andPOP - Pop Culture With Substance

Put Your Hands Up Here Comes My DJ!

In an industry that has been said to be over saturated with peripherals for rhythm games do we really need a plastic turntable? People that don’t enjoy the gentle musings of Children of Bodom and Metallica would have to say: Yes!

Activision and FreeStyleGame’s DJ Hero is a game that still has you making coloured circles disappear much like previous Guitar Hero games but adds in the new functionality of scratching and cross-fader manipulation. Does DJ Hero have the replay value and fun factor to have it stand beside Guitar Hero though? In the words of Flava Flav, “CHECK THIS OUT!”
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Band Hero let's you be Taylor Swift without being interrupted by Kanye West!

After last week’s amazing DLC 3 pack of Gwar, Marilyn Manson, and The Misfits is there any better way to follow it up than offering a new game featuring Taylor Swift and Adam Levine?  Heck no!

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Move aside, guitar, there’s a new Hero taking over the video game world: the turntable.

Video game creator Activision has released the much-anticipated massive set list for the DJ Hero video game, which comes out on Oct. 27, according to CHARTattack.

The game features 93 exclusive mixes by some of the industry’s top DJs, including Cut Chemist, DJ Shadow, and the late DJ AM. On the game these DJs slice up songs by artists such as Daft Punk, The Killers, Jay-Z, Public Enemies, and the Beastie Boys.

DJ Hero aims to expand on the technology used in video games such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band. The game will use a turntable controller to help immerse players into DJ culture. It will give aspiring DJs the chance to learn DJ techniques including sampling, crossfading, and scratching.

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Welcome to GWAR into your home this October with Guitar Hero 5!

No tricks here folks just treats as Guitar Hero rolls out a fine month of DLC for Guitar Hero 5.

It all starts with a Queens Of The Stone Age Pack featuring three tracks from their debut album, with Dave Grohl being featured on Avon you know it’s going to be a blast on drums. The week after that we get three tracks from Billy Squier with “The Stroke” which funny enough was the first Guitar Hero custom ever! Coming up next is Mike Patton’s favourite band Wolfmother featuring three tracks from their forthcoming album  Cosmic Egg. READ MORE »

PARTY ON!

In early 2006 Harmonix split ways with the Guitar Hero series and went off with MTV to create Rock Band leaving Activision to contract Neversoft to re-build the game that Harmonix arguably perfected. This move marked the day that split the plastic instrument community right down the middle.

While some people saw no problem with the direction that Guitar Hero went in there is a hardcore contingency of people that would like nothing more than to see Guitar Hero vanish into obscurity and let Harmonix’s Rock Band franchise rule supreme. It has been said that ever since Rock Band was released Guitar Hero has been scrambling to avoid doing just that by “ripping off” Rock Band any chance they get. Well if that’s the case then on September 1st, 2009 they finally caught up. READ MORE »

Ah, Twitter, where would we be without you.

In the first of today’s Twitter-leaked news stories, Courtney Love spilled the virtual beans last week about her outrage over the new Kurt Cobain Guitar Hero avatar.

“FOR THE RECORD, I DID NOT APPROVE KURTS AVATAR FOR GUYITARHERO5. i think Kurt would despise this game alone let alone this avatar,” she wrote.

Then came the more telling post: “We are going to sue the shit out of Activision we being the Trust the Estate the LLC the various LLCs Cobain Enterprises.”

Activision has since responded in a less-mouthy fashion.

“Guitar Hero secured the necessary licensing rights from the Cobain estate in a written agreement signed by Courtney Love to use Kurt Cobain’s likeness as a fully playable character in Guitar Hero® 5,” according to Pitchfork.

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I still remember the summer when Guitar Hero 2 came out.  It was a summer not unlike this one.  The sun was hot and the air was clear, but I did not go outside.  I stayed in and worked my way through career mode on medium, then hard, and then expert.  Would you believe, I started impressing girls with my button-shredding abilities?

Video game fans, take my advice.  Stay in this season and hone your fake guitar skills with Activision’s Guitar Hero: Smash Hits.  Some may scoff at this newest entry, a compilation of the greatest hits from previous guitar hero releases, but the core gameplay remains tight and challenging as ever.  The tracks have been taken from Guitar Heroes 1, 2 and 3, with entries from Rock the 80’s and Aerosmith.  All of the tracks are now playable by the whole band – guitar, bass, vocals and drums – just as in Guitar Hero World Tour.  The selection features lots of reliable favourites, but like the rest of the series there’s a heavy weighting on classic rock and metal. READ MORE »

In a move sure to delight and anger plastic instrument enthusiasts everywhere Kurt Cobain has been included in Guitar Hero 5 alongside living rockers Santana, Matt Bellamy, Shirley Manson and deceased Johnny Cash.

The addition of Kurt Cobain gives us two never before used Nirvana tracks in a Guitar Hero or Rock Band video game, “Lithium (live)” and the holy grail *drum roll* “Smells Like Teen Spirit”.

One has to wonder how much money Courtney Love made off this little foray but in any event I’m excited to take my flannel jacket out of the closet and rock out come September 1st.

Encore once more…

You know what’s funny? I did a bit of digging around before I got down to writing my review and realized that the DS version of Guitar Hero has seen its third offering in about a years time. So you know it’s been selling relatively well to merit a sequel and since the Guitar Hero Brand is popular there is no stopping this juggernaut on any platform. Despite that it’s a bit too quick to be releasing so many sequels if you ask me.

With Activition’s third offering for the DS we dive into the basic same game with a different playlist and more broad approach to single player progression. Save for a few key setbacks this has become my favorite Guitar Hero title on the DS simply because of the aforementioned feature and playlist.
Now andPOP has reviewed the previous iterations so for a full understanding I will kindly ask you to refer to those in depth reviews to get a broader understanding of the game.
I find it funny that this game actually took physical form, it couldn’t be download only on the DS, but had they gone that way I wouldn’t be surprised since that’s the amount of content that’s packed within the cart. That’s not to say it’s not worth a pick up if you are a huge fan of the series on the DS but if you’ve played and owned the previous two versions than you’ve essentially played the third. Now if you don’t have any of the DS incantations then this is the version you have to pick up. READ MORE »

Finally the last 15 songs have been revealed for Guitar Hero 5, and September 1st is fast approaching. Included in the list is the coveted “Smells Like Teen Spirit” that Rock Band couldn’t seem to get for their Nevermind DLC, Dire Strait’s “Sultan’s of Swing” a highly requested classic song with an amazing call and response guitar solo sure to delight people everywhere, a Muse song which isn’t just fast strumming the majority of the time, and a Megadeth song which has a relatively tame solo.

Of course this game isn’t just about guitar anymore so vocalists get ready to be destroyed by Queen & David Bowie’s “Under Pressure” along with Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” and drummers prepare to fail Arctic Monkey’s “Brianstorm” over and over.

One thing is for sure September is going to be a big month for carpal tunnel and future arthritis. READ MORE »