The instruments have always played a big part of the music rhythm game experience, for me personally. While some will always scorn the playing of a game with a peripheral that looks like an actual instrument, this mocking is about to get much, much worse in the upcoming game by Activision: Guitar Hero 6: Warriors of Rock.
The new controller (yes, be prepared to find space for another music game controller if you want to stay on the cutting edge) is essentially a giant piece of plastic. Yes, technically that is what they have been all along, but the actual body of the controller used to house the workings. Now, in the upcoming iteration, all the actual electronics will be housed inside the central bar, which will be extended to where the body used to sit in the old guitars.
In short, you will be playing a stick, with some plastic attached to the sides to make it look more like you’re not playing a stick. This is in contrast to the older guitars, where you were stuck with the same basic body shape with the option to customise the appearance of that body through the use of faceplates.
One of the things that seems relatively cool about the new guitars is the ability to seemingly customise your guitar however you want. A recently released video shows two different variations (one additional besides the one you see at the top of this post) of guitar customisation, and various news sources have reported that retailers will potentially receive custom guitar bodies to offer as preorders.
Of course, putting one of these custom bodies on your guitar seems entirely optional, and it seems to be possible to enjoy a round of Guitar Hero with just the bare basic stick.
Finally, from the slim amount of information that has been released so far, it seems that the new guitar controller will do away with the awful slider bar that was present in the World Tour and GH5 guitars. Good riddance, I say, although I will miss the ability to wah-wah the long notes, instead of the admittedly tired sounding whammy sound that the whammy bar brings. Perhaps they will be implementing a system that allows the player to decide on their effect?
Assuming that the bodies are relatively easy to make (they seem to fit into the guitar body via three relatively simple clips); it will only be a matter of time before the modding community begins creating custom guitar bodies. I can imagine a burgeoning custom market, with in-game designed guitars being created in real life and sold for a premium, in a similar manner as how World of Warcraft characters are made into models.
What do you guys think? Is it possible to rock out with a stick, and would you want to? Let us know your thoughts.
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