Monday, April 20, 2009

DLC: The Battle For Supremacy...Sparta...Your Money?

At this point, you're probably thinking yourself, why should I care about this and who the hell still cares about any of this. My response is you shouldn't and no one. As a person who looks forward to a chance to play video game karaoke whenever free time is allowed, I, however, do still care about this.
At this point, it's pretty safe to say that Rock Band took Guitar Hero to some seedy alley, had it way with it before kicking it in the face and robbing them. Sorry about being so graphic but a spade is a spade and imitating the girlish shriek of Journey's Steve Perry's is better than the painful whine of Coldplay's Chris Martin. Although, the song selections have helped with that, it is the game's DLC (downloadable content) that is truly responsible for giving Guitar Hero Fred Sanford's proverbial "five across the lip."

It's not to say that Guitar Hero isn't enjoyable but the lack of incredible DLC is killing it (well, that and the release of four more Guitar Hero games this year alone. Seriously, I smell another 1983 video game crash headed our way). Rock Band has some questionable material (Spongebob Squarepants, The Naked Brothers Band, "Chinese Democracy") but it makes up for it with really awesome DLC (Styx, Sonic Youth, Queens Of The Stone Age) and, better than that, full albums ("Moving Pictures," "Blood Sugar Sex Magik"). Assisting this is the albilty to import songs from previous and secondary Rock Band games. Essentially, you can save the songs and trade the game in for the sequel.

Guitar Hero, this is where you're falling behind but should be able to make up for it with awesome downloads. Instead, we're getting a very odd, mixed bag of track packs. Packs with Reggae influenced Rock, a Queen pack with a song from the current version with Paul Rodgers (that's not Queen), multiple European packs. It's not exactly a collection that screams fun but this month (besides the Steely Dan pack) has been pretty good. Pixies, Silversun Pickups, Motorhead and, next week, Nirvana have helped ease the pain of downloadable Nickelback, Hinder and Bob Seger. Can you really ease the pain of Nickelback...?

I guess the point of this is keep your money and wait for the really awesome DLC to appear ("cough" Styx "cough"). Although there are a lot of you out there, stop encouraging bad DLC to appear by downloading everything. One Hinder song now means three more later if there are enough purchases for it. Get the cool songs, fun songs and songs that are so awesomely bad that they're fun (for example, if "Sunglasses At Night" showed up on either game). Whatever you decide to do with your points, remember this one thing...there's a Styx/REO Speedwagon tour pack on Rock Band tomorrow and that's not a bad thing.

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