Guitar Hero Craze *Update*

So this week, Guitar Hero II comes out on the 360, and everyone is going nuts for it. A lot of people are going to disagree with my stance here, but I really dislike the game. If you do any research, or have played any of Harmonix's previous games, you'll see quite a similarity. Frequency and Amplitude are great, they were new and innovative, Guitar Hero is the same freakin' game. Sure, the choice of songs in Frequency and Amplitude is a little less mainstream, but they had heaps of other features that are missing in Guitar Hero.

The first two games had power-ups and other interesting gameplay features, you played several instrument tracks for every song, not just one. Guitar Hero simply stripped out the other tracks, added two more buttons that are rarely used, and packed a cheap piece of crap toy with the game, and they figure that demands NINETY DOLLARS, before tax. It's just a simple rhythm game! I know a lot of people are going to say "OH NO! IT'S NOT SIMPLE AT ALL!!1!!!" Sure, it may get fast, but it's VERY simplistic, you just press buttons as the dots scroll down the screen. At least Frequency and Amplitude required more thinking than memorization.

Also, I can see Guitar Hero becoming the next Madden... We had the first game, less than a year later we had a second, 6 months after that we're getting a release on another console, there's a spin-off "80's" version coming, etc... It even seems that Harmonix isn't very interested in Activision's plans for the series, as they're not developing the third iteration, that's been pawned off on the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater developer, Neversoft.

I guess my frustrations all come down to the fact that a good, enjoyable series (Frequency/Amplitude) has been cheapened with the addition of a crappy toy that people are going absolutely bat-shit insane over. My biggest complaint though, is that they want people to pay over a hundred dollars for that crappy toy.

*Update*

A mobile version of the game was just announced, which just furthers my point that the series is being milked.