Quick Van Halen thoughts:

You only play as old (current) Van Halen? Like a current concert tour? Lame.

The idea that you have to play even a couple other shitty band songs before you can play more Van Halen is flat out retarded.

Yeah, I don't get the setup for this game at all. In Aerosmith and Beatles you play through the band's careers and Metallica gave you a cover band story. In this it's like a modern tour with a 22 year old Eddie, a hairless DLR who looks to be in the mid-30s range. Alex looks young and then there is some baby-faced meathead on bass. So yeah, current tour using younger looking versions of themselves?? Oh and no DLR antics on stage.

Another couple of baffling things I've noticed. This game gives out star power like crazy. It's impossible to not 5 star a song(at least on hard). Nearly every song has sections of long sustains with star power so you rarely have less than a full meter the whole song.

Jump - my least favorite VH song. Well least is putting it nicely, I hate that fucking song and this game gave me even more of a reason to hate it. You play the synth part for pretty much the entire song.

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Other little things:
Tutorial achievements? Really, again? We're almost a dozen games into the franchise and forcing us to do this shit again? Same with designing tattoos, guitars and shit that's done before. They really suck at coming up with achievements.

Sammy gripes aside, this game really should have had some more time in the cooker. It feels like they phoned this one in. You could actually tell the guys that crafted Metallica cared about what they were making. That's not the case here. Kinda makes sense why they're giving it away for free.

I have a question. Do we know who decided to leave out the Sammy Hagar VH? It seems that people think it was Activision, but I doubt it was their call. I blame the band, particularly Eddie.

No one has really said, but I'm betting that's the reason this game sucks. Somewhere along the way they were told "No Hagar" for whatever reason, and so Activision decided to just half-ass the thing and throw it out there.

The fact that there's no Van Hagar nonsense is the only reason I'm interested in the game. But I can see why fans of that era are pissed.

If the game truly sucks, it's because of Activision. They don't care about the music or experience, it's all about branding and product.

I finished up the VH tunes last night and probably 10 of the other tunes and I figured out what this game feels like.

Guitar Hero: Van Halen feels like a couple of guys got their hands on Frets on Fire for the first time and went on cram session to pump this game out in one weekend.

Did someone hack porieux's account or something? I've gotten two emails about goofy statements he's made in here and in the Rock Band thread and now they're both gone.

I got my copy of GH:VH today. Popped it in and played a few songs.

I wasn't too surprised to see that the development of the game was outsourced to another company, and that the game ran on the GH:WT engine (rather than GH5). If you liked GH5 as a MASSIVE improvement over the lackluster GHWT, be prepared to be disappointed. The clumsy, crowded, interface is BACK. Like GH:M and GH5, you don't have to do sets; just unlock enough stars.

The sound quality is MUCH better than GH5; the audio sounds rich and deep and has punch, rather than that thin, tinny, boxy GH5 audio. The animations are acceptable. Was it just me or is the game setup that you CAN'T play custom characters, just the stock ones? I'll have to check that out again.

The song selection is good. I am HUGE fan of DLR-era VH, so I'm loving what I've played so far. Thankfully you don't have to play too many "outside artists" to unlock more VH songs, but the wife and I had fun doing Third Eye Blind and Fountains of Wayne.

If anything, the game feels like a cheap leftover. If you like the song's you'll generally like the game, but it's not as fun or crafted with as much care as the Metallica game. It's worthwhile at a $20-30 price point. Free with GH5 was a smart move.

Have they totally dropped all pretense of including similar bands in these GH band-licensed games? I mean, come on : what does "Semi-Charmed Life" possibly have remotely in common with VH's work?

I was stoked to see perhaps my favorite rock song of the decade : Foo Fighter's "Best Of You" on there -- until I played it. It's one of those fast-strumming single-note boring tracks that you never want to play again. I guess I should have realized that listening to the song, but I never did until tonight.

GH5 Demo (360)

They've totally dropped the pretense of even providing a setup for the game itself. It's no surprise that there are 20 random artists that have nothing to do with VH themselves.

I bet they included those 20 artists because they inspired VH and gave them the drive to make good music.

I like Sammy's solo work and work with Red Rider, but his work with VH was abysmal. Only Hagar could take a monster rock riff and turn it into a sissy song about love (see Humans Being, for example).

Sure, that song is terrible, but Right Now and Best Of Both Worlds are decent enough, IMO.

I love Human's Being. That would be a blast to play.

I prefer DLR era VH by far, but 5150, Summer Nights, Best of Both Worlds, Cabo Wabo, Dreams, etc would be great fun too.

Red Rider?

Montrose?

Fuck Eddie. All this is almost forgivable if we could get some Chickenfoot in Rock Band.

News of Sammy being in Red Rider is new to me, that's all.

Red Rider was already a feeble-sounding band in the early/mid 80s. They didn't need Sammy Hagar joining them to accelerate THAT process.

so i was playing this before i went to work.. i went for quickplay and i thought i'd play what to me sounded like it would be pretty easy to play.. now i'm not the best gh player by far, i'm still playing on med.. i picked tom petty american girl.. 96% done, I was killing it till the end of the song.. that like came from out of nowhere.. damg! I went from green to red in a matter of seconds.. i'm gonna have to slow it down and practice it.. thats my goal now not only to finish it but to 5 star it.

oh and i remember a thread that said nirvana was gonna be exclusive for rock band.. thats cool that gh was able to put a couple of songs in gh 5

LOL, I did mean Montrose.

No fans of Lunatic Fringe on DVDT it seems

Great song...even made Matthew Modine look tough. Hendo in UFC still uses it...classic.

I just got this e-mail, which explains why PS3 owners haven't gotten their copies yet:

Looks like Neversoft want's to get in the nut kicking business. They can't let Harmonix have their moment, now can they?