Skipping all of the unnecessary “song” nonsense, Eruption is a plain and simple guitar solo.
* Indicates a re-recorded version of the track.Īs we’ve done with all the other band-centric titles, we’re first going to look at what we’d like to see in our “dream Van Halen 5-pack” and then take a look at 5 guest songs we’d like to have.
The percentage here is on the lower end of the Guitar Hero scale, but compared to other band-centric titles, it’s tied with Metallica and slightly ahead of Aerosmith’s 10%. In addition, The Kinks’ original version is playable in Rocksmith 2014 while Van Halen’s cover is available here. Of the 47 songs, 8 are currently playable in Rocksmith for a total of 17%. In a similar vein, David Lee Roth does a lot of really fun vocal stuff which, if you can get past the dodgy vocals engine, makes for a great game to sing, too.īack to the setlist, 60% of the 47 song setlist consisted of Van Halen music, although three of the VH songs are Eddie Van Halen guitar solos. Eddie Van Halen is the truest definition of Guitar God, so what GH:VH had on offer was one of the strongest set of guitar charts in the entire franchise. Not everything about the game was awful, though. Musical opinions aside, the connection to Van Halen is tenuous at best. That’s why the guest acts were hand picked by Wolfgang who went with people like Yellowcard, Alter Bridge, and The Offspring. for Metallica), the members of Van Halen clearly couldn’t be bothered to pick any. in the case of Aerosmith and Mercyful Fate, Mastodon, Suicidal Tendencies, ect. While previous band-centric games Aerosmith and Metallica had featured guest acts that were of significance to the band or directly influenced by them (Run-DMC, Cheap Trick, Ted Nugent, ect. On the subject of Wolfgang Van Halen, one of the other major disappointments with the game was the setlist. In addition, the replacement of longtime Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony with Eddie’s then-16 year old son Wolfgang was met with largely the same reaction as it was in real life. The absence of anything from the Sammy Hagar era (and to a MUCH lesser extent, Gary Cherone) was a disappointment to people, myself included. The engine wasn’t the only thing that was heavily criticized, however. Because of this, a lot of features like song challenges, party play, and any instrument combination weren’t included.
If you didn’t live in a country that had that promotion (or if you wanted a real case and not a paper slip), however, you could purchase it separately in December of 2009, Guitar Hero: Van Halen would be the 6th and final full price game released under the Guitar Hero brand in the infamous year.īecause of the pack-in nature of the game, it meant that it was developed in the World Tour era and would therefore be using the now outdated Guitar Hero: Metallica engine instead of the then-current GH5/ Band Hero one. You paid, of course, nothing given that for a long time purchasers of Guitar Hero 5 would be given a full copy of Van Halen for free. Arguably the most infamous of all the Guitar Hero games, there was definitely a “you get what you pay for” attitude surrounding Guitar Hero: Van Halen.