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During the late 2000s and early 2010s, these two brands faced off to see which one could capture the attention of music-loving gamers through innovative gameplay and great soundtracks. But what did each game do better than the other?
10 Guitar Hero: Difficulty
Some may scoff at the idea of a game that uses a fake guitar with colorful buttons on it, but let’s be clear: Guitar Hero is not a game that is meant to make things easy for players. The game starts players off with the basic concepts, but as career mode progresses, the songs get a lot more difficult to pull off and players may need a few attempts to get things right. The boss battle in Guitar Hero III, “Through the Fire and Flames” by DragonForce, famously brought players to their knees as the hardest song in the series.
9 Rock Band: Realistic
While Guitar Hero was more for those who wanted a major challenge, Rock Band’s approach was to make things a little bit more realistic when it came to playing the guitar. Most of the songs in Rock Band’s library have charts that are structured to be more realistic to the song compared to Guitar Hero, which made certain charts a lot more difficult to read in order to increase the challenge for its players. Rock Band was also a bit more strict when it comes to hitting notes precisely.
8 Guitar Hero: Embraced Singleplayer
While later iterations did eventually add multiplayer modes, Guitar Hero was built to be a single-player experience. Career mode was the center of many of the games in the franchise, traveling around with an in-game band and performing at venues around the world.
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You also had the ability to practice on your own with Quick Play, which allowed for a more personal experience. With the amount of action a split-screen experience causes in a rhythm game, being able to play alone is perfect for those who just want to focus on their solo.
7 Rock Band: Embraced Multiplayer
Sure, Rock Band had its singleplayer modes too, but it was built for the party game experience from the start. With multiple instruments coming with the game and online play available early on, friends in-person or on the other end of the internet worked together or competed against each other to perform songs to the best of their abilities. Even the main mode of the series, “Tour,” allowed multiple people to form a band, giving players a much more interactive experience in trying to grow their in-game music group.
6 Guitar Hero: Established Characters
If there’s one thing that stands out between the two franchises, its that Guitar Hero had a lot more notable characters. First off, the playable characters in the game are unique and aesthetically associated with what genre they are used to playing. For example, there’s Axel Steel, who is best at playing songs in the heavy metal or power metal genres, among others. On a different spectrum, there’s Eddie Knox, who is more of a rock ’n’ roll and rockabilly type. Guitar Hero even had some guest appearances in its games, such as Johnny Cash, Ozzy Osbourne and, the legend himself, Sting.
5 Rock Band: Character Customization
There were plenty of ways to customize your experience in Rock Band, but most notable was the rocker players are able to create for themselves. Players had the ability to customize their character’s hair, facial features, body, tattoos, and clothing, along with how they move on stage and the instruments they play. Later games grew this into customizing their bands as well, including band merchandise and logos. Guitar Hero got to this much later in the series, but Rock Band did it first and did it better.
4 Guitar Hero: Controllers
This is hard to choose between, as both Guitar Hero and Rock Band controllers each have something to offer to the player. It all comes down to preference as it depends on many different factors, including which controller players start with or how either controller feels in their hands as they play.
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The Guitar Hero controller has the slight edge here as being the first of its kind and also being able to give more feedback to the player through the noises the buttons and strum make.
3 Rock Band: Instrumental Variety
When Harmonix was no longer involved with Guitar Hero, they decided to recreate their game and expand it beyond its original format. This meant that, along with guitars, they would add a drum set and a USB microphone to Rock Band for players to use in order to become drummers and singers, respectively. Sure, Guitar Hero added some of this in later, but Rock Band continued to grow its instrumental library when it also added a keyboard and more microphones for players to add backup harmonies to the main vocals.
2 Guitar Hero: Battles
Players who engaged in Guitar Hero’s guitar battle mode got a treat. Sure, it is fun to go one-on-one with a friend, rocking out together to see which one does better with a particular song. However, what made guitar battle stand out among the other modes in the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises as a whole was the fact that players could play against the likes of Slash, Tom Morello, Joe Perry, and more. These artists worked with Guitar Hero to record these boss battles. The mode is also fun for the fact players can use power-ups to throw off their opponents.
1 Rock Band: Song Library
Both games are well known for their deep library of songs to choose from, with Guitar Hero going out of the way to get exclusive rights to some artists’ songs, such as Bruce Springsteen. But beyond the songs themselves, Rock Band has the stronger library just for the fact that it would release a game and then continue to frequently update the game with more songs, and also allowed players to import songs over from previous games. Rock Band put a lot of heart and soul into building a song library to keep giving players more experiences with the game, and it shows.
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