Rock Band vs. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
On the surface, these two games look very much alike and they deliver a similar experience. This is why people buy one or the other but not both. Comparisons between the two are inevitable but not entirely fair. One game is guitar and bass only while the other includes full drum and vocal components. At the same time how can you not compare them? They are playing to the exact same audience and filling the same need. What I've found is that both games excel in different areas and the fears that Rock Band would be a replacement for Guitar Hero III were unfounded. It's perfectly appropriate to own and play both.
For the sake of comparison, I've broken the games down into 11 categories: single-player career, multiplayer, song list, sound, gameplay, peripherals, downloadable content, customization, replayability, cost and visuals. Each category will have a winner, and after tallying the score at the end, we'll have our overall victor.
Single-player Career
The single-player options in each game are somewhat scant consisting of either a career or quickplay. Rock Band has three separate careers for the guitar, drums and vocals but the only difference between them is the order of the songs. Each song is a completely new experience when played from different perspectives but the careers are little more than trudging through the song lists to unlock more songs and venues and to get more clothes for your musician.
Guitar Hero III follows a similar format but the culmination of events in the career and the addition of the few boss battles along the way spice up what would otherwise be a ho-hum single-player game. Neversoft brought in the idea of "boss battles" against real - and not-so-real - guitarists for Guitar Hero III. This reeked of desperation when I first heard about it, but after playing it, I have to say it's implemented very well. Going head-to-head in guitar duels with the likes of Slash and Tom Morello on solos they recorded specifically for these sections of the game adds a new challenge to the familiar formula.
Using real guitarists and newly recorded solos makes the joy of victory even sweeter. I could care less if I beat Axel Steel or Judy Nails in a guitar duel, but Slash? Beating Slash sounds fun. Both Tom Morello and Slash went into the Neversoft Studios to get laser-scanned and do motion-capture for their characters and they both confessed to being fans of the series. This is a hard one to call since the two games are so similar but I'm going to give the point to Guitar Hero III for the faintest hint of a story and the inclusion of the boss battles.
Winner - Guitar Hero III
Multiplayer
While the single-player category winner was hard to pick, this one was easy. There is no other experience like four-player Rock Band. This is without a doubt the best party game around. You may feel intimidated at first, but once you warm to the game and get your head around the premise, your inhibitions will melt away.
Rock Band puts all four instruments on one screen - guitars on the sides, drums in the middle, and vocals across the top.
Local multiplayer on Guitar Hero III is not to be dismissed, but when the entire song is being controlled by players as in Rock Band the connection to the music is even deeper. The online components of both games suffer since the only options are the dueling modes and cooperative quickplay (there aren't any online campaigns) but even the quickplay can deliver the goods. These games are all about local multiplayer.
Rock Band takes the local multiplayer campaign one step further with the Band World Tour. This mode allows you to create individual characters, form a band and tour the world. As you rack up fans and stars you'll get access to buses, planes, bodyguards, PR firms, etc., and venues from around the globe will become available. If there's a drawback to the Band World Tour, it's that much of the time the songs you play are chosen randomly from the list of unlocked titles. It's best to unlock all the songs before starting your Band World Tour...unless you want to play "Say It Ain't So" ten times in the first two hours.
Winner - Rock Band
Song List
These games are only as good as the songs they include. This is another hard category to score because it's absolutely dependent on personal taste. I try to look at all the songs from a quality gameplay perspective but the fact remains that the songs you like are the ones that are the most fun to play. With that in mind, there are some design challenges that Rock Band faces as a multi-instrument game that Guitar Hero III avoids.
There are a finite number of songs you can put on the game disc. If your game consists only of guitar - and to a lesser extent bass - you only need to worry about finding great guitar songs, which makes it easier to maximize the number of songs that each player may find as their favorite to play. In the case of Rock Band, there needs to be great guitar songs, great drum songs and great singing songs. When I categorized the songs on Rock Band, I found that while some of them fell into the "great" category for two of the three instruments, none of them were great for all three. Since the songs need to cater to every instrument, there are fewer that shine for each individual instrument. In my opinion, Guitar Hero III has more kick-ass guitar songs so the song list feels better.
Winner - Guitar Hero III
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