Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock puts players through a fantasy quest with a twist: you have to shred a guitar to save rock music itself. The game asks players to lead eight individual characters through a realm of studded black leather and dark gothic undertones, using their special abilities to complete rock performance challenges and move toward an ultimate battle against an antagonist known as “The Beast.” It is the sixth full title in the original play-along rock & roll series, and it arrives with the largest out-of-the-box playlist ever in the Guitar Hero line.
Trailer, via HERO Europe.
The Playlist
The game boasts more than 90 tracks from artists including Black Sabbath, Kiss, Megadeth, Anthrax, Def Leppard, and Soundgarden. Hits by Dire Straits, The Cure, Queen, and The Rolling Stones round out the list. That total is the largest the series has shipped with, and it shows.
Quickplay lets players jump straight into the Rock Warrior characters’ special powers outside of the main story campaign. Party Play and other familiar modes let any combination of guitar, bass, drums, and vocals join together.
The Story Mode
Quest mode is the new draw here. Players lead eight individual characters to transform into heroic warriors by earning power stars. Once a character reaches its warrior state, their power upgrades into a “+” form that either boosts the effect or adds bonus effects. Collecting stars also unlocks additional characters for Quickplay, ranging from past figures to Arthas Menethil from the Warcraft franchise.
The storyline incorporates Rush’s seven-part “2112,” and a new song performed by Megadeth serves as its culmination. That song would later appear on Megadeth’s following album, TH1RT3EN.
The Gameplay
The controls follow the formula set by Guitar Hero 5. Up to four people can play in a band on vocals, lead and bass/rhythm guitar, and drums, using special instrument controllers to simulate the playing of rock music. Players match scrolling note gems that correspond to their instrument’s part in the given song to score points.
Guitar and bass players hold down the appropriate colored buttons and use the strum bar as notes pass over a marked zone. Drummers strike matching drum pads. Vocalists match the relative pitch of the song’s lyrics as guided by phrase markers. Missing notes drops the performance meter, and an empty meter ends the song for solo players or forces the band to revive a fallen member.
Each player can pick one of five difficulty levels: Beginner, Easy, Medium, Hard, and Expert. A sixth Expert+ level is available on drums, adding a double bass pedal. Harder difficulties mean higher note density and harder playing techniques, but each player picks their own level.
What’s Missing
The game does not feature characters of real-life musicians. Ongoing legal issues with the likenesses of celebrity musicians in Guitar Hero 5 and Band Hero kept real names off the screen. That means only eight fictional guitarists appear, two of them entirely new.
That absence changes the feel of the campaign. Without named performers, the story leans more on fantasy than on rock history, and the characters feel less like tributes to actual bands than like stand-ins with special powers.
The Verdict
Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock is a solid entry in a series that had grown comfortable. The story mode adds a reason to care about the eight characters beyond their stats, and the playlist gives longtime players plenty of reasons to return. The controls carry over well from Guitar Hero 5, and the addition of Quickplay gives solo players a fast way into the game’s best moments.
But the lack of real-life musicians keeps the game from feeling essential. Fans of the series will find hours of replay value in the expanded track list, but the core formula hasn’t changed, and the fantasy setting won’t convince anyone who wasn’t already sold on the genre.
- A large playlist with more than 90 tracks
- A new story mode with eight playable characters
- A Quickplay option for solo play
- A Quest mode that turns characters into warriors
- A mix of metal, pop, and classic rock tracks
The game is available as a standalone title, letting players use existing compatible instrument controllers, or as a bundle that includes a microphone and guitar, bass, and drum controllers. The PS3 version also comes in an edition bundled with a hard-rock themed guitar controller.
Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock is a competent entry in a series that had grown comfortable. It doesn’t break new ground, but it delivers the biggest playlist in the series’ history and a story mode that gives players a reason to care about the eight characters they lead. For fans, that’s enough. For newcomers, the fantasy setting may be a hard sell. The game earns a score of 6.8 out of 10.
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