After four years of Guitar Hero (GH), Activision probes the rhythm music genre for extra customers with a mainstream pop version of their franchise.

The floors of Gamestops and gaming shops everywhere will be filled with with large boxes of plastic instruments this Christmas, and wedged in amongst the hapless store staff, next to the boxes of the recently released Guitar Hero 5, DJ Hero, and competitor's Beatles: Rock Band, there will also be a large, precarious stack of Band Heroes. Surely there will be no home in North America that will be without some version of plastic guitars and drum kits come December 25th. And there is good reason for these mountains of instruments, as there are few fantasies more potent than imagining oneself to be an edgy, sexy, and cool rock god, pounding out notes in syncronicity to the rough beats of any number of rock anthems from the last 40 years.

It's a good deal for the publisher as well: Music games, with their high margin peripherals and tempting in-game music stores are a hot profit center. This season, Electronic Arts and Activision square off in a titanic struggle to control market dominance of the genre. In the last volley, Activision even offered a mail-in coupon for a free copy of Guitar Hero: Van Halen when pre-ordering with Guitar Hero 5. Against this, Electronic Arts had the big guns: Beatles: Rock Band. And when the dust settled, the Beatles took the first month sales lead away from the venerable GH franchise for the first time.

But, Activision has an ace up its sleeve: Band Hero has just been released, on November 3rd, 2009. Surely this one, two, three punch from Activision will keep the “Hero” franchise on top of net sales come this year's end... but... is Band Hero polished, creative, and original enough to create its own identity amongst all these competing products? Read on to find out..

Gameplay:

Upon launching, the game puts a band on a stage and directly starts playing songs from its library of 65 tracks. Perhaps it will play one of the tracks from its highly touted artists: No Doubt, Nelly Furtado, or Taylor Swift. Or perhaps a nostalgic favorite from the Jackson 5, David Bowie or Duran Duran. Players can leave it on as background ambience for their slumber party or jump in and start playing from any point in the song without going through any tedious menus or setup. Dropping out of a song or changing options does not interrupt song play, so the music won't grind to a halt as you connect controllers or change difficulty settings as players swap turns. There is also a no-fail Beginner difficulty mode, so that the resident 4-year old brat brother can demand to play a few songs with his sister's friends, all the while getting coos of “Isn't he soooo cute!” while pillow stuffing gently falls around him. Setting up playlists is a snap, so long sessions of Taylor Swift's “ You Belong With Me” played over and over and over again are a simple reality. Players do not have to use annoying cheat codes or go through tedious unlocking to get at the song content in Quickplay either. We appreciated how (with the Xbox version), players can select their own Xbox live Avatar to appear on stage alongside the lean and gangly preset stars included with the game, or roll their own likenesses using the in-game character studio, which match better with the look and feel of the game.

Band Hero also supports any number of Lead Guitars, Bass or Mics, even going so far as to call out a special Sing Along Mode which showcases 4-player microphone-only play, which we think will be amongst the top reasons police will come to your door investigating noise complaints. We also tested and found that both Xbox headsets and Rock Band guitar perhiperals work fine with Band Hero, which is a good move by the developer as it improves the odds players will have enough of the preferred instruments to go around.

Band Hero also contains some features ported over from Guitar Hero 5. Most obvious of these and feeling pretty out of place is GHStudio which is a hopelessly complicated suite which allows players to develop their own tracks. “Free” or not, we couldn't help but feel Band Hero would feel more focused to its target market without this feature. The competitive modes also seem a bit too macho and out of place for a title so focused on creating warm fuzzy feelings of camaraderie and casual play. Career mode is a by the books location and character progression unlocking mode, and feels justified and necessary for a $69MSRP (disc only) or $219MSRP (full kit) game.

Graphics:

The environments are colourful, bright and well saturated with effects. Campaign mode features multiple unlockable venues which each have their own unique theme. The environments appear to have been selected for minimal grunge factor and more commercial venues in mind, such as a mall or evening indie festival. There is plenty of neon. This all adds up to making the game fun to watch for spectators, as the focus of the players is the note track. The note track is clean, uncluttered, and is easy to understand. Textures and effects on the note track are fairly basic with a few flourish effects when you invoke Star Power. Seeing as the rest of the game is so fun and colourful to look at we wonder if anything more could be done to spruce up the note track after 4 years of Guitar Hero sequels. Anything? Coloring the track, warping the track, or allowing the user to specify some amount of transparency might be more interesting by now.

Sound:

We can't be sure that we have heard all 65 tracks of Band Hero end-to-end, but we can say with confidence that the music is well rendered within the soundscape of the game. Audience cues and responses to the player's actions are serviceable, but we had some difficulty feeling like a rock star at some points: Selected tracks from the setlist felt a little too mainstream and commercial to really drive that rock star instinct out of the player. For example, a Tap Playing mechanic allows the player to tap out translucent onscreen notes without strumming. This was used at points to let the lead guitar play horn solos (eg. Duran Duran's "Rio"). While a different mechanic is nice, instead of feeling that surge of ego during a cool solo, we felt cheesy.

Longevity:

Band Hero feels like a well executed party game, with special attention paid to making sure tweens will have a fun social diversion between bouts of gossip or painting toenails before curfew. But it is so calculated in its targeting, that despite a perfectly serviceable campaign mode and online competitive features, the long term attraction of progressing and becoming a rock star within the title has been cannibalized by its casual mood and pastime-activity feel. Having spent your money, you might just as readily find its customers huddled under a tented blanket with flashlights, playing Animal Crossing together on thier Nintendo DSs.

Overall:

Band Hero is a solid execution of a neon-infused Coca Cola commercial. It makes itself fantastically easy to pick up and play in sugary 3 minute doses, and to drop out just as easily. Technically, features and presentation are well executed and bug free. The box even has a rainbow on it. However, we have some issues recommending it unconditionally due to missing that something that makes a player take the experience seriously and invest effort to earn progression. It's a victim of its own targeting.