{"id":3178,"date":"2009-09-20T11:59:10","date_gmt":"2009-09-20T17:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamingwithchildren.com\/?p=3178"},"modified":"2009-09-20T11:59:10","modified_gmt":"2009-09-20T17:59:10","slug":"guitar-hero-tasteless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/20\/guitar-hero-tasteless\/","title":{"rendered":"Guitar Hero Tasteless"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cobain-guitarhero5\"Seen the new Guitar Hero 5 commercial?\u00a0 I’m not going to link to it but I bet you can find it at Youtube or someplace similar. Anyway, the short of it is that, like GH World Tour, they’re doing the Risky Business thing except that where a young Tom Cruise (in his undies and socks) was, a blonde supermodel is. For Guitar Hero 5 it’s a horde of pretty girls wearing socks and button up T’s (and presumably tighty whiteys). Now, I’m not prude or anything and I don’t really mind my kids seeing this but something does bother me . . .<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And that’s my daughter asking me who that creepy old man is.\u00a0 The creepy old man is Hugh Hefner, a mummified version at least, and my daughter is right. Man is he creepy in this commercial. People often ask me the difference between GH and Rock Band and I usually answer that Rock Band has a more cohesive feel – a feel that indicates the developers are more “into” music than the competition (the Rock Band makers, Harmonix, popularized this kind of gameplay and made Guitar Hero 1 and 2) – and to me at least, Rock Band has better music.<\/p>\n

Rock Band: Beatles is a perfect case in point.<\/p>\n

That small prejudice aside – and it is a small one because, why choose? The instruments work for both games – this commercial illustrates this difference perfectly. Rock Band uses music to sell its product, Guitar Hero uses Hugh Hefner. Oh, and yeah, I’m also geeky enough to mention almost every time I see this ad that you really can’t play Guitar Hero while cavorting on a couch with your girlfriends and kicking your sleek legs in the air.<\/p>\n

So, the Activision ad department is out of synch with the game they’re advertising, that’s not the developer’s (Neversoft) fault. But Kurt Cobain is their fault. You can also look this up at Youtube but GH5 uses Cobain and Johnny Cash as unlockable avatars. Cartoon figures. Not a problem so much when it’s Slash or some other guitar player – but when its a tortured soul like Cobain and you can make him sing songs and dance like a monkey to music he’d loathe? Not so cool. Not so cool at all. Creepy, in fact.<\/p>\n

Add in that commercial, and you get double creepy.<\/p>\n

Activision\/Neversoft need to take a cue from their rival. Rock Band Beatles exudes a real love for its subject. Much like Rock Band 2 had that cool ACDC commercial (that didn’t star ACDC but captured the spirit) they used. Kids get it and come on, they shouldn’t be asking their folks who Cobain is and why he’s dancing and singing Bon Jovi – and who that creepy guy is in the commercial. Long live Rock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seen the new Guitar Hero 5 commercial?\u00a0 I’m not going to link to it but I bet you can find it at Youtube or someplace similar. Anyway, the short of it is that, like GH World Tour, they’re doing the Risky Business thing except that where a young Tom Cruise (in his undies and socks) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}