A nice selection of rock-centric tracks makes this a decent return to form for the franchise.

I'll freely admit to being burned out on Guitar Hero or Rock Band games as anybody else was last year, and thankfully Neversoft and Harmonix both apparently took notice. Of course, Activision was the largest offender, offering up multiple variations on Guitar Hero over the course of 2009 that really ended up taking their toll on sales numbers, with the end result being dissolution of that particular wing of Neversoft's team for the publishing giant. Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock (effectively Guitar Hero 6), marks the last Neversoft developed title in the franchise, and while I realize it's popular to hate on the series at this point, I actually think Warriors of Rock is pretty good.

The game designers have said they were looking to go back to the series roots, in particular going back to the success of Guitar Hero 3, and by doing so were looking to cut out some of the diversity offered up in Guitar Hero 5 in favor of more rock-centric tracks. For the most part Warriors of Rock delivers on that, offering up some great cuts with songs like "Bohemian Rhapsody" from Queen, "Money for Nothing" from Dire Straits, and some gameplay specific moments involving Rush's 2112 album. There are still a couple songs in the game I could do without, like Nickelback's "How You Remind Me" or Fall Out Boys "Dance, Dance". Those are mostly due to my own taste in music, and I can see how their popularity would be seen as a nice inclusion for certain folks, but they're definitely not my cup of tea. On a less subjective note, I think there's also a couple tracks that just seem a little out of place, and while I'm a pretty big fan of The Cure, having Fascination Street on the track list seems a little out of place In comparison to the majority of the song list. I think a little more refinement could have went into making the track list reflect the theme of the game, but for the most part the list given here is damn good.

The game goes for a tongue in cheek representation of heavy metal / rock stereotypes, mimicking to a certain degree what Brutal Legend did, giving the game a medieval sheen with giant monsters, rock Demi-gods, guitars shaped like giant battle axes, and an actual quest line for Guitar Hero characters to follow. Most of the Guitar Hero games haven't been without a story before, but it was generally delegated to small animated cut scenes. This time, however, the game goes a little further with in-game assets being used to depict characters as they unlock their inner rock form, changing familiar characters like Axel Steel or Judy Nails into monsters/warriors of rock, hence the game title.

It's more than just a visual change as well, as the game introduces specific abilities for each character. For instance, Johnny comes with the ability to never fall below a 2x multiplier, while Axel has a resurrection ability, granting him the ability to prevent you from failing out of a song a couple times. Each character starts off with a unique ability, and then that ability is amplified once you've earned enough stars to transform the character permanently. Also, each venue is divided by the characters, meaning you'll play as Johnny at one venue for a list of 8 songs, and then go to a venue to play as Judy Nails for another 8. The game tracks your progress by Quest Percentage, and also a meter that fills up as you earn stars, letting you know how close you are to triggering their transformation.

The quest line is divided up into two sections, one that has you playing as four different musicians before attempting to gain access to a legendary weapon, which then kicks off the pretty awesome Rush segment of the game, complete with liner note narration from actual members of Rush as you play through 7 tracks from 2112. Then the second half of the quest involves unlocking the other four rockers and then battling against the Beast, which has trapped the Demi-God of Rock, voiced a bit poorly by Gene Simmons of KISS fame. Once you've completed the quest you'll actually gain the ability to play songs with all of the individual abilities combined, which means that there's a total of 40 stars that can be earned on every song in the game, and if you want a 100 percent completion total you'll need to replay them all to gain it.

It's certainly a departure from the way previous games were presented, but at its core it really comes down to playing venues like the previous games, just with a whole lot more presentation involved. That said, as a predominantly single player experience, I found the whole set-up to be a lot of fun. This isn't going to be the driving reason for people to pick up the game if they only break out the plastic guitar instruments for the occasional party, but for someone like myself that's not a particularly huge multiplayer person, I definitely enjoyed the scenario and over the top style the game exudes so well.

Also worth noting is that the challenge of the game feels like it's been amped up a bit. I realize that the Megadeth infused ending sequence was designed specifically for the hardcore (and it's certainly challenging), but even some of the other tracks involved throughout the quest provided a pretty damn good challenge for myself. That said, the difficulty is a little all over the place too, which can be a little off-putting if you're playing with someone that's a little more casual at their approach to music games. There were plenty of instances early on where I found odd spikes in set lists, and it was hard to gauge the difficulty of songs inside the Quest mode. Generally in older games as you advanced to new venues the difficulty would gradually ramp up, but here it just hops around a bit, and it's certainly not as progressive as the older titles.

Outside of Quest mode the game offers up the usual suite of multiplayer experiences, and does include the Party Play option from Guitar Hero 5 as well, but you'll have to access it from the menu as opposed to it just starting up automatically like Guitar Hero 5 does. One thing that's seen a little bit of a makeover is the Quickplay mode, which allows you to create large set-lists, and import songs from previous Guitar Hero titles (World Tour on up), and includes specific song challenges to complete for every song you play, even the imported tracks. The game tracks your star progress and you'll level up along the way, unlocking additional content or bonuses as you continue to play.

While Warriors of Rock doesn't quite knock it out of the park when it comes to music games, it's a decent enough send-off for Neversoft that feels a little more focused on actual Rock than previous Guitar Hero games of the past couple years, and it's definitely a welcome return to form. Of course with all the features already being touted about for Rock Band 3 this year it's hard to think of Warriors of Rock as a really progressive entry into the genre, but I think there's enough fun to be had with the on disc content to make it worth a look for everyone that already generally enjoys these types of games. It's definitely not geared at the casual fan, which might alienate a few people, but if you've been looking for a challenging exercise to get those fret fingers loosened up a bit, then I suggest checking it out.