All of the Guitar Hero games use the same game mechanics. The basic aim is to watch the coloured circles zooming down the frets toward you and hold down the right colour and strum at the right time to score. You can boost your score by chaining notes together. Guitar Hero: Van Halen is no different and since the band produced some great tunes there are plenty of challenging offerings here that will leave your fingers aching.
For real fans of Van Halen the fact you only get 25 of their songs and all of them are pre-1985 may come as a disappointment. This release comes on the back of the Metallica and Aerosmith versions but the Van Halen release is far more limited. There are no real extras for fans and the game totally fails to capture the high energy, spandex clad madness of Van Halen at their height in the eighties. It also completely ignores former members Sammy Hagar, Michael Anthony and Gary Cherone. The line up in the game is Eddie Van Halen, David Lee Roth, Alex Van Halen and Wolfgang Van Halen.
This game uses the old engine so the extras that came along with Guitar Hero 5 are missing here. There is a career mode and quickplay options and you can pit your skills against a friend. Largely thanks to the amazing skills of Eddie Van Halen the guitar parts are excellent and will throw up a new obstacle even for hardcore fans of the series.
The extra tracks that make up the list are from a completely random assortment of bands and none of them really fit with Van Halen at all. The fact they’ve completely ignored later Van Halen stuff is also sure to annoy some people. This really feels like a churned out title designed to squeeze every last bit of money out of a franchise which is getting tired. It’s almost the equivalent of a cash-in comeback tour for an aging rock band and that’s exactly how Van Halen appear in the game.
