Publisher: Activision
Developer: Red Octane
Genre: Music
Release date: December 22, 2009

As I type this, my area is being hammered by the worst winter storm in 13 years. What better way to warm things up around the old homestead than to rock out with Van Halen, one of the best live-performance bands of all time? In Guitar Hero: Van Halen, Activision and developer Red Octane feature one of the true guitar gods and one of the most distinctive voices in the history of rock in another band-centric edition of the series that revitalized the gaming industry.

Van Halen, led by lead guitarist Eddie Van Halen and frontman David Lee Roth, appear on stage behind the now-familiar note highways of Guitar Hero as you strum, drum and sing your way through the game’s 47-song setlist. There are 28 VH songs on the menu, all of which are unlocked out of the box in Quickplay mode, mostly from the late 1970s and early ’80s. All of the band’s signature tunes are here, including “Panama,” “Pretty Woman,” “Dance the Night Away,” “Jump,” and “Hot for Teacher,” which makes an encore appearance from it’s initial inclusion in Guitar Hero 5. There’s also a diverse list of guest artists, from classic acts such as Deep Purple, Judas Priest, Billy Idol, The Clash and Queen, to more current favorites Foo Fighters, Weezer, Blink 182 and Third Eye Blind.

All of the usual gameplay modes are back in GHVH. You can work the setlist from top to bottom in career mode on guitar, bass, drums or vocals, or as a band. The songs are divided into eight sections, each highlighting a venue from Van Halen’s past (Los Angeles, Rome, Amsterdam, etc). As you complete songs on the list, more venues are unlocked. The AI rockers from the previous Guitar Hero games are also back; your selected character appears on stage when you play the non-VH songs. Quickplay allows you to customize a five-song setlist of your own, or you can just pick and choose a song at a time. Multiplayer modes feature the old stand-bys Faceoff, Pro Faceoff and Battle. There’s also 2 vs 2 Guitars, Band vs Band, Band Quickplay and Co-op Guitars. GH Studio, the latest version of the custom song creator that debuted in Guitar Hero: World Tour, is also included, this time with tutorials that are actually useful.

Features might be major selling points of the music-game genre, but most players come for the music, and it’s here that GHVH falters. Red Octane has selected the best of the VH catalog for the game, including a very welcome appearance by the boogie-woogie-flavored “Ice Cream Man” and three solo guitar shorties showcasing the undeniably epic skills of Eddie Van Halen. But the songs featuring the supporting cast are mostly forgettable, some from bands guaranteed to be unfamiliar to those in the classic VH demographic (Alter Bridge? Yellowcard? Never heard of ‘em. Of course, it can be said that I don’t get out enough…).

And there are other problems apart from the anemic secondary setlist. The difficulty level of the note charts stays flat all the way until the last seven songs on the list (on Easy, the songs are almost boring; you don’t see your first power chord until the 40th song if you play them in order), then leaps into the stratosphere at the end. This is also true on Medium, although the entire list is much more fun to play on this level. Red Octane once again wastes disk space on the monstrously pointless Beginner mode, in which all you do is play open notes for the entire game; the included tutorials are more than adequate for teaching newbies how to play. The star power note strings seem to be twice as long as they’ve been in any previous GH game, seriously altering the strategies used in the past for star-power activation and achieving the highest scores (don’t activate at the beginning of phrases or you’ll be wasting your star power). GH Studio continues to be the least user-friendly gaming accessory this side of the wired controller, although the tutorials help you get started (there’s even an achievement available for completing one of the tutorials). Many of the songs have horribly abrupt endings (a fact of life, I suppose, since fading out is not an option, but jarring nonetheless). And GHVH‘s career mode ends with a whimper instead of a Dragonforce-like bang, with Eddie playing all alone for the last three songs. And perhaps the biggest disappointment in the game: you can’t use your Xbox Live avatar as your playable character, as you can in Guitar Hero 5.

I was never a Van Halen fan, although I did like their music and Diamond Dave’s on-stage histrionics (replacing him with Sammy Hagar might’ve made them a better band, but they were not nearly as much fun to watch). But after twice playing through Guitar Hero: Van Halen‘s career mode, I’m struck by how much alike almost all of their songs are. This same sameness carries through to the game itself, which makes no attempt to distinguish itself from what has come before it. I suppose giving the game away three months early as a rebate for the purchase of GH5 should’ve been the first clue that GHVH was not going to be a critical darling. Red Octane and Activision would probably have been better served by releasing these Van Halen songs as Guitar Hero DLC instead of giving it the stand-alone game treatment.

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