Battle of the Music Games

So, as any gamer worth his or her salt knows, this holiday, there is a battle upcoming of sorts. Between Guitar Hero 3, with Neversoft continuing the franchise started by Harmonix Music Systems, and Harmonix moving on to Rock Band, the spiritual successor to guitar hero, featuring drums and vocals.

Neversoft has previously announced several seemingly minor changes to the Guitar Hero formula, such as boss battles, battle mode, and a story with cutscenes. At first blush, these seem like minor changes, and possibly even welcome ones. And if that were all Neversoft had done to the Guitar Hero franchise, there probably wouldn't be a post here right now.

Enter Guitar Hero 3 demo.

Holy.
Fucking.
Shit.
How the fuck do you fuck up Guitar Hero? Neversoft knows. Terrible sequencing.

I played a few songs on hard... and it seemed... OK. Then I cringed at the tutorial, and brought it into work, and people at work played horrible, shitty battle mode and hated it. Then I played some songs on expert against my co-workers (face off, of course). Everyone agreed it was kind of weak, people didn't like the sequencing much, but I couldn't believe that would have such a huge impact.

I then took the game home and played it for a while. I was starting to think I was getting over the music game genre. I was almost ready to give up on Rock Band. I thought I was just through with the whole idea. I played portal for a while, then did some other stuff.

Then I sat down at my X box 360 and put in Guitar Hero 2.
Booted up Bark at the Moon on expert.
Yes. This was still fantastic.

Sweet Child O Mine? Fucking incredible experience.

Search and Destroy? Still fun as hell.

I put guitar hero 3 back in. Rock You Like a Hurricane? Decent, had some fun with it for sure.

Evenflow?

Holy shit it is a fucking horrible mess. I can't believe how bad it is. Nearly unplayable.

Basically what I'm saying is..... Fuck you Neversoft. Fuck you for ruining one of the best video game franchises to come along in the past decade.

Meanwhile, I'm going to rockband.com looking for info, listening to the tracklist, generally getting excited again, because I'm sure Harmonix won't blow it the way neversoft has.