When it was revealed that Neversoft was to take over Guitar Hero III I didn’t realize at the time that this was going to lead to a broken fanboy heart. I’m sure that at the time Red Octane was happy to let their baby go. After all, there was Rock Band to contend with. Take the franchise and run. As Joystiq wrote:

Hopefully this changing of the guard will be more like a Sammy Hagar and less like a Gary Cherone.

Sadly, it was the latter. Guitar Hero III is a talentless stand in and I can’t see past it any more. So like any downtrodden fanboy, I’ll have to blog about it.

In an effort to keep it short, though, I’ll simply say that the characters are by far the worst travesty. The characters have gone from chiseled rockers struggling to make their way as a band, to generified baby-faced pop stars just riding their sponsorships. Without a doubt the worst sins come with the girls, the poor girls, to whom many young rockers no doubt looked up to in admiration thanks to this gender-barrier-breaking game. The girls now are reduced to boobalicious babes playing unplugged guitars alongside dancers in cages.

(Image ganked from Cerise Magazine.)

“Yea, just strum it like that and people will probably buy it. Make that bra strap a little looser though, please.” “Mr Manager, what happened to my soul?” “Never mind that now. I have it safe in a jar. Now hurry up and get on stage and don’t forget make it look real!”

I’m sure this was all done by Neversoft in the name of “knowing what’s cool,” as they no doubt proclaimed they could do when they bargained with Red Octane for the franchise. “Cool” here though is so clearly market segment research and veiled sponsorship (all over the venues) combined with the kind of “coolfinding” that soured the Tony Hawk games so badly they couldn’t possibly have gotten worse.

OK, I suppose this is not the first time a great game has ever “sold out,” Neversoft-produced or otherwise, but this was Guitar Hero, man. This was arguably the best thing to happen to gaming as a whole since, well, ever. The feeling is just like finding out that Fugazi has signed up for the MySpace Rockstar Energy Drink Vans Tour and will be premiering a special new song in a car commercial during the super bowl which will downloadable on iTunes for a limited time! Fuck that shit.

Forgive me. I realize that the concept of a band “selling out” isn’t really pertinent anymore (thank you Moby), but I still can’t help but feel that painful little tinge of anger and disappointment. With Guitar Hero, there was something good there all on it’s own. It could rock out just as hard in a massive arena as well as in those burnt-out bars in Boston that GH II parodied so well. I guess those days are over now, though. I’ll probably skip the show.