Customer Reviews

Guitar Hero Van Halen

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I got the freebie copy of GH:VH from the GH5 promo. GH:VH uses the GH: Metallica engine - it has expert-plus drums and better star power indicators, but it doesn't have the easy group play drop-in/drop-out stuff of GH5 or the instrument challenges that make that game a little more interesting.

Positives: If you like classic David Lee Roth Van Halen (no Van Hagar here) you'll love it. You'll also dig it if you like playing hard guitar parts. It's difficult without being annoying - a lot of hard guitar songs are mostly endless strings of HOPOs and alt-strums. These are more interesting, and with a bunch of fun slide parts.

Negatives:
1) For most of the game you're "Van Halen in 2008." You too can be middle-aged guys reliving their youth! Not exactly my rock-n-roll fantasy. And yes, the game has Eddie's son Wolfgang on bass. I don't want to pick on him, but even his videogame avatar looks a little embarrassed to be there. Eventually you unlock classic VH...with Wolfgang sort of foolishly wearing Michael Anthony's sleeveless dice tee from 1984. O the humanity. Still, that was Eddies's call and not Activision's fault.

2) The cut scenes, venues and characterization are pretty thin. Except for one classic Van Halen club, the venues are all generic.

3) The non-Van Halen set list. I know it's personal taste. Maybe you love it, that's cool. But apart from a handful of period-appropriate songs (Foreigner, Deep Purple, The Clash), the non-VH songs are a grab bag of generic modern rock (Blink-182, Yellowcard, the ubiquitous Foo Fighters) and stuff that's already been released on Rock Band (Painkiller; Sick, Sick, Sick; Master Exploder; the egregious Pretty Fly for a White Guy). It feels like a bunch of songs that Activision had lying around because they didn't make the cut for GH5.

One thing I liked about GH: Metallica was that the non-Metallica tracks were songs the band liked, and songs that influenced or were influenced by Metallica. There was some intelligence behind the setlist and the whole game hung together. It wouldn't have been too hard to do this with GH:VH - mix more cheezeball 70's guitar rock (Nugent, Foghat, Alice Cooper, Styx), some Guitar God tracks (Jimi, Clapton, Santana), and some GH Rocks the 80's songs (Ratt, Journey, Autograph). Stuff that VH listened to, stuff that was inspired by VH, stuff that was on the radio when VH was big. Not too hard. But instead we get a set list assembled by the marketing staff. Meh.

GH: VH feels like GH: Metallica done on the cheap. Like halfway through development Activision realized this should have been a track pack and not a standalone game, but by then it was too late so they just half-assed it to get it out the door. Though my complaints melt away when I fake-play the opening chords of "Unchained." Three stars if you like Van Halen and don't care about money ($50 for 45 songs is painful). One star otherwise - if Van Halen isn't your thing, just stay away.

This could had been a 5 star title but as some reviews stated it was rushed and used the same engine as the Metallica game. Come on Activision you had a diamond in the rough and you blew it. This comes from a die hard Van Halen fan since 1980.

The game is addicting, is great, i have a lot of fun with it!!
Highly recomended!!!
All the songs are great!

This is not a hard Guitar hero if you are here for difficulty dont buy this one. The hardest song on this game you get get it by downloading the demo sad but true. "I DONT MEAN THE SONG SAD BUT TRUE IS ON THIS GAME" : / I buy guitar hero's for difficulty and I was Hoping this would take the cake but it didint. Its STILL A GOOD GAME I just like Expert mode alot buy it if you don't care about difficulty

I was a little reluctant to purchase this game at first, but I'm glad I did! There are a bunch of fun songs to play and even some that are really challenging towards the end of career mode.

I have 4 Guitar Hero and I think this is the best... A lot of great songs... Quantity, Quality. The only objection is I don't find the way to play two players and both guitar players...

This game is solid and fun but I feel a bit ripped off.

First, this is old Van Halen mixed with a lot of bad music that you would not buy. Allot of the Van Halen is the stuff on the old albums you probably would not listen to. Few Great songs, lots of music, probably some of the worst songs on the albums of some of these bands.

Probably was very cheap to license this game.

Buy it on sale for 10$ otherwise I would stay away.

Songs are awesome on it, got it for a great price! Fast shipping as well. Very happy with the purchase :)

I really like this game, I like just about every song on here. The only thing I think it is missing is songs from the sammy hagar era. There were a lot of songs I liked with sammy hagar on vocals. I think had they done that this would have been the best guitar hero game by far and also have hagar and anthony in the game as well.

Great game - I originally bought this for my husband, but it turns out that I like it more than he does! I'm new to the Guitar Hero games, but I think this one is fun. I would have liked to see more songs from Van Halen and from other artists, but I knew how many songs there were before I bought it. Lots of Van Halen songs were missing. I'm not sure if there's a way to add songs to it?? But otherwise, awesome game.