We hope you finished Guitar Hero: Metallica, because Activision plans to release yet another entry in its mega popular music series, this one based on the legendary band, Van Halen. On August 4th, the appropriately titled Guitar Hero: Van Halen will rock its way to retail on Wii, Xbox 360, PS3 and PS2, complete with new songs to master and plenty of history. We just hope your hair's big enough to handle it.
This Van Halen edition features 25 master tracks from the band, including "Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love," "Jump," "Panama" and "You Really Got Me." Then you have additional songs from such bands as Weezer ("Dope Nose"), Queen ("I Want It All") and Yellowcard ("The Takedown"). If this game's similar to previous band-centric offerings, Activision will do a decent job mixing quality stuff from Van Halen with bands from various eras, presumably ones that somehow connect to the iconic group.
You'll also get to play as Eddie Van Halen, Alex Van Halen, Wolfgang Van Halen and David Lee Roth (no Sammy Hagar). You'll begin with avatars that resemble them today, and unlock younger versions as you progress through the game. We can only hope that scoring perfect scores on the highest difficultly unlocks Van Halen babies.
While on the subject of scores, Guitar Hero: Van Halen plays similar to previous games in the series, as up to four players can form a band and break off into lead, bass guitar, drums and vocals. That said, you won't find Guitar Hero 5's party games, nor will you be able to take advantage of its drop in/drop out play, since allowing you to do that would thwart Activision's plan to continue milking the franchise.
Whether or not this is great news for Van Halen fans remains to be seen. Metallica was significantly better than last year's Aerosmith, so we have high hopes for this new Guitar Hero. We'll find out whether Activision delivered this August.
Chris Buffa is GameDaily's senior editor. He enjoys easy achievement points, first person shooters and starting trouble.
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