May 15, 2009

Vicarious Visions talks about Guitar Hero on Tour: Modern Hits
By Michael Lafferty

“Each of these titles has incrementally pushed the franchise on the DS.”

Guitar Hero on Tour: Modern Hits is the third installment from Vicarious Visions for the Nintendo DS platform, and rather than resting on the laurels of the other installments, it is a game that moves the franchise forward with new gameplay elements and a new song list.

Ok, you say, the new songlist is a given, and that is true, but what is important about the 28 songs on the list is that they add to the multiplayer aspect, bringing the total number of songs available to DS gamers up to 75 (if they own all three iterations; Modern Hits releases to retail in early June).

Activision and Vicarious Visions (publisher and developer, respectively) held a media round-table discussion for the title Thursday, and GameZone was lucky enough to be included in the conversation. The principles from VV to sit in included: David Nathanielsz – executive producer; Jesse Booth – producer; Mike Chrzanowski — lead designer; Muhammad Ahmed — lead designer; Eric Feurstein — lead artist; and Justin Joyner — lead audio designer.

Before getting to the gist of the conversation, for those who may have missed the announcement yesterday, the songlist for Modern Hits was released. It is as follows:

• 12 Stones - “Adrenalin”

• AFI - “Miss Murder”

• Angels & Airwaves - “Call to Arms”

• Atreyu - “Falling Down”

• Black Tide - “Shockwave”

• Coldplay - “Violet Hill”

• Endeverafter - “I Wanna Be Your Man”

• Evanescence - “Sweet Sacrifice”

• Fall Out Boy - “This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race”

• Finger Eleven - “Paralyzer”

• Foo Fighters - “All My Life”

• Franz Ferdinand - “The Fallen”

• Kaiser Chiefs - “Ruby”

• Lenny Kravitz - “Where Are We Runnin'?”

• Modest Mouse - “Dashboard”

• Phantom Planet - “Do The Panic”

• Sum 41 - “Still Waiting”

• Tenacious D - “The Metal”

• The Bravery - “Unconditional”

• The Donnas - “What Do I Have to Do”

• The Duke Spirit - “Lassoo”

• The Fratellis - “Chelsea Dagger”

• The Kooks - “Always Where I Need to Be”

• The Offspring - “Half-Truism”

• The Strokes - “Reptilia”

• Weezer - “Everybody Get Dangerous”

• Wolfmother - “Dimension”

• Yellowcard - “Lights and Sounds”

Nathanielsz began the discussion by noting that Modern hits is the third installment, is built off the same tech, “so it’s really kind of a trilogy between the three releases,” he said while assuring the participants that the game is compatible with the other two games in terms of song sharing.

“The key focus for us on modern hits was around bringing some freshness to the game progression,” Nathanielsz said. “Fan request is what we call it.” The player makes his or her way thru the game by amassing a huge fan base through venue events. During the course of the venue event, fans will ask the player to do specific challenges, which are “a wide assortment of different challenges.” These could include playing a song on certain difficulty setting, or achieving a certain note streak. Players will build the fan following by completing the challenges and “can go to millions of fans and by the end of the game you can be the biggest rock star on the planet.”

The new mode “allowed us to look at the core way players interact with Guitar Hero. We found it a refreshing new way to look at the game,” Nathanielsz said.

The conversation rolled around to the choice of songs included in the release and the VV team stated that the songs were all taken from music released over the past 5-7 years. “Decades and On Tour was a broader range, this was our opportunity to focus on popular music, songs that resonant with fans.” When asked about the inclusion of Tenacious D, which is more of a cult-based band than one that is broad based, the team first justified it by citing the difficulty level of “The Metal.” Then they moved on to stating that “it adds to one part of rock – rock is really broad, it represents the metal aspect.” Finally, accompanied by a bit of laughter, they admitted that “we won’t deny that personal tastes factor itself into our song choices.”

Questions were asked about adapting the GH franchise to the DSI and team deferred, saying that while they are excited about the new Nintendo handheld, and have some experience with the technology and the platform, Modern Hits does not support the DSI.

One of the media participants asked about scaling the songs to the DS and the peripheral it uses, and Joyner noted that “Yes, we have one less button on the DS, but we have a terrific note scaling team here.”

Did you tweak the tech at all?

“The strum detection in general is something we continue to look at the player feedback and tune it. There were some minor adjustments,” it was said.

This is the third installment in the trilogy, do you see it ending? How are we going to get more songs?

Nathanielsz said that “as long as people keep asking, we’ll be excited about giving people more songs, but we are not ready to talk about what might be in the future.”

What else is new aside from fan request?

“The overall fidelity on the venues and the overall art has been optimized. We have two new characters and the Fan Request system. Another feature we added in, we decided we were not going to lock any songs. We opened up quick play, so you can jump right in and go to the last song in quick play.”

As the session wrapped up, the team reiterated that one of the key elements was the whole base of songs available for the NDS. “One of the things we learned after On Tour was released is those who had bought it were ready for new songs after a few weeks. They wanted more songs. Getting 75 songs on the DS that people can play and share is a good thing. We clearly see people are excited about it; as long as people keep asking for it, we are going to keep giving it to them.”

And Nathanielsz summed it up by stating that “each of these titles has incrementally pushed the franchise on the DS.”

And that is something that fans of Guitar Hero should be happy about.

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