Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock attempts to reinvigorate the series with a story-driven "Quest Mode" where you transform into rock legends. While this mode adds novelty and the tracklist boasts plenty of hard-hitting anthems, Warriors of Rock suffers from familiar gameplay mechanics now feeling slightly stale. The core rhythm-matching fun is still there for dedicated fans, but the lack of significant innovation makes this installment feel more like a solid expansion than a true evolution of the franchise.

Holy SHIT. After playing through all the games from the great guitar hero mediocrity wave of '09, I had middling hopes for this one. I had heard that the game was a fan-favorite for some reason, so I was cautiously excited and boy were the fans right. The setlist is full of bangers, the difficulty is there for the players that can take the heat (EXTREMELY REFRESHING AFTER PLAYING SO MANY BRAINDEAD EASY GAMES), there are power up mechanics so that even the newcomers can still clear songs, yet only the skilled will master them, and I think that's a really cool evolution from the whole pass/fail system that all previous games had done. There's even a story that, while simple, is actually there unlike a bunch of other GH and RB games just being more songlists than adventures. All in all, this is definitely a game on par with GH3 and that isn't something I say lightly. For a swansong of the series, they absolutely went all out.

"🎶🗣🎶I want my, I want my, I want my MTV 🎶🗣🎶"

Snags a high 3 for now - but at first I was honestly enjoying this more than both Guitar Hero III and 5. The first half of the campaign is elite - with essentially wall-to-wall bangers, a neat spin on its story mode, and characters that look fantastic. But the second half dwindles intrigue almost immediately - with what feel like the most filler-iest filler songs the console releases have ever seen and winners only few and far between. But even a lot of its hits are ultimately undone by this game's weird collection of re-recordings and live versions which - I'm sorry - are never superior or even on par with the originals. That Ozzy + Metallica "Paranoid" rendition outright SUCKS, and didn't they already use the original like barely three years before this? Tiering system based on vibe was done so much better in my beloved Guitar Hero World Tour. I dig when this gets weird like the grotesque + straight-up badass transformations, that huge titan amp monster thing, as well as a few standout venues like the haunted house, dingy pub, and Lars' awesome forest place. Appreciate that this took steps to differentiate itself, but it doesn't all pan out - needed another couple years in the pot to avoid the rhythm genre running out of steam the way it did at this time, as this is clearly still the product of crunch and overuse. Too much to a formula that craves simplicity.

This might be in top 3 for guitar hero games. Loved that each character would get an alternate look and each had their own unique powers that made gameplay a bit more fun on the career side. Also loved the each character kind of had their own genre of rock? Some being alternative, some being classic, etc. Over the past year or so I’ve been steadily getting better at playing on expert, and last summer I had only learned how to play on hard difficulty. It’s been a long road but I’m so happy to have told childhood me that I would get to this point where I could use more than three fingers :p