Hey Activision, How Bout a Little DLC?

I don’t know why this grates on my nerves, particularly because I actually LIKE the Guitar Hero games. The first two games were instrumental in bringing a relatively new game genre to the gaming public and in a big way. Plus, I’d always wanted to learn to play the real thing, and I was inspired to accelerate that yearning because I had been given a taste of what it might feel like to strum an actual set of strings (my fingers are actually a little sore as I type this because of tonight’s practicing).

Here’s my gripe. Has anyone else noticed how many disc-based titles they have released or announced in the past 8 months? Look, I bought GH3, and liked what they did with it, but we’re living in a world of streaming multimedia and downloadable content. I think it was in Activision’s best interest to step up to the plate after Harmonix came up with Rock Band, but if you’re not going to improve upon the game mechanics, the graphics, the animation and on and on, then don’t bother making an entirely new game, just set the the new tracks up for download by an adoring public. Right?

I’ll grant that they’ve got quite a bit of DLC for GH World Tour, but do we really need a Metallica titled release (that, by the way isn’t completely Metallica) and now Guitar Hero: Smash Hits? Smash Hits is a compilation of songs culled from all their previous titles tweaked for full band play. What exactly prevented them from placing all 48 “smash hits” up as DLC exactly is beyond me. What spurned this article was that they changed the name from “Guitar Hero: Greatest Hits” to “Guitar Hero: Smash Hits”. To me, it sounds like some kind of veiled attempt at avoiding the correct conception that these are all just basically songs you’ve already got.

Wouldn’t it make more sense for the sake of choice, as well as a better financial success, to let people download their favorite songs from games past at 2 bucks a pop, instead of force feeding all 48 to a very discerning audience who will assuredly have their own opinion as to what songs should be considered smash hits, and which were duds? You know what might be smart, and fair to consumers and the fans that already have previous titles? Provide a tool, at a modest fee of course, to get those songs from the discs gathering dust on the shelf and convert them to be used on the full band game?

Oh right…Rock Band did that already.

For the record, I haven’t ruled it out, at least not until I see a playlist. The fact is that I opted for Rock Band instead of GH:World Tour, but if the list is good and I don’t need a World Tour disc to play the new songs, I might be in. I wouldn’t mind belting out “Cherry Pie” at the next geek-get-together.