Following in the footsteps of GH Aerosmith and GH Metallica, Guitar Hero Van Halen is a retail game mostly focused on the title band but also including "guest acts". There are 25 songs from Van Halen's discography between 1978 and 1984, ignoring the time when Sammy Hagar was in the band and not mentioning former members Michael Anthony and Gary Cherone.
Only Eddie, Alex, Eddie's son Wolfgang and David Lee Roth appear as characters in the game.
There are 19 "guest acts" for a total of 44 playable tracks. The guest artist cast is very eclectic: it includes Billy Idol, Third Eye Blind, Judas Priest, the Clash, Killswitch Engage, Queen, the Offspring, Jimmy Eat World, Tenacious D, Queens of the Stone Age, Deep Purple, Foreigner, Weezer, Foo Fighters, Lenny Kravitz, Fountains of Wayne, Blink-182, Alter Bridge and Yellowcard.
The game engine is the same one used for GH Metallica, which was a slightly improved version of the GH Smash Hits engine. It supports all 4 'instruments'--guitar, bass, vocals and drums--as well as including GH Studio for making custom songs, but it lacks many features that were included in Guitar Hero 5 and Band Hero. This means no drop-in/drop-out party play, seperate 'careers' for each instrument, and the lack of refinements present in newer titles' GH Studio, among other things. It does support GH Tunes but won't import DLC for newer titles.
Sound-wise, GH Van Halen is terrific. The songs are all masters and you have full control over the audio mixing of the different instruments, recorded vocals, and sound effects. ProTip: either knock the vocals (not the mic) down a notch or raise the 'other instruments' up one. You can also enable Dolby Digital to get cleaner low end and surround sound support.
Concerning the visuals, GH Van Halen is merely passable. Characters have the "more realistic" look that they had in GH Metallica which was a big improvement over GH3 but still a ways beneath the quality of GH5 and Band Hero which have better textures, higher polygon counts for character models, and much more dynamic lighting and effects.
Gameplay is exactly the same as GH World Tour, which means the guitar parts can contain sustained notes and tap/slide sections, the bass charts can include open notes, and the drum tracks scale up or down depending on what drum controller you are using. The game is surprisingly hard, second only to GH Metallica in terms of difficulty, thanks to Roth's vocals and Eddie's guitar playing. The Drum+ difficulty option is available for some songs and lets you play with 2 kick pedals.
Career progression is star-based like GH Metallica rather than gig-based like GHWT or setlist-based like Smash Hits. The character and instrument creators are identical to previous series iterations except for the addition of unlockable instruments and paraphernalia from Van Halen's career. Aside from the single instrument and band careers, GHVH also has the standard quickplay and practice/tutorial modes, as well as both competitive and cooperative multiplayer locally and over LIVE.
My chief complaint with this game is the paltry number of songs--44 tracks is pathetic for a full-priced retail music game from 2009.
Some of the guest act songs are very fun to play but, as far as I know, none of them have anything to do with Van Halen, and that's odd since they are more than 40% of the game content. Another big negative is that there are no extra interviews or videos of the band. You can view 'Rock Facts' for each song but most of them are more like discography documentation and not historical or biographical in nature.
The lack of VH specifics and some of the most popular music from their career coupled with the odd extra artist inclusions make this title feel very slapped together; the use of outdated software technology makes it even worse.
Most of the Gamerscore for this game is tied to completing entire careers on Expert and 5-starring all 44 tracks as well as harsh tasks like completing the Drum+ career and every member of a 4-player band getting 100% on a song, making it possibly the most difficult music/rhythm game in terms of Achievements. You may need to set the difficulty a level below what you usually play on just to complete all of the songs, especially if you play guitar.
Bottom line: For die-hard Van Halen fans and people like me that are addicted to difficult songs, this game could be a 5, but for everyone else it is barely a 4 and I wouldn't even recommend it as a rental.
I can definitely see why Activision gave free copies of this to early purchasers of Guitar Hero 5.
Attachments
107150
15084
15084
150113
