Band Hero is a spin-off title to the Guitar Hero series of music video games, published by Activision on November 3, 2009 for PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, and Xbox 360, released alongside the Nintendo DS version of the game. Band Hero on home consoles is structurally similar to Guitar Hero 5, supports full band play (lead and bass guitar, drums, and vocals) including the drop-in/drop-out and in-song instrument and difficulty change menus, and additional multiplayer modes as Guitar Hero 5.
Unlike the main Guitar Hero games, where the focus is on the lead guitar portions of the songs of various genres, Band Hero provides a soundtrack more oriented towards pop rock to challenge the whole band.
Gameplay[]
Full band gameplay of Band Hero on 7th generation consoles.
According to Jeff Gerstmann of Giant Bomb, the game, from its first trailer, appears to be functionally similar to the feature set for Guitar Hero 5, including bands comprised of any combination of four instruments, drop-in/drop-out play, in-song menus to change difficulty and instrument, the updated GHStudio for making custom songs and submitting to GHTunes, and additional multiplayer modes compared to Guitar Hero 5's "RockFest".
The game also supports up to four player multiplayer in a similar manner as Guitar Hero 5 using the DS's local wireless connections, allowing any combination of instruments. However, there is no support for the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection nor plans for additional downloadable content for the Nintendo DS game.
As for Career mode, like with the 7th generation version of Guitar Hero 5, has a single Career for any instrument to be used to progress through it and features a Bonus Challenge for each song on a specific instrument or in a Band. The PlayStation 2 version, however, has individual Careers for each instrument plus Band Career, just like Guitar Hero World Tour and its expansive titles, and does not have these Bonus Challenges.
PlayStation 2 version[]
Bass gameplay of Band Hero for PlayStation 2, which uses World Tour-styled HUDs and lower quality notes and target line.
Besides the change in the Career, lack of challenges, and how the songs are arranged in Career, the PlayStation 2 version ported by Budcat Creations has several differences compared to its next generation counterpart. Like with Guitar Hero 5 on PlayStation 2, the graphics for character models, guitar models, gem models, etc. are inferior to the next generation counterpart. Furthermore, it uses in-game HUDs and menu screens similar to what the World Tour-styled games would use, the sound effects are low-quality audio that are compressed, and loading times are longer. Lastly, there is no Music Studio or the updated GHStudio, and no GHTunes example songs are provided in the PlayStation 2 version.
Regardless of these differences, the PlayStation 2 version still plays similar to the next generation versions and share the same songs as the next generation version with re-arranged Career setlists for each instrument and Band play, unlike the Nintendo DS version that has an entirely new setlist (per region) with different gameplay features, so it is not entirely an "new game" like the Nintendo DS version is with the "Band Hero" title and theming.
Soundtrack[]
- Main article: Setlist in Band Hero § Console setlist
Many songs that appear in Band Hero are pop rock songs catered towards the younger audience, but there are also a variety of other family-friendly songs of other genre, but nothing too "heavy" or "intense". The console versions has a total of 65 licensed songs and 50 of these songs are exportable to other games Guitar Hero 5 while this game can also import songs from Guitar Hero World Tour and Guitar Hero: Smash Hits with a small fee. The 7th generation version also has six GHTunes example songs created by Neversoft and supports most Guitar Hero World Tour and all Guitar Hero 5 downloadable content, and can import songs from previous Guitar Hero titles.
Venues[]
- Mall Of Fame Tour
- Smoke & Water Festival
- Club La Noza
- Summer Park Festival
- Harajuku
- La Luz De Madrid
- Everpop Awards
- Red River Canyon
- Paris
- Amp Orbiter
- Hypersphere
Trivia[]
- The crowd cheering sound effect in the third Career cutscene was recycled from DHX Media's Super Mario World.
- The crowd cheering sound effect in the third Career cutscene was also used in Barney's Great Adventure: The Movie when Barney crashes into a stilt walker in the parade.
- In the base console game, there are no songs with the Expert+ difficulty on Drums.
- A day after the game's release, the band No Doubt sued Activision about the misuse of their in-game avatar variations beings used for any song. No Doubt's lawsuit claimed their contract limited their performance to the three songs within the game and that they were never told their avatars would be used in that manner. Activision argued that it believes that the manner of use of the band's avatars in the game is within the bounds of the contract.[1][2] This is a similar lawsuit Activision went through with the misuse of Guitar Hero 5 guest character Kurt Cobain.
References[]
- ↑ Lewis, Randy (2009-11-04). "No Doubt sues Activision over Band Hero [Updated]".
Hello. In case you didn't know, when you add the title of a book, film, album, magazine, or TV series to an article, it should be italicized by adding two single apostrophes on either side ('' ''). Titles of television episodes, short stories and songs should be placed within quotation marks. More detail can be found in the Wikipedia Manual of Style. Los Angeles Times. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2009/11/no-doubt-sues-activision-over-band-hero.html.
- ↑ Kreps, Daniel (2009-11-04). "No Doubt Sue Activision Over Use of "Band Hero" Avatars". Hello. In case you didn't know, when you add the title of a book, film, album, magazine, or TV series to an article, it should be italicized by adding two single apostrophes on either side ('' ''). Titles of television episodes, short stories and songs should be placed within quotation marks. More detail can be found in the Wikipedia Manual of Style. Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2009/11/04/no-doubt-sue-activision-over-use-of-band-hero-avatars/.
