By the time 2010 rolls around, the rhythm games market is close to implosion. The glut of Guitar Hero and Rock Band titles had pretty much sucked up a lot of energy from players, and despite some unique directions and interesting ideas, the core gameplay was beginning to get stale for some. Reviewers at the time were becoming increasingly vocal about the simulation of rhythm games being just that; a simulation, with some arguing for something more real.
It may seem odd today, but by the time Guitar Hero 5 came out, several reviewers were beginning to argue that rhythm-based games can go more pro with their instruments. The idea of actually learning to play an instrument through the game is not as audacious as it may sound; learning the basics with a game attached can be a fun and creative method to teach players how to properly use a guitar or drum kit. Of course, the limitations are obvious; Guitar Hero and Rock Band up until this point at least, were not looking to simulate real-life guitar playing. The criticism definitely began to sway Harmonix a bit, who would make attempts with a more "pro" style with Rock Band 3.
This did, however, leave the market open for a possible niche in the rhythm games industry, one that a competitor was hoping to fulfil. In this case, it is developer and publisher Seven45 Studios, and their game Power Gig: Rise of the SixString. Power Gig was the 2nd of two games to really attempt a fair challenge to both Guitar Hero and Rock Band. While the first game, Rock Revolution faced a lot of problems - a rushed development cycle, and overall poor gameplay implementation - Power Gig was attempting to position itself as a different, wholly new experience for rhythm game players, a game that teaches you how to play real instruments.
Seven45 was a relatively new developer, founded in Massachusetts in 2007 as a video game arm for the music company, First Act. First Act was known for creating real-life musical instruments, musical toys, running the gamut from guitars to drum kits to amplifiers. In a way it makes sense; seeing a music manufacturer entering the marketplace with some expertise in peripheral production, sort of mimicking the early days of Red Octane with the first Guitar Hero. For First Act, Seven45 was their entrypoint, hiring some developers and pumping in a ton of capital to develop Power Gig into a competitor against Activision and Harmonix.
As you can expect, it did not go well. Power Gig, though attempting to challenge both Rock Band and Guitar Hero, forgot the core rule of game development; making a game that works. Even in a weakened marketplace that's been heavily saturated by a glut of rhythm games, Power Gig made so many missteps that it is almost laughable that it even attempted to make a play for a piece of the pie. Ultimately Power Gig had only one thing going for it, claiming it's a game that can teach you how to play the guitar, and even that was at best, misleading advertising.
Seven45 went all out on this as the primary selling point. They bundled Power Gig with an electric guitar that was custom built specifically for the game. The guitar was a ⅔ scale version of a standard six-string electric guitar, with actual strings that can be strummed. The edge of the guitar's fretboard would contain colored markings corresponding to their in-game notes. Instead of a strum bar, players must hold down a string in the colored fret area that matches the displayed note patterns on-screen, and strum the strings in real-time.
In theory this seems like it could work, getting an albeit cheap starting guitar that can mimic real-life guitar playing in a game format. In practice however, the peripheral was an abject failure. Since the game allows you to strum any string, so long as it's in the correct colored zone on the fretboard, that would count as a played note. This means you can focus all of your attention for a singular song on one string, only moving your fingers to the colored zone. The same is done with double notes and hammer on's and pull offs, so truthfully, you're not learning how to play a guitar here, you're just mimicking the actions on a Guitar Hero game with a string over a strum bar.
The one addition that could have value to it is Power Chord mode, where the colored notes on-screen are replayed with colored numbers, ranging from 1 to 6. These numbers represent which strings must be held down in the colored fret area to make a chord, along with strumming. This is as close as Power Gig gets to mimicking a real life guitar, but even then it's not super accurate; the game can only support two-note chords at a time, ignoring other potential chords that can be found with a real guitar. It is also a feature that struggles to work because the feedback in game to guitar strumming is not calibrated properly.
It should be noted that Power Gig allows for guitar, vocals and drums as a three-player party mode. A drum controller was also developed, known as the "AirStrike" controller, which is an array of motion sensors placed on the ground in front of a player instead of an actual drum kit this time. Seven45 claimed that the controller was quieter and more "authentic" than competitor controllers, but the AirStrike was a piece of plastic that looked like a broken Simon Says gamepad, and never worked properly upon release.
In fact, much of Power Gig didn't work properly. The Power Chord mode didn't fully register strums, and I mentioned the issues with calibration. The guitar controller was also kind of cheap and poorly developed; the guitar neck was overly heavy, making the actual sounds made by strumming atrocious to hear in real-life, along with being harder to wield and use for long periods of time. Players had to really hit hard on the fretboard and do heavy strumming to register notes on-screen, leading to a lot of problems. It should be noted that, at least for the Xbox 360 version of Power Gig, that a dashboard update in 2012 has effectively rendered Power Chord mode unplayable, making this gameplay mode almost impossible to actually try for Xbox players if they were curious enough.
Which they shouldn't be. Gameplay follows the Rock Revolution model of being a top-down speed scroll of notes, with the only real differences being the connection of said notes to a specific string. The game is, admittingly, more forgiving than Rock Revolution ever was with note striking, though the issues with actually playing are a major hindrance holding everything back further. Otherwise, the presentation is almost a carbon copy of PS2 era Guitar Hero; mimicking the same gameplay, same presentation, and even the same cartoonish character designs beat for beat.
Is there anything actually new? Well, there is a narrative story for single player mode that ironically would mimic something similar seen in Neversoft's unique take, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, a tale of nonsense involving factions opposing the tyrannical ruler the Headliner from a fictional rock-based world called Ohm. It's a very thin premise to string a bunch of songs and characters together, but it's at least something outside of picking a song and playing it. Otherwise, Power Gig has no real setlist progression to follow.
If there is one thing you can give Power Gig though, it is that it tried to compete with the other rhythm games in terms of getting exclusive musicians in their corner. An impressive seventy songs make up the games setlist, and it includes a decent amount of bands like Smashing Pumpkins, Living Colour, Black Label Society, Ozzy Osbourne and The Hives. You also get a few oddball choices for bands that allow for variety, like Surfer Blood, Idlewild and The Paris Riots. The real selling point was including a number of songs from Kid Rock, The Dave Matthews Band, and Eric Clapton; all three acts were never found in Guitar Hero or Rock Band, with Clapton famously stating that he felt rhythm games should teach you how to play an instrument as a reason for not licensing any songs. Dave Matthews said in interviews that Power Gig "puts a real guitar into the hands of aspiring musicians."
The irony, however, is that it really didn't. Power Gig: Rise of the Six String failed as a game on all levels. Impressive setlist aside, the peripherals were subpar, the gameplay was years behind what has been done already, charting was all over the place in quality, and the "learning to play guitar" claims were at best, misleading. Getting a real electric guitar is nice and all, but it's as cheap as the plastic imitations by other game companies, with gameplay that doesn't teach properly at all, it instead emulates a souped up version of what Guitar Hero could have been.
Power Gig: Rise of the Six String was the last proper challenge to Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and arguably a worse failure than Rock Revolution. For all of the faults of Rock Revolution, it at least tried to actively be fun and enjoyed on its own terms. Power Gig, however, actively fails at what it was created for in a way that is so colossal it is released as a borderline unplayable mess that is barely remembered to this day. Seven45 Studios would take a massive hit with Power Gig, and make a few iOS games before closing down in 2013, and the rest, is of course history. Ultimately, do not play Power Gig, even if you are curious about it. Instead, just get the charts for Clone Hero and call it a day.