Guitar Hero 4 Review

I’m not gonna throw any SG-like novels at you, but let me just start by saying that the set list is EXCELLENT. There are a few songs I think it definitely could’ve done without, like the Allman Brothers, but overall I was very impressed. There were a tonne of songs I never heard that I thought were pretty great, and a lot of the songs I thought I’d hate turned out to be some of my favourites to play, like “About A Girl” by Nirvana. Now, I’m not gonna try to pass them off as extremely talented or anything, but I’ll be damned if that song’s not a charmer.

There is no Dragonforce equivalent for this game, but “BYOB” is a fucking wrist exploder, can’t lie about that, no matter how unimpressed I am with the real System of a Down. “Pull Me Under” by Dream Theater is supposed to be the monstrously challenging unlockable song, but both BYOB and Scream Aim fire are probably way harder, and the live version of Purple Haze is way up there too. Overall, the challenge is there, but it isn’t there in spades like it was in GH3. If you’ve already mastered expert in GH3, don’t expect anything really new to be thrown at you.

There are a bunch of new features that allow the songs to be played more REALISTICALLY though. For one, there’s a touch-sensitive tap/slide bar on the higher frets of the guitar. I don’t want to explain how it works, the game will do that for you, but I thought I’d mention that it’s there. Also, the long notes that you had to hold in GH3? You can now hold them while playing other notes OVER them. It makes for some interesting new phrasings in the game. And thirdly, a lot of the finger flailing you had to do over storms of white notes in GH3 is replaced by INVISIBLE NOTES that you can just tap away at for easier, more natural “soloing.” The game also seems to be a lot more forgivable when it comes to hammer-ons and pull-offs too.

To sum up, good set list, low challenge.

There is a built-in song creation tool, though, that deserves to be brought up. Basically, you can create your own songs and download others’ online. So while there are no face-meltingly hard songs in-game, some will probably surface online after a while.

There are a few other things I want to mention that don’t have any real effect on the game, but are just really, really cool. For one, the stages in the background. You’ll notice, for example, when playing a Tool song, that instead of the run-of-the-mill stages of most songs, there’ll be huge eyeballs and psychedelic ghosts and shit flying around in front of flashing, colored strobes, in the spirit of a Tool music video. Two, on top of guests guitarists like Hendrix and Zakk Wilde, there are guest SINGERS like Billy Corgan and Hayley Williams, in cutesy, GH-ified GLORY. I thought these things were very very cool even though they don’t enhance the actual gameplay in any way.

I imagine the guitar was made easier in part because the series and genre has gone away from solo rhythm game and moved towards party rhythm game.

Also, I’m the one that told Epic to suggest Beat It. I take full credit for that song being in the game.

Is there anything you’re finding you don’t like? While the reviews we’ve been getting are generally positive we got hit pretty hard on the interface and ui.

I’m glad you’re enjoying it overall.

Well, it took a while for me to realize that the different colored heads under the song names in quick play represent the high scores of different difficulties, but that was just me being retarded.

One think I REALLY liked that I forgot to mention, was the way they included open notes, where you don’t have to press any buttons to strum. My problem is that you only ever see them while playing bass. Guitar has open notes too.

So yeah, there a few things I think could be improved on, but it’s nothing game-breaking.

Oh, it’d be nice to be able to look at high scores without beating a song, too. Like, a list of names, not just the top record.

Oh, I totally forgot, but the orange button on the guitar didn’t work for the first few hours, then it just kicked in. I don’t know what was up with that, but I had to play with the GH3 guitar to hit orange notes for the first while :\

Also, it really really bothers me that expert bass is about as easy as medium guitar. There’s only one bass song that actually made my right arm tired from all the alt picking. There should be way more.

Just picked this up today and I’m amazed and somewhat disappointed the difficulty curve has taken somewhat of a nosedive. Normally I only play on medium but this year medium is equivalent to easy on GH3… and they’ve added a difficulty setting BELOW easy. Quite clearly they’re after the casual crowd.

Anyways, enough of that, onto the drums. :smiley: Despite using the Rock Band 4-pad set, the drumming is a lot of fun and marginally harder in GHWT than in Rock Band (I normally play on Hard difficulty)- could just be of course I haven’t got the hang of drumming to circular notes yet. The one major annoyance I find is that to engage star power, you need to hit both cymbals at once (YO on a GH kit, YB on a Rock Band kit)- very irritating and cost me combos on multiple occasions. The fills also seem to be weak- then again, they may well have been designed with a pressure-sensitive kit in mind. I’ll know more when I’ve played a little more.

Are there no difficult songs? Not necessarily Through the Fire and Flames difficult but some stuff that is at least fun to play?

Hot for Teacher’s intro and Satch Boogie are the “hard” songs, I believe. BYOB, Scream, Aim, Fire and Pull Me Under look somewhat challenging as well. But no, there’s nothing on the level of Through the Fire and Flames or DWDtG in this.

What is DWDtG?

Oh. DWDtG is easy. The only difficult part of Through the Fire and Flames is the intro. “Fun” songs to me are like Thunderhorse and Hanger 18 and Six and stuff. Anything around that

The intro is the easiest part of F&F, fool.

Oh dear god, I’ve just played- or tried to play- the Tool sets. Biggo mistako, nothing like giving you a complicated drum roll to try to maintain whilst flashing strobe lights at you in the background. Someone wants a punch over that one.

I was reading the SomethingAwful thread on gh4 and the Tool venue gave some dude a mild seizure. So I’d watch out for that.

lol easiest part? Grinding scales? Can you even play Through the Fire and Flames?

Yeah, cos how dare Hades find something easy that you find hard, lol

It’s not just me. It’s generally accepted that if you can’t play the intro, you can’t touch the song. I’m willing to bet Ramza hasn’t gotten far enough in F&F to even know how hard the actual song is. The intro is just holding the green button and tapping. You don’t have to be a Jedi to do it.

FYI, the hardest part in any GH3 song is Mosh 1 in Raining Blood.

See cos the intro for Through the Fire and Flames is much more difficult for me than Mosh 1 cos, which after the first couple tries just kind of clicked for cos me.

I have no idea what is “generally accepted” becos guitar hero games are neither difficult enough or competitive enough to give a fuck. cos! Half the shit that is “generally accepted” is wrong anyway.

Raining Blood was hard because the notetrack didn’t correspond to the music at all.

Really? That explains quite a few things, because I always play along to the music -_-

What do you mean? I just looked up the video for Raining Blood on youtube and the rhythm and note changes were there. Maybe there’s something I’m missing in your terminology since I don’t play these games?

I mean at the end, the last 20 seconds of it is just guitar squealing.