[[{“value”:”
There are some games that you hope will demonstrate how much muscle memory can survive years of neglect. Hand me a plastic guitar, put a rhythm game in front of me, and apparently my brain still thinks it knows what it’s doing. Having not touched a guitar controller since around 2009, when Guitar Hero 5 was released, my hands-on time with Stage Tour at Gamescom went a little differently than I’d hoped.
Getting to grips with the new rhythm game from RedOctane Games, I opted for guitar, naturally. If you’re going to spend time with a game that is openly positioning itself as a spiritual successor to the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises, it feels obligatory to pick up that instrument. Rather than making the spectacularly poor decision of attempting Expert difficulty and embarrassing myself, I settled on Medium, and was promptly reminded that remembering how rhythm games work and actually being good at them are two very different things.
The first few notes went pretty well, but things quickly began to unravel. “Here’s my guitar solo,” I announced, with considerably more confidence than my mediocre gameplay warranted. Fortunately, the developers behind Stage Tour were more forgiving than the note charts I was fumbling. “No bandmate left behind!” joked Jack Guinchard, global brand manager, “It’s a rock tour; bad shit happens.”
A short while later, the song had finished, and my pitiful score flashed before me. Still, there’s something immediately familiar about Stage Tour, and that’s clearly intentional. RedOctane isn’t pretending that its predecessors never existed, and it’s not trying to reinvent the formula that made them so popular. The familiar five colored note spread, the physical controller, and the strange wavy vision you get after concentrating too hard are all present, and that familiarity is part of what makes Stage Tour so appealing.
Stage Tour isn’t being released in a world where rhythm games have disappeared entirely. While Guitar Hero and Rock Band have left the mainstream, their communities still exist, and games such as Clone Hero and YARG (Yet Another Rhythm Game) continue to thrive.
Stage Tour isn’t just being built by people who understand that audience: It’s being built by former Guitar Hero developers. Instead of pretending Guitar Hero never happened, the team wants to take the nostalgic formula and figure out what else they can do with it.
“We want it to be a spiritual successor,” creative marketing manager Marcus Buress told me. “We want the people that played those games back in the day to see this and recognize us.”
Buress describes the game as something of a middle ground between Rock Band 4’s conservative approach and Guitar Hero Live’s attempt to radically rethink the entire controller by replacing the single row of five buttons with two rows of six. Stage Tour wants to retain the fundamentals of an instrument-based rhythm game without relying entirely on nostalgia.
The first notable new additions are modifiers. These options dramatically alter how songs play: Double Notes turns every single note into a double, while doubles become triples. Mirror Mode swaps the colors around, meaning muscle memory built up for one color is suddenly actively unhelpful. Other modifiers can be combined to create charts that are so challenging you wonder what you’ve done to yourself.
Then there’s Tour Mode, which is easily the biggest attempt Stage Tour makes to distinguish itself from its inspirations. The mode uses roguelite elements, with each run introducing different choices and challenges. Instead of just selecting a song from the menu and playing it, Tour Mode feels more like going on tour and integrates that into the game. You’ll work your way up from small local venues to huge sold-out arenas, but no two tours will play out the same thanks to randomized choices and challenges that you’ll have to take on throughout your burgeoning career as a rock star.
One concern I had when I learned of Stage Tour’s upcoming release was the potential barrier to entry in terms of hardware. While Stage Tour can be played with the packaged instruments, it also supports standard controllers and PC keyboards. “You should be able to play however you want to play,” Buress explained.
Alongside this, the team wants to support as much existing hardware as possible. Modern instruments can work natively on compatible problems, but older controllers can also be used with the right adapters. For the serious musicians, your electronic drum kits can be enabled for use in the game through a MIDI connection.
What’s even more interesting is the way RedOctane has designed the modern controllers. They work with a modular “brain” that can be swapped depending on the platform. In theory, that means any instrument controller you acquire won’t become obsolete when you change consoles or suddenly prefer to play on PC. I remember the pain of realizing my Xbox 360 Guitar Hero controllers wouldn’t work on my new PS4 when I upgraded, so this philosophy is hugely important to fans of the genre.
In fact, while the developers told me they weren’t “allowed” to tell me that their controllers would work on an Xbox 360, everything they told me about how the hardware works means it’s pretty obvious that they will.
That long-term commitment to peripherals reflects the development team’s attitude to supporting the game beyond launch. They’ve already begun working on licensing deals for future DLCs, while their long-term ambitions extend far beyond just adding more songs. New characters, stages, and gameplay features are all possibilities for the future.
The game’s impressive soundtrack spans more than 90 songs over six decades, with artists ranging from Metallica and Slipknot to Paramore, Radiohead, and The Rolling Stones. Buress told me that the team initially expected their licensing efforts to have roughly a 50% success rate. Instead, around 85% of the songs they’ve pursued have worked out. Some of those tracks have even come directly from submissions by musicians, with “The Unknowing” by Jay Ferrari being one such example.
When I asked whether they had any tracks they were certain they’d be unsuccessful in acquiring, the team told me about Jeff Buckley’s “Grace” being one such example.
“Jeff Buckley was never in a Guitar Hero or Rock Band game before, despite him being massively popular back then, and even now. I think he has over 20 million listeners on Spotify still,” Buress explained. “Jeff Buckley has a very interesting story, just the tragedy of what happened and all that stuff, so it’s cool to finally get representation for him in one of these games of this genre. It was a long shot, like, ‘They’ll never do that. They were never in a game before. Why would they do it now?’ But they did. They came through.”
If the developers get their way, the stages could become just as varied as the soundtrack, too. The Gibson Garage in Nashville has been recreated as an in-game hub and stage, and the team says that real-world venues could be added if the necessary rights can be secured. “Gibson’s a great partner of ours. We’ve been able to do real-life modeling after their stuff, and theoretically there’s no real limits to what we can do … I think it’d be sick to have a Red Rocks-type of venue.”
With Stage Tour, RedOctane is building on the reasons why people still want to play games like Guitar Hero. “We think the genre is ready for a comeback,” Guinchard explained.
After my brief time with Stage Tour, I’m yet to decide whether it can recapture what made Guitar Hero and Rock Band so special. I did come away thinking that the developers understand what they’re trying to preserve and know where to stretch its limits without throwing too many ingredients into the mix.
The familiar gameplay is there, but Stage Tour isn’t solely relying on nostalgia to capture a player base. Modifiers and Tour Mode give experienced players new ways of making the game more challenging, and their decisions to support multiple input methods make it less intimidating than knowing you have to fork out a ton for new hardware just to play. People who have dusty cupboards of old plastic instruments don’t really need another rhythm game, but anyone who missed the original craze might not understand why they should care about one now. Stage Tour has to convince both of those groups to give it a go. My own guitar solo might have gone terribly, but it also gave me a reason to try again. I’m looking forward to Stage Tour coming out on December 10.
“}]]
[[{“value”:”There are some games that you hope will demonstrate how much muscle memory can survive years of neglect. Hand me a plastic guitar, put a rhythm game in front of me, and apparently my brain still thinks it knows what it’s doing. Having not touched a guitar controller since around 2009, when Guitar Hero 5 was released, my hands-on time with Stage Tour at Gamescom went a little differently than I’d hoped.
Getting to grips with the new rhythm game from RedOctane Games, I opted for guitar, naturally. If you’re going to spend time with a game that is openly positioning itself as a spiritual successor to the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises, it feels obligatory to pick up that instrument. Rather than making the spectacularly poor decision of attempting Expert difficulty and embarrassing myself, I settled on Medium, and was promptly reminded that remembering how rhythm games work and actually being good at them are two very different things.
The first few notes went pretty well, but things quickly began to unravel. “Here’s my guitar solo,” I announced, with considerably more confidence than my mediocre gameplay warranted. Fortunately, the developers behind Stage Tour were more forgiving than the note charts I was fumbling. “No bandmate left behind!” joked Jack Guinchard, global brand manager, “It’s a rock tour; bad shit happens.”
A short while later, the song had finished, and my pitiful score flashed before me. Still, there’s something immediately familiar about Stage Tour, and that’s clearly intentional. RedOctane isn’t pretending that its predecessors never existed, and it’s not trying to reinvent the formula that made them so popular. The familiar five colored note spread, the physical controller, and the strange wavy vision you get after concentrating too hard are all present, and that familiarity is part of what makes Stage Tour so appealing.
Stage Tour isn’t being released in a world where rhythm games have disappeared entirely. While Guitar Hero and Rock Band have left the mainstream, their communities still exist, and games such as Clone Hero and YARG (Yet Another Rhythm Game) continue to thrive.
Stage Tour isn’t just being built by people who understand that audience: It’s being built by former Guitar Hero developers. Instead of pretending Guitar Hero never happened, the team wants to take the nostalgic formula and figure out what else they can do with it.
“We want it to be a spiritual successor,” creative marketing manager Marcus Buress told me. “We want the people that played those games back in the day to see this and recognize us.”
Buress describes the game as something of a middle ground between Rock Band 4’s conservative approach and Guitar Hero Live’s attempt to radically rethink the entire controller by replacing the single row of five buttons with two rows of six. Stage Tour wants to retain the fundamentals of an instrument-based rhythm game without relying entirely on nostalgia.
The developers want to add more venues in post-launch content.
The first notable new additions are modifiers. These options dramatically alter how songs play: Double Notes turns every single note into a double, while doubles become triples. Mirror Mode swaps the colors around, meaning muscle memory built up for one color is suddenly actively unhelpful. Other modifiers can be combined to create charts that are so challenging you wonder what you’ve done to yourself.
Then there’s Tour Mode, which is easily the biggest attempt Stage Tour makes to distinguish itself from its inspirations. The mode uses roguelite elements, with each run introducing different choices and challenges. Instead of just selecting a song from the menu and playing it, Tour Mode feels more like going on tour and integrates that into the game. You’ll work your way up from small local venues to huge sold-out arenas, but no two tours will play out the same thanks to randomized choices and challenges that you’ll have to take on throughout your burgeoning career as a rock star.
One concern I had when I learned of Stage Tour’s upcoming release was the potential barrier to entry in terms of hardware. While Stage Tour can be played with the packaged instruments, it also supports standard controllers and PC keyboards. “You should be able to play however you want to play,” Buress explained.
Alongside this, the team wants to support as much existing hardware as possible. Modern instruments can work natively on compatible problems, but older controllers can also be used with the right adapters. For the serious musicians, your electronic drum kits can be enabled for use in the game through a MIDI connection.
There’ll be many instruments to collect, including Gibson replicas.
What’s even more interesting is the way RedOctane has designed the modern controllers. They work with a modular “brain” that can be swapped depending on the platform. In theory, that means any instrument controller you acquire won’t become obsolete when you change consoles or suddenly prefer to play on PC. I remember the pain of realizing my Xbox 360 Guitar Hero controllers wouldn’t work on my new PS4 when I upgraded, so this philosophy is hugely important to fans of the genre.
In fact, while the developers told me they weren’t “allowed” to tell me that their controllers would work on an Xbox 360, everything they told me about how the hardware works means it’s pretty obvious that they will.
That long-term commitment to peripherals reflects the development team’s attitude to supporting the game beyond launch. They’ve already begun working on licensing deals for future DLCs, while their long-term ambitions extend far beyond just adding more songs. New characters, stages, and gameplay features are all possibilities for the future.
The game’s impressive soundtrack spans more than 90 songs over six decades, with artists ranging from Metallica and Slipknot to Paramore, Radiohead, and The Rolling Stones. Buress told me that the team initially expected their licensing efforts to have roughly a 50% success rate. Instead, around 85% of the songs they’ve pursued have worked out. Some of those tracks have even come directly from submissions by musicians, with “The Unknowing” by Jay Ferrari being one such example.
The familiar five-lane format is back.
When I asked whether they had any tracks they were certain they’d be unsuccessful in acquiring, the team told me about Jeff Buckley’s “Grace” being one such example.
“Jeff Buckley was never in a Guitar Hero or Rock Band game before, despite him being massively popular back then, and even now. I think he has over 20 million listeners on Spotify still,” Buress explained. “Jeff Buckley has a very interesting story, just the tragedy of what happened and all that stuff, so it’s cool to finally get representation for him in one of these games of this genre. It was a long shot, like, ‘They’ll never do that. They were never in a game before. Why would they do it now?’ But they did. They came through.”
If the developers get their way, the stages could become just as varied as the soundtrack, too. The Gibson Garage in Nashville has been recreated as an in-game hub and stage, and the team says that real-world venues could be added if the necessary rights can be secured. “Gibson’s a great partner of ours. We’ve been able to do real-life modeling after their stuff, and theoretically there’s no real limits to what we can do … I think it’d be sick to have a Red Rocks-type of venue.”
With Stage Tour, RedOctane is building on the reasons why people still want to play games like Guitar Hero. “We think the genre is ready for a comeback,” Guinchard explained.
After my brief time with Stage Tour, I’m yet to decide whether it can recapture what made Guitar Hero and Rock Band so special. I did come away thinking that the developers understand what they’re trying to preserve and know where to stretch its limits without throwing too many ingredients into the mix.
Different players can choose different instruments.
The familiar gameplay is there, but Stage Tour isn’t solely relying on nostalgia to capture a player base. Modifiers and Tour Mode give experienced players new ways of making the game more challenging, and their decisions to support multiple input methods make it less intimidating than knowing you have to fork out a ton for new hardware just to play. People who have dusty cupboards of old plastic instruments don’t really need another rhythm game, but anyone who missed the original craze might not understand why they should care about one now. Stage Tour has to convince both of those groups to give it a go. My own guitar solo might have gone terribly, but it also gave me a reason to try again. I’m looking forward to Stage Tour coming out on December 10.”}]] Read More GameSpot – All Content
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