Guitar Hero: Van Halen
[ Register or Signin to view external links. ]

Game Information
Developer: Neversoft
Publisher: Activision
Genre: Music
Platform: PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360
Release Date: December 22, 2009

---

Synopsis
Guitar Hero: Van Halen is the third and final band-specific music rhythm game in the Guitar Hero series. As with the previous games Guitar Hero: Aerosmith and Guitar Hero: Metallica, the game features 25 songs from Van Halen along with 19 additional songs from selected artists that have been inspired by the group. The game was released in retail for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii systems on December 22, 2009, in North America, and in February 2010 for PAL regions. However, as part of a promotion with Guitar Hero 5, the game was shipped to Guitar Hero 5 purchasers in North America prior to its retail release. The game was developed by Neversoft with Underground Development assisting Neversoft on developing the Xbox 360 port and published by Activision.

---

Gameplay
The gameplay of this Guitar Hero is something new to me when I first played it. It reminded me of the Rock band series when I first played that. This goes up to four players playing at once; lead guitar, bass, drums, and the singer. The game doesnt feature the drop in and then drop out kind of gameplay, you must go through it all. The would have to say my favorite is drums, lead, bass, and then vocals but thats just me. Most of the songs are by the Van Halen band of course some with the new people and some with the former band members. There is only 4 playable characters; Eddie Van Halen, David Lee Roth, Alex Van Halen and Wolfgang Van Halen. They all have what they would look like back then, funky hair and tight jeans. There is two modes, story and free play. In the story you go through as what some of there bands went through. It shows cut scenes of the real band and them doing cool stuff. In free play you just play whatever song you would like to choose. There isnt as much songs as there is as the other games but it is still fun to play and gets you rocking in your room. The player can also unlock skins for your guys and you can dress them up any way you'd like.

---

Graphics
The graphics of this game are like any old guitar hero game. But now that you can play lead, bass, drums, and vocals it looks much more like the Rock band series. It has a bar popped up on your screen and red, yellow, green, orange, and blue notes coming at you. Now this is actually when you have the notes, when it goes over your marker you must strum and press the buttons. The game shows many perspective if your looking somewhere else besides your playing area. Like one moment it will show the whole band playing together and then it will change quickly to the lead guitar perspective. The characters are actually apart of the band and they look as they would in real life. It will show them all dancing around having a great time. The one thing that looks bad in this game is the drummer. He doesnt even look like he is hitting the pads or that he really isnt into it. It has a rock meter on the side as well as your blue star power. Red means your bad, yellow means good, green mean rock on! The little light bulbs on top of that are your blue star power. When you actually use it everything will go blue and the light bulbs will break. I saw no problems with graphics, they wouldnt effect the gameplay that much any ways if there bad.

---

Controls
The controls of this game are pretty self explanatory if you have played any of the others. For guitars you strum and hit the colored buttons at the top of the guitar, for drums you hit the pads with your sticks (they all have a certain color on them thats how you know which is which), for vocals you just simply sing when it gets highlighted. There just simple controls like that. Now in this game they can have combination of buttons but it isnt that bad. Guitar you might need to strum and hit two notes at the same time, drums you might need to hit the pads at the same time, and vocals there is no other thing. If your on a certain difficulty you might want to speed up your reflexes a bit. This games controls makes it able to be sitting down or standing up. You will preform better when sitting on the drums and standing up for the guitars. The controls make perfect sense for the game, I saw no flaws in it whatsoever and it was just fun.

---

Rating
Synopsis 8/10
Gameplay 9/10
Graphics 8/10
Controls 10/10
Overall 9/10