Career is the primary game mode of the Guitar Hero series. It is equivalent to another video game's "story mode".
Types of career modes[]
Career[]
The first venue of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock's Career, "Backyard Bash".
In Career for most Guitar Hero video games, the object of the game is to successfully play every song in a setlist known as a tier at a venue, and then play the encore song for that tier. Once that is accomplished, the player can move on to the next tier, until the final tier is reached. When the final encore song is played, the career is beaten, and the player can now focus on either the bonus songs, or boosting their career score.
In most games, a tier must be reached in Career before it can be unlocked in Quickplay, which makes Career Mode the first thing that most players go to when they get a new Guitar Hero game.
From Guitar Hero to Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, each difficulty level has their own Career on Guitar that are progressed separately: Easy, Medium, Hard, and Expert. In some games, completing a certain difficulty (especially on Expert difficulty) unlocks certain content (like unlockable guitars) or hints of a cheat code. In Guitar Hero World Tour onward, Career can be progressed on any difficulty level including the new Beginner difficulty so the player can change difficulty level at any time without losing or changing progression. For more information about Career modes in Guitar Hero World Tour onward, see the Instrumental and Band Careers section.
Co-op Career[]
- See also: Cooperative
Co-op Career is a two-player game mode exclusive in Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock where two players play together in cooperative play in Career mode (no cash earned though) with the career setlist re-arranged into 6 tiers (with new tier names) based on a balanced two-player cooperative difficulty level. While Guitar Hero: Aerosmith was based on Legends of Rock, it does not feature a Co-op Career mode.
There are no Guitar Battles in Co-op Career but Co-op Career has new encore songs exclusive to it that can be unlocked for Quickplay and other multiplayer game modes after unlocking them in Co-op Career. These Co-op Career encore songs include "Sabotage", "Reptilia", "Suck My Kiss", "Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll", "Helicopter", and "Monsters".
Some Xbox 360 achievements in Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock can only be earned by playing in Co-op Career including "That's What Friends Are For", "Guitar Wizard" and any other cooperative-based achievements.
Instrumental and Band Careers[]
Guitar Hero World Tour, Guitar Hero: Metallica, Guitar Hero: Smash Hits, and Guitar Hero: Van Halen on all platforms, as well as the PlayStation 2 versions of Guitar Hero 5 and Band Hero, feature five Career modes, one for each instrument including Guitar Career, Bass Career, Drums Career, Vocals Career, and Band Career. While the first four are single-player Careers for those specific instruments, Band Career can only be played with a minimum of two instruments of any kind up to four instruments, meaning that two or more players may be required, but a single player can attempt to play two instruments at once such as Guitar, Bass, or Drums while singing on Vocals.[note 1]
The setlist of songs for each gig/venue are arranged differently for each instrument, usually by the difficulty of the song's instrument but usually features the same encore songs at the end of each gig for every Career. In Guitar Hero World Tour, the order of the visiting venues is different for each instrument. As some venues were removed from the PlayStation 2 version of Guitar Hero World Tour, the PlayStation 2 version of revisits a few venues for new gigs.
Each instrumental Career has their own unique unlockable content for Rock Star Creator as well as character unlocks that references the instrumental Career. Completing songs in either Career or Quickplay earns the player cash, with bonus cash added for completing a gig of songs in Career for the first time. Unlike the previous games where each difficulty level had their own Career modes, the selection of difficulty does not affect the progression of Career in Guitar Hero World Tour and newer titles or its rewards.
Career in Guitar Hero 5 and Band Hero[]
Unlike the PlayStation 2 versions, the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii versions of Guitar Hero 5 and Band Hero do not feature instrumental and Band Careers. Instead, they feature a single, "unified" Career mode that can be universally progressed either solo on any instrument and difficulty or as a band. Career mode on these versions of Guitar Hero 5 and Band Hero also features unique instrumental challenges for each song as "bonus challenges" that can unlock the player more rewards.
Career in the Backstage Pass mobile games[]
- Main article: Guitar Hero III: Backstage Pass/Career
- Main article: Guitar Hero World Tour Mobile: Backstage Pass/Career
World hub in Guitar Hero III: Backstage Pass's Career.
Career mode in Guitar Hero III: Backstage Pass and Guitar Hero World Tour Mobile: Backstage Pass are different in which they feature a story mode with a hub world, buildings, and minigames where the player manages their character's band with the goal of becoming a rich and famous rock star by learning songs, buying/obtaining guitars, playing music-based minigames, earning money (while avoid being fined), playing gigs at venues, and releasing their tracks to earn more cash.
The standard 3-lane GRY rhythm gameplay is still available in Career at the start of a gig when when playing a gig at venues at night. In Guitar Hero III: Backstage Pass, this minigame is called Fret Frenzy. After doing a minute of Fret Frenzy, depending on the level of the venue, there will be few other minigames with the last minigame being the Finale.
In Guitar Hero World Tour Mobile: Backstage Pass, there are a total of 4 instrumental rhythm minigames including Axel on Guitar, Lars on Drums, Casey on Vocals, and Judy on Bass, each unlocked during Career as the player progresses through its Career. Each time the player plays a gig at a venue, the player plays one of these minigames when they are unlocked (the decision of the starting instrumental rhythm minigame is rotated per gig in the above order)[note 2] along with several other non-rhythm venue minigames before ending with the Finale minigame.
Quest in Warriors of Rock[]
- Main article: Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock/Quest Mode
- Main article: Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock Mobile/Quest Mode
Quest mode is Career in Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock Mobile, and Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock Mobile More Music. Rather than selecting your own character, you play through certain characters through certain tiers and use their unique abilities during their songs until they are strong enough to defeat "The Beast" at the end of their Quest.
Career in Guitar Hero Live[]
The offline "Live" game mode in Guitar Hero Live features the game's Career mode. There are two Guitar Career modes as "festivals" including the Rock the Block festival and the Sounddial festival with their own set of venues with fictional bands taking stage, playing a small gig of songs. There are 41 songs in total; 24 on-disc songs are featured in Rock the Block festival while 17 on-disc songs are featured in the Sounddial festival.
In Live, the player plays on a realistic stage from their point-of-view. There is no on-screen Rock Meter but the crowd reacts to the player's performance. The crowd cheers when the player performs well, acts worried when the player makes some mistakes, or boos the player whenever they perform poorly, with the screen glowing red until the song is failed.
As Guitar Hero Live does not have Star Power, it does have Hero Power, which functions almost the same as Star Power, doubling the player's multiplayer for a period amount of time. Rather than building energy for a meter, units of Hero Power can be collected and be activated one at a time. Due to this, the whammy bar on the Guitar Hero Live Wireless Guitar Controller does not give the player extra Hero Power, effectively making the whammy bar in Guitar Hero Live useless other than to distort guitar noises. This Hero Power is featured in the GHTV game mode as "Double Multiplier".
Career score[]
Career score is one of the best ways to determine one's skill at Guitar Hero. Formerly, Career score was the total of one's scores on all of the songs, across all difficulties. For example, if one has 180,000 points on a certain song on Expert, but 195,000 on that same song on Hard, the Hard score would be counted toward the Career score.
However, in Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, there were difficulty specific Career scores. That means that only Expert songs would count toward the Expert Career score and so on. In Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, a 14 million Career score is considered a very big achievement, since it requires Full Combo'ing nearly every song in the game.
References[]
Footnotes[]
- ↑ Tip: Solo players that struggles singing while playing an instrument in Band Career could set Vocals to Beginner while playing another instrument on their preferred. Also, lyrics are not require to be sung; any noise will play all Vocal lines on Beginner difficulty. Alternatively, if a microphone is not available but if the player has access to another instrumental controller, the player could attempt to play their primary instrument on their preferred difficulty and their secondary instrument on Beginner difficulty.
- ↑ Note: In Guitar Hero World Tour Mobile: Backstage Pass, the player starts off with Axel on Guitar only unlocked with more instrumental rhythm minigames unlocked as the player recruits other characters for their band. Upon unlocking more characters and their minigames, one of your characters' rhythm minigames are played at the start of a gig for one minute. The player cannot decide which instrument/character to play at a gig nor is it random, but the starting instrumental rhythm minigames are rotated per gig (for instance, if you have Axel, Lars, and Casey unlocked, the rotation is Axel on Guitar for one gig, then Lars on Drums for the next gig, then Casey on Vocals the gig after, then rotates back to Axel on Guitar for the next gig (or Judy on Bass once Judy Nails is recruited, then back to Axel on Guitar). However, the starting minigame does not determine which of the other non-rhythm venue minigames will be played.
