Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, the sixth major release for the franchise, hits store shelves in just a few weeks.  I was able to play the game for a few hours last week.

Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock Gameplay

The game plays very much like the later Guitar Hero games; there is nothing extraordinarily different about the core gameplay.  There is a new quest mode, narrated by Gene Simmons from KISS and featuring an original song by Dave Mustaine of Megadeth.  Additionally, there is Facebook and Twitter support, so players will now be able to share their accomplishments with their friends.  The track list features over 90 songs on disc, and will also support importing from Guitar Hero World Tour, Guitar Hero Smash Hits, Guitar Hero 5 and Band Hero.  

This is all very standard stuff, so I am going to dive the deepest into the one part of the game I was able to take home – the new guitar.

The New Guitar Model

This new guitar may be the best one since the Les Paul.  The core of the guitar is now one large neckpiece, with the body not serving any actual function anymore aside from balancing the weight.  This is a huge relief to anyone who has had their previous guitars start to drop notes due to the neck coming apart from the body.

The Deconstructed Guitar

The frets feel as good as ever, and the strum bar has a very satisfying click to it.  The strum bar is a bit more tapered than the previous guitars, which may take a little time to adjust to – since I have smaller hands I actually liked the feel of this but it may be different for other people.

As with the Guitar Hero World Tour guitar, the Back button is right at the palm of your strumming hand for easy Star Power use.  The Start button is right next to the large Back button like in previous iterations, but the whammy bar is now on the other side.  This makes for a shorter, but easier to handle whammy bar.  The Xbox Guide button also serves as a D-Pad, and the sync button is on the back of the guitar.

The neck no longer includes the touch strip, just the five basic fret buttons.  However, the bottom part of the fret board has a small button that unlocks the battery compartment.  Simply press and a slide it downwards and the panel comes right off.  As with all the other guitars, this one uses 2 AA batteries.  

The size of the body is in between the Les Paul and the World Tour guitar, but this new guitar weighs quite a bit more than the Les Paul.  The body is very dense, despite the cut out design of it, and it weighs close to what the World Tour guitar weighs.  

The battery compartment and unlocking mechanism for the guitar body

The new hardware is really quite impressive, with a lot of the problems from previous guitars rectified.  Only time will tell if this is the best guitar we’ve seen yet, but from my time with it so far, it’s a very strong runner.