Regardless of your feelings towards the genre, you can’t deny the impact that the music rhythm games have had. More people are playing than ever before, and both companies (Harmonix and Neversoft) continue to churn out sequel after sequel, and more spin-offs than you can count on both hands. Each subsequent iteration of each franchise improves upon the last, adds new features, gameplay modes and more songs. Improvement, it’s the way forward.
However, even though they are currently working on Guitar Hero 6, and Rock Band 3, there are still a number of features that are missing. So, regardless of whether it is in the new Guitar Hero or Rock Band, I think the following features would make the next release the best of all.
1. Better User Content Creation
The GHTunes software in World Tour and 5 sucked. It was next to impossible to create anything even remotely resembling a decent piece of music, and without a degree in sound engineering, there was really no inclination to. If they somehow managed to make this mode fun, easy to use and powerful enough so that everybody could create decent music (and added support for recording vocals), that would be good. As it stands now, you have to wade through piles and piles of … well user-created content that is just awful, in order to find a rare song or too that is worth playing more than once.
2. More streamlined instrument changing
As it stands now, you have to basically quit to the main menu in order to change the combination of instruments that you are currently playing. When you are busy with a marathon session and get bored of a certain instrument, it’s a bit of a pain to swap out what you are playing. It would be nice if the process of changing instruments were easier, and didn’t require quitting with the one instrument, disabling it, and then joining with the new instrument.
3. Custom song support
Definitely not going to happen, because it would totally destroy the DLC market, but imagine if you could load up any song on your console’s hard-drive, and be able to play it in the game, complete with accurate note charts, scoring, full-game integration and online play against those with the same song.
4. An Expert+ mode for Guitar
New guitars will feature a new purple fret button which will only come into play on Expert+ mode. Think you’re hot stuff on guitar(hero -Ed)? Prove it by beating Scatterbrain or The Spirit of Radio on Expert+!
5. Cross compatibility between all games, songs and DLC
So you’ve bought a whole slew of Guitar Hero content, and have every game released. One day, you go to a friend’s house, and play his copy of Rock Band 2. You’re hooked, and immediately want to jump ship to the competition’s franchise. However, because you’ve already invested so much money into Guitar Hero, you’re pretty stuck. Imagine if you weren’t, and you could import your Guitar Hero tracks and DLC into Rock Band.
6. Mainstream support for the DJ Hero turntable
If you bought DJ Hero, chances are your turntable controller has been gathering dust for a while now. It would be awesome if they implemented a remix mode into the next game, where you could do whatever you wanted with two tracks on the fly. Also, being able to play the turntable in songs that supported it, like Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park songs.
7. Adaptive Difficulty in Career Mode
Similar to Momentum mode in Guitar Hero 5, except available in career. Miss too many notes and you get dropped a difficulty, while a string of successive notes will raise your difficulty. Being available in career mode, it will still let you get trophies and complete challenges, but won’t disrupt the flow of the game so much when your friend keeps failing the song that you’re busy with.
8. Better Trophy Integration
I really liked how The Beatles Rock Band integrated the trophy system, where it gave a detailed breakdown of what you still needed to do on what songs in order to get a trophy. It would be great if you could launch each song from this trophy menu.
Are there any features you’d like to see in the next entry in either franchise? Let us know via the usual channels.
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