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Evening Reading
by Jeff Mattas, Feb 10, 2011 1:00am PSTWell, ladies and gents, it would seem as though the heyday of plastic instruments (and their associated games) might finally be appearing in our rear-view mirror. It was bound to happen, eventually.
The beginning of the end, so to speak, seemed to be when Harmonix -- the developer that founded both Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises -- was put up on the chopping block by Viacom late last year. Harmonix elected to, in effect, purchase itself, and remains an independent entity that continues to churn out Rock Band DLC at a regular clip.
Couple that with today's news that Activision is not only canceling the 2011 installment of the Guitar Hero franchise (which it's owned since 2006), but is pursuing the "discontinuation of the development of all music-based games," due to "anticipation of a continuing weak environment for casual and music-based games," and the trend couldn't be more obvious.
Don't get me wrong. I still fire up Rock Band on a semi-regular basis, and it still does an exceptional job of making someone who can't play any real instruments (like myself) feel like a rock star. Granted, it's been three years since I've purchased a plastic guitar. If peripheral sales are built into your expected profit margin, factors like a plateauing or declining user-base and making an increasingly iterative product make it harder to meet those numbers each year.
And, in case you missed it:
Only issues were the occasional framerate hiccups that made it hard to fight more than 3 dudes at a time. Also didn't like the fact that there was only really 1 character model you fought constantly with a couple of mid-level bosses thrown in. When you're running around the world, you're trained early on to look for glowing handholds that tell you where to go next. I thought this took me away from the gameplay a bit. I don't remember other climbing centric games like Ass creed, uncharted or even the recent prince of persia games doing this.
Other than the abovementioned minor gripes, I found this game to be charming, fun to play and deeply memorable. Think I'm going to wait a bit and buy the pigsy DLC. That dude was seriously lecherous.
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