After a full gauntlet of Guitar Hero games in one year, Activision closes out 2009 with one more, surprise launch with Guitar Hero: Van Halen. Though surprise should be a misnomer; though the game would be released right before Christmas of 2009, it was originally shipped to players as a pre-order bonus for those who purchased Guitar Hero 5.
This is a curious move for sure. Maybe someone at Activision realized the multitude of releases was becoming problematic. Having another band-centric game in the same year as Guitar Hero: Metallica was probably not a wise move either. Perhaps it was always part of the plan, release a band-centric Guitar Hero game as a bonus for the mainline game to provide extra content for players. Whatever the case may be, Van Halen is definitely an anomaly within the Guitar Hero franchise, and that is not always a good thing.
Van Halen follows the same formula as all of the band-centric games; it focuses on the history of the band from their rise in the late 1970s to the then modern day of 2009. However, unlike Aerosmith, Metallica, or The Beatles, Van Halen was never a fully stable lineup of musicians, with a few lineup changes over the years that are fairly significant. Most famously was the relationship between guitarists Eddie Van Halen and singers David Lee Roth, Sammy Hagar, and Gary Cherone.
Not to get into too much behind the scenes here, but Eddie Van Halen was on amicable terms with Cherone and had personality clashes with Hagar and Roth, though at the time of the games release, Roth had returned to the band for the second time. The band at that point was also a family affair, with Alex Van Halen, Eddie's brother, on drums since its inception, and his son Wolfgang Van Halen, replacing longtime bassist Mark Anthony in the mid 2000s. It was this lineup of the Van Halen's and David Lee Roth that would be the focal point of Guitar Hero: Van Halen, which is a major point of contention for some players.
The real elephant in the room is the lack of Mark Anthony, Gary Cherone and Sammy Hagar in the game at all. This also includes zero songs written or sung by Hagar during his era with the band, meaning a ton of Van Halen hits between 1985-1996, along with Cherone's sole album recording in 1998. This means a total of five albums were omitted from the list of Van Halen songs in-game, and along with it a ton of potential songs that could be featured.
We know that David Lee Roth had zero objections to Hagar, which was reported at the time by Activision's head of music licensing. This is arguably similar to Guitar Hero: Metallica, which did not include the late Cliff Burton or Jason Newstead as playable characters; but it did include songs they were a part of, and gave tribute to them in-game. Van Halen, however, makes no reference to Cherone, Anthony or Hagar.
In truth, we may never know why the trio were excluded in the end, though Occam's Razor suggests that someone in the band didn't want them to be there. It ultimately doesn't matter, as the end product of what we do get is a band-centric game that feels incomplete. A large chunk of Van Halen's history is exorcized, leaving us with a song selection that is good, but not great.
Since all of the songs are coming from the David Lee Roth albums, we scraped down some interesting choices for the game's soundtrack. Massive hits like "Runnin with the Devil", "Jump", "Panama", "Unchained" and of course, the instrumental "Eruption" are included. For every known hit or great song, you get some curious choices though, like "Atomic Punk", "Loss of Control", and "Cathedral". Unique choices sure, but for most Van Halen fans they would likely be disappointed that there is no "Dreams", "Don't Tell Me What Love Can Do" or "Why Can't This Be Love" to play instead.
It is also a small number of Van Halen songs due to the focus on David Lee Roth songs. You have twenty-five songs with lyrics, and three guitar-centric solos as performed by Eddie Van Halen, leading to a 28 song total from the band. It is mostly in line with Guitar Hero: Aerosmith in this regard, but it is the first time the guest acts closely match the content of the headliner.
The guest act selections are also a bit uninspired. Reportedly, Wolfgang Van Halen selected the songs for the guest acts, and there are a lot of good bands and choices there, but it doesn't feel indicative of bands that were influenced by Van Halen, or vice versa. Deep Purple, Alter Bridge, Weezer, and Judas Priest all get some representation though, so there is a solid mix of well known acts and a few unique surprises. One big issue however is the repetition of songs; Queens of the Stone Age "Sick, Sick Sick" is on the track list, and this is the second time it was released, both previous times as a downloadable for Rock Band. Judas Priest's "Painkiller" is the same, being on the main setlist of Rock Band 2. In fact, thirteen out of the nineteen guest acts had a song either already released in Rock Band as DLC, or on a main disk in Rock Band 2. By the time Rock Band 4 comes out, that number jumps to 22 songs in total, including seven Van Halen songs.
This is what I mean by uninspired; they are good songs, but for a lot of them they were nothing new. It is a similar chart to Harmonix' work, and developer Underground Development, the fifth team to work on a Guitar Hero game now, didn't really deviate much from what was already established out there. In truth, there is not much to really say either; Van Halen feels very thin and sanitized, with the full band setup intact and a stripped down feature list from the mainline Guitar Hero games playable, mainly because it's in the Guitar Hero: World Tour engine; the 5th game to be derived from it in the series.
Many accuse Van Halen for being a game that was lazily developed, though this is something I don't necessarily agree with. There are some visual flairs here and there; my favorite little detail is that we see Eddie Van Halen's fingers plucking the guitar with great veracity during his primary solos, so it's not a lazy production by any standard. Some care was also put into the design of the band, reflecting their 1970's and 80's wardrobe at times and even changing the order of events; with the early years of the band being the final setlist you go through. The heavier focus on guitar is also an addition, having a guitar career and band career pathway to differentiate the two.
Still, the extra little bits that Underground Development added were not enough to really stop the inevitable; Guitar Hero: Van Halen is just a bad game. It is hard to go from the standards set forth by The Beatles: Rock Band, but even by the standards of band-centric Guitar Hero games like Metallica, Van Halen lacks any charm or uniqueness to it. There is not a lot of behind the scenes info, there are not a lot of unique songs, and the fact that the game became a pre-order bonus package probably says a lot about the confidence Activision had in it at this point.
We will never truly know why Guitar Hero: Van Halen came out the way it did. Maybe the fatigue was finally catching up to Activision itself now, but in the end the result is a half-baked mess of a game that could have been good, but turned out to be lacking heavily. This is not a game that is just a massive misfire like Band Hero, it is a game that is disappointingly bad across the whole board; tired visuals, weaker production values, and overall curious design decisions that shackle it to being the worst of the band-centric rhythm games by far, and in the running for the worst Guitar Hero games in the series.
Authors Note: Some videos of online footage were used to capture screenshots of online gameplay. Links are below for credit.