Ok, cool… but how’s the demo!? After a pretty decent sized download (100+ MB), I fired this baby up, grabbed my (plastic) axe, and got ready to rock.
So the beginning sequence shows us this crazy Viking battling this gigantic robotic beast, kind of like a giant rock stage come to life. The Viking has a rad looking Axe (it’s totally a guitar) and he’s waging some serious war with his mechanical foe. The beast defeats our friend the Viking, sending the guitar/battle axe into an underground cave, banished until someone worthy enough can wield it again. The hero is then “entombed in a granite prison” which is another way of saying “turned into an awesome statue”. “Warriors” are need to find the ancient weapon and release the hero, so a call goes out across the land for someone to step up and lend him a hand. The winner will be transformed in to warrior with great powers… this is where we come in.
Right away, I like this concept. This is a cool direction for the game to be going. Instead of the usual stages we’re all used to with the Guitar Hero series (start a band, get discovered, play concerts, make it big, blah-blah-blah), we actually have a mission- to help our Viking friend and defeat the evil stage…robot…monster…thing…?
The only playable character in the demo is our old favorite, punk rocker Johnny Napalm. We get a nice “Quest Completion” meter next to his name, which is currently at 0%. It also says “Speed Freak” next to his name and a nice little biography: Johnny’s energy is boundless, but unfocused and wild. Given a greater goal, though, he could bring his tempestuous nature to bear. This makes me think that maybe other characters will have different abilities in this game.
We also see that, in the same meter area, there is a chart saying 0/12 To Transform, which makes me think (and this is exactly right, I soon discover) that as you play songs you earn whatever the heck it is that you need to “transform.” I end up picking up “7″ in my first song. Ign.com has a lot more details on the game, but I’m really only focused on the demo in this article.
The playable tracks in this cut down version are:
Children of the Grave- Black Sabbath, 1971
No Way Back- Foo Fighters, 2005
Ghost- Slash featuring Ian Astbury, 2010
The standards are back when you select your instrument, vocals, guitar/bass guitar, drums and something else (I haven’t play any recent installments of Guitar Hero or Rock Band, so hell if I know what the last thing is… keyboards?).
Upon selecting the first track, we are taken to a cut scene. CBGB is the venue! Johnny wakes up wasted outside, struts into the bar, chugs a Coke (the sponsors are back, stronger than ever. Also, I’ve never sobered up by drinking a Coke before…) and climbs the stage. The song begins…
During my first run of “Children of the Grave” I was able to pound out a 318 note streak and finish with 94% accuracy (I’ll admit to have a few drinks before playing… the download took awhile…). I hit 686/723 notes, pretty much only messing up on the two solos. I really like this stat chart they have. It will have the stats of all the players (singer, guitar, drums), breaking their routine down into categories like Into, Solo A, Riff 2 and so on, showing what percentage you get for each category- very cool. I got a 7. Not too shabby for a guy who hasn’t really played much Guitar Hero since the second game.
I did similarly good on the Foo Fighters song, with my difficulty setting still set at Hard- fyi, it was surprisingly hard. After this song, I had enough… credits?… points?… to get to 12, which turned me into this creepy epic demon version of Johnny. “Warrior Johnny” is a brutal mutant elf looking version of normal Johnny- also cool, his whole band turns into Warrior Mode as well.
After you get to 12 you turn into the warrior- the true embodiment of chaos, in Johnny’s case- and then get to play the “encore” although it isn’t called an “encore” this go around. To my surprise and pleasure, the hidden song was “Bloodlines” by the cartoon band Dethklok from Metalocalypse on Cartoon Network’s [adult swim]. Known for playing brutally metal songs, I couldn’t think of a better band to cover when in “Warrior Mode.” The song was pretty difficult, full of long, note filled solos. I had some trouble with it, but eventually got through it.
After I defeated the song, I unlocked Warrior Johnny and His Band’s Outfits, More Powers for Quickplay, Johnny’s Archaic Anarchy Guitar and Bass and More Quickplay venues- none of these were usable in the demo version, unfortunately.
Overall, this was a fun demo which gave me a great look at the game to be. I haven’t bought a Guitar Hero game in a long while, but I might shell out the bucks and scoop this one up.
One thing I did notice was the improvement of the animation. The note track looked, in my opinion, easier to read, with clearly lit and quite detailed note markers. The background animation was awesome- the crowd was great looking and so was the animation of the band. The sound was great- “Children of the Grave” is one of my favorite Ozzy songs and I thought it was skillfully covered. My only beef was with the singer, a skinny, bald dude who looked nothing like the Oz man. For shame, Activision!
All in all, I think this is going to be a fun new take on the genre and definitely worth picking up when it’s released.
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