band Unplugged for PSP), and I think there are truly too many music game options available. If this keeps up, we can all say goodbye to the genre as we know it…and I kinda don’t mind that.
May 7th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
I’m sick of the pages, too. Infendo may lose my readership entirely if this continues.
May 7th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
Ahahah, pages,
we soooo don’t care.
And hourray for “Rock Band Hero”
May 7th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Yeah, thumbs down on the pages.
This is getting ridiculous, by the way. Jonkind and I figured out today that there are TEN new music games coming out (or came out, counting GH: Metallica) this year, and that’s insane. I’ll consider Guitar Hero 5 depending on the setlist. Same with Band Hero, although I know I’m not the target audience. And I’ll have to read some hands-on reviews of DJ Hero before I’ll commit to that.
Guitar Hero: Van Halen was announced recently too. Infendo might want to do a bit on that, I don’t know.
May 7th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Is this whole page deal a way to give advertisers more time? Because everytime I click a new page, there’s a 50% chance an ad will pop up, and if there’s more pages, then there’s a whole lot more chances of that happening, now aren’t there?
May 7th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
May 8th, 2009 at 12:24 am
@ bnenthe…
so with all the new music products, are companies following the soft drink and ice cream model- where shelf space is limited so the more skus you have, the more you may start taking away from the competition?
@ stan
yeah man, that’s my guess. they did just ask for a new biz manager, so who knows what theyre up to… course when penny arcade did that (eons ago), they didn’t break up the posts, which was nice.
also, julia nunes on youtube is incredibly charming. i know that’s a random plug, but she always improves my mood!
May 8th, 2009 at 1:26 am
suck a big one activision, and mtv, and whoever did that
GH3 kicks ass
and thats more than enough
too much stuff added and it just doesnt work out.
May 8th, 2009 at 6:48 am
The only saving grace with the RockBand stuff is that so far I’ve been able to rip all the songs from say AC/DC RockBand or even Rock Band 1 and put the on my hard drive and play them through RockBand 2. That’s at least convenient. And let’s say Lego Rock Band for instance is $60, with 50 songs that are halfway decent. That’s say $1.20 a song rather than $2.00. And if I wait a while, no doubt the price will drop further (AC/DC is going for $10 now). So I’ll pay the $5.00 to rip them and I can boost my RB2 music library up for a fraction of the cost.
With Guitar Hero, nothing is cross compatible. Which means I have to buy and then play each game individually for the songs. That stinks.
May 8th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
ah give em a break about the pages it’s not that bad and if it helps grow infendo into a profitible organization who cares. these guys are doing the site for us and an extra click doesn’t bother me all that much. i’m at work killing time anyway…
May 8th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
I think it’s great that they’re splitting the game up into the family-friendly version and the hardcore product. It’s one of two reasons I hate Rock Band: too much mainstream crap music. Now they can get that out of their systems on the “Band Hero” franchise, and give us metalheads more of what made us love the series in the first place: good music.
May 9th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
I only hate pages due to my cell phone modem… other than that, Infendo can’t exist for free, right? If they have to get ad dollars, then so be it.