Guitar Hero vs. Rock Band

Video games are really popular nowadays, especially with the young people. There are several games that come out daily, so it would be hard for others to keep up with them. Guitar Hero and Rock band are examples of popular video games. People may wonder what differentiates one from the other. The purpose of this essay is to compare and contrast the differences between Guitar Hero and Rock Band. This could help people who can’t decide which of the two games they should buy since both games seem to be the same from each other.

The Guitar Hero series and the Rock Band series were both developed by Harmonix Music Systems. Both game series simulate playing musical instruments using controllers shaped like the instruments featured in the game. The games will e compared and contrasted by three topics: game interface, gameplay, and popularity.

One of the obvious differences between the two games is their game interface. Guitar Hero mainly uses a guitar-shaped controller. Rather than the typical Playstation or Xbox controller, the guitar controller is the primary input of the game. With the purchase of Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero II, a controller modeled after a Gibson SG is included, a controller modeled after a Gibson X-plorer for Guitar Hero II (Xbox 360) and Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (PC). The controllers help simulate what it would be like to play a lead, bass and rhythm guitar on different rock music songs while playing the game. The controller has features of an actual electric guitar which can also be used in the game. The whammy bar feature that electric guitars have is also found on the controller. It is also, like in electric guitars, changes the tone and strum of the guitar. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar_Hero, March 2010)

Meanwhile, Rock Band uses an array of instrument-shaped controllers, namely: a microphone, a drum set, and an electric guitar. The guitar controller for lead and bass guitar is modeled after a Fender Stratocaster. The drum set has four rubber drum pads with colored rings around the edges and a bass pedal. The microphone is a standard USB microphone. The controllers are designed to make the players feel like they are actually performing the song using the actual instruments. When using them, players really have to sing, strum the guitar controller as if he or she is actually playing the real guitar, and beat the drum controller like what you would do in a real drum set. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Band, March 2010)

Another difference between the two games is how each is played and the difficulty levels of it. Guitar Hero focuses mainly on playing the guitar during gameplay. It supports mostly single player modes, typically a career mode to finish all of the songs in the game, and both competitive and cooperative multiplayer modes. The players can choose to play either rhythm or bass guitar on the songs. Players who are used to playing rhythm could opt for the rhythm version of the song when playing, the same goes with bass. It could also be a way of learning what it feels like to play the song using a bass guitar if you are more used to rhythm, and vice versa. The game simulates the playing of an actual guitar by the use of the guitar controller to play the game. But instead of frets and strings, it has five colored “fret buttons” and a “strum bar”. With the use of fast paced guitar riffs and altering the pitch of notes using the whammy bar, Guitar Hero makes its players have a great sense of how it will be like to play an actual guitar.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar_Hero, March 2010)

Rock Band, on the other hand, features a variety of choices in terms of choosing which instrument players would want to play and it needs the cooperation of all players to win the game. It allows up to four players to mimic the performance of popular rock music songs. Players could also set the difficulty of the instruments they choose. In time with the music, players use the instrument-shaped controllers to play the scrolling musical “notes” on the screen. When players use lead or bass guitar, they pay their notes by holding down the fret buttons on the guitar controller and pushing the strum bar; for players using drums, they must strike the matching drumhead or step on the pedal to simulate playing the bass drum notes. Green bars that represent the pitch of the vocal elements are the pattern that “vocalists” have to imitate his or her voice with. Lyrics are also located underneath the bars. Rock Band has a section of the screen for every instrument being played. On the upper part of the screen, the vocals display is located just like in Karaoke Revolution. If one instrument is not being played in the game, it would not be displayed on screen. The “band’s” virtual characters performing in a concert is displayed on the background. The score given to the players is based on the ability to match the musical “notes” of he instruments or y the ability to match the singer’s voice when playing vocals. The songs found on Rock Band are more modern and up-to-date than those in Guitar Hero. Weekly, downloadable songs are being added to the network service of the game consoles, so that the users can get new songs easily. The game is more challenging because all players must do well in each of the instruments they are playing. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Band, March 2010)

A notable difference is the popularity of one game from the other. The Guitar Hero series is more popular than the Rock Band series in terms of total sales. Guitar Hero was developed earlier than Rock Band, so more people are familiar to it. According to Wikipedia’s Guitar Hero article, the number of units that Guitar Hero has sold is larger than Rock Band’s 4 million units, with 11.8 million units sold. Because of the game’s popularity, developers make the game even better then the previous version and makes it more polished and seldom has bugs during gameplay. Even though Rock Band is not as popular as the Guitar Hero series, it gains popularity because of the game’s downloadable content. The series has sold more than $1 billion in total sales to date. Behind Guitar Hero and the Mari Series, Rock band was the third highest brand with $622 million in total sales for 2008. On the same year, over 5.3 million copies were sold and 3.8 million of those were instrument-bundled packages. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Band, March 2010)

Both games have similar features that make people confuse one from the other. There are also differences which make each pf them unique from one another. Because the two games were developed by the same company, the similarities seem to be exact. Setting aside their similarities and differences, both are awesome game series which give its users the feel of enjoyment and challenge.