Back in high school, like every young teenager who can play a decent instrument, me and my garage band aspired to be one thing and one thing only…. rock stars! (Well actually I wanted to be in an R&B band and the rest of my friends were rockers – go figure)
From about my Freshmen year of high school up into around early Junior year, on most weekends, instead of finding us at the local mall or going to some parties with friends for me and my bandmates, you’d probably wouldn’t have found us at those places – instead my friends & I were planning new rifts & building up new songs so that we could eventually “rule the world!” … guess I don’t have to tell you that we didn’t get too far?
The funny thing is even though we didn’t get much success, those days of dreaming to be professional musicians were some of the funnest times in my life.
Now, fast forward years later, and the teens of today don’t have to truly be musicians to have rock aspirations.
As many of you know, the Guitar Hero franchise has won over many gamers and has garnished many awards for its unique guitar peripheral application.
And now with Guitar Hero II, the successor to the first Playstation-exclusive Guitar Hero game, being out and available for the Xbox360, (released yesterday on April, 3rd) even more gamers will have the chance to’be’ the dream.
Guitar Hero II for XBOX360 Commercial
If you’re not too familiar with the game, Guitar Hero II puts you in the lead guitarist role, with scrolling notes flying by while you hold corresponding fret button on the guitar neck and simultaneously pressing the strum bar to interact with the game. Much like the Dance Dance Revolution and Parappa the Rappa trend, these types of games depend highly on your ability to chime in timely executed button hits to both visual and audio ques.
And like every successful game format, Guitar Hero II has now aspired more games like it. And this time, you don’t have to be the solo-lead. Annouced in USAtoday.com, gamemakers EA and MTV along with Harmonix, the developers of the Guitar Hero’s franchise, are combining forces to give this game franchise another go at it, this time, involving the entire garage band into the act.
Incorporating key elements like drums, bass, and singing, four gamers will be able to emulate the entire garage band experience via these band peripherals: two guitars (for lead and bass), a drum kit and a microphone.
Besides having four player connectivity, the developers are also touting online interaction. Thus theoretically, the entire band could be four gamers from different parts of the world.
Now if only they can get it to a point where gamers can start getting their own music out and sell it to an aspiring producer, then now we’ll really be talking in evolution terms. If the producers can get the same kind of synergy that revolves around Guitar Hero, it appears “RockBand” should be a hit.
And after that all we need is for someone to develop the “recording studio” peripheral and we’ll really be in music biz!
Source / Usatoday.com
