d+pad

It’s frustrating when you’ve been promised something, only to be forced to wait an inordinate amount of time for it. I’m talking about the downloadable content (songs) that are supposed to be available to those of us with Guitar Hero 2 for the Xbox 360 . (What else could I mean?)

As an Xbox 360 owner, I missed out on the first wave of Guitar Hero mania on the PS2. But when a 360 version was announced, this old rocker–confused and alienated by the American Idol generation–couldn’t put his pre-order down fast enough. And, since its release back in April, GH2 is pretty much the only game I’ve been playing. I’ve rocked through the entire soundtrack (sometimes in one sitting) and have worked up a healthy appetite for more. Unfortunately, Activision has decided to offer us a slow series of bite-sized of appetizers instead of a sumptuous rock-out-with-your-cock-out buffet.

A lot of noise has been made about the cost of the song packs, (500 Microsoft Points, or roughly $6 CDN for a three track pack) but I’m far more irritated by the limited choice and availability. A couple of bucks per song is reasonable given the amount of extra game time you’re getting, not to mention the different guitar parts for multiplayer fun. Where the scheme fails in my opinion is the pre-selected packs that don’t let you choose which songs you’re getting for your 500 points. Add to that the months we’ve had to wait for a single new pack and the whole thing is just a big sour note in an otherwise perfect performance.

Fortunately, Guitar Hero 3 is only a few months away–and of course, Rock Band which looks to be phenomenal–so I’ll have a bunch of new tracks to shred through soon enough. I also think the pending release of those two games means Activision has a limited window of opportunity to sell the DLC for the X360 version (at any price), so hopefully we’ll see them pick up the tempo and give us greater selection sooner rather than later.

With any luck I’ll have a new comic before then as well!

-JBE

joe at dpad dot ca