"C'mon guys, don't give me recycled stuff and charge me full price."

I've been thinking long and hard this week about Guitar Hero Encore: Rock the 80's. What happened to my rockin' soundtrack? What happened to the crazy solos? And most importantly - what happened to originality?

Let's back up a bit. In case you somehow missed it, the original Guitar Hero was released in late 2005. It took a simple idea - Letting people play guitar on some of their favorite songs - and made it a reality, using a giant plastic guitar controller. Gimmicky? A little, but you didn't care while you were jamming with the Ramones, Pantera, Ozzy, and many other amazing bands. It was a great game, and I couldn't get enough of it. So a sequel is made, and somehow trumps the original with a better soundtrack, despite a few songs I personally can't stand. Guns n' Roses, Danzig, Rage Against the Machine... it even had Spinal Tap. Spinal Tap! Not only did it have an amazing soundtrack, but the game play was improved in every way. Co-op, Practice mode, easier to do Hammer ons and Pull offs... Guitar Hero II even got ported to the XBOX 360, where we were promised downloadable content... and although we are really still waiting for anything new, at least it will eventually come.

I'm assuming you already know this. So why am I stressing these points? Because unlike its predecessors, GH:80's does absolutely nothing new. It's the same tired stuff we've seen before... and honestly, it does only an average job at it.

For starters, let's look at arguably the most important aspect of the game - the set list. For comparison, GH had 47 tracks, and the original PS2 GHII had a whopping 64. GH:80's has 30. How did we actually get FEWER songs? The two original games had bonus songs, which were mostly smaller, local bands that the developers liked; bands of the developers themselves; or songs from TV Shows and other popular culture put into the game to put a smile on your face. While some of these songs are painfully bad, most of them are quite good (and there's even a few that might be more fun that the actual set list). 80's has no bonus content whatsoever. There are your 30 songs, and only your 30 songs.

As for the songs themselves, they're varied. There's some really good ones, and some really bad ones. While I'm going to say that none of the tracks are as bad as those few tracks in GHII, some of these songs should have definitely been left in the 80's. For example, "Los Angeles" by X - You'll see why you've never heard of it. "The Warrior" By Scandal - Another song that I really can't stand. And I hate to bring it up because everyone's saying it, but they're right - Radar Love. C'mon, the White Lion version? Seriously? Now there's plenty of great picks like "Holy Diver", "Synchronicity II", "Shakin", and "I Wanna Rock"; there's even some unexpected but still cool picks like "Heat of the Moment" and "Because, It's Midnite". But it seems that all of the great songs in the game are incredible easy. Heck, with one or two exceptions, it seems ALL of the songs in the game are easy. Now, I'm not amazing at Guitar Hero. I can't beat Jordan on expert - Heck, I can't 5 star Freebird on expert. So why was I able to 5 star 80% of this game on my first try, and 10% on my second? I have 3 songs left to 5 star in the game, and all of these songs are pretty close to the required score. There are really only two songs with completely crazy solos, and that's just disappointing to me.

Multiplayer (specifically Co-op) is another place this game really doesn't excel, just for the simple fact that the bass lines in the game are so basic and easy. I can't find anyone to co-op the game with me just because no one wants to play bass. Also, the relative ease of the guitar makes 5-starring co-op songs stupidly easy. There's still Face off and Pro Face off modes, exactly the same from the second game.

In fact, almost everything else is exactly the same as GHII, except coated in Neon. The look of the venues, Unlockable Guitars (even the "beat _____ difficulty to unlock a special guitar" rewards are the same), heck, even the intro is exactly the same (albeit it being spray painted with neon). In fact, the only real difference is the characters - they've been completely re-skinned to look more 80's. However, even with the one bonus character, there are only 6 playable characters now. Again, let's count. The Original GH had 8; GHII had 11; now we're down to 6? And also, we're missing two venues. What the heck, guys? Is it really that hard to re-skin a guitar? Give us a new venue or two?

Thankfully all the new stuff introduced in GHII is still intact. Pro-face off and Co-op (even though it's boring), Practice Mode, Easier Hammer On/Pull Off system, it's all there.

Now, the game isn't terrible by any stretch of the imagination - I still have fun while playing it. There are still a few songs I need to 5 star, and there are a few songs in the game I really like. But this leads me to my biggest disappointment with the game - They took all of this content out of the game... and charged me $50 for it.

That's what my main issue with the game is - how much it cost. This game was actually supposed to be an expansion pack for GHII, which is why most of the stuff is exactly the same. So why, then, is there considerably LESS content? If I had paid $30 dollars for this game, I would have been a lot more satisfied - I can deal with loss of content for a lower price. Heck, I don't even really care that much about the venues and whatnot - if they left one character and venue and gave me at least close to the number of songs that was in the last game, I would be satisfied and not writing this review. But the fact that all this content was removed and nothing new to replace it was put in is just disappointing.

So would I recommend this game? Yes, to Die Hard GH fans only, and I'm talking about those fans that like to unlock everything and then try to hit every note in every song. If you kinda liked GH or GHII, just do yourself a favor and wait until GHIII or a price drop... and even then, it's really not worth more than $30.

I seriously hope that GH doesn't go the way of DDR. I guess we'll see when GHIII comes out.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 08/06/07