Rhythm games are getting a little long in the tooth. It’s going to take some innovation to keep people interested. Guitar Hero Van Halen doesn’t give anything new and, in fact, seems to strip previous features away. Taking the Guitar Hero 5 core gameplay and adding new character skins and songs, the game just doesn’t deliver.

If you’re a huge Van Halen fan, you might be interested in this game, but only as a rental. The band, minus Sammy Hagar, has been digitized with 25 of their biggest hits. The good news is Activision and RedOctane took the solid Guitar Hero 5 gameplay mechanics, so you know this one plays well. If you want to get more info on the gameplay, check out our review of GH5, as it’s essentially the same. That’s about as far as my praise goes.

Guitar Hero Van Halen feels very disjointed. Previous band-specific iterations of Guitar Hero, such as GH Aerosmith and GH Metallica, had you following the path of the band from the early days until the present, giving back story and adding songs that match the band’s sound. With GH Van Halen, none of that is present. If you can tell me how Jimmy Eat World, Queens of the Stone Age and Fountains of Wayne in any way fit in with Van Halen’s sound, I’d love to hear it. There are others that work well, such as Foreigner and Queen, so it’s not all bad. Another major annoyance was having each instrument’s career separated. If I want to play a few songs on drums, a few on guitar, and a couple more on vocals, I don’t want to have to start the career mode over for each instrument.

At the $59.99 retail price, I cannot advise buying this game. If you really want to play, rent it. Yes, it plays well, which is why it gets 3 stars, but the soundtrack isn’t a ton of fun and the game does not do anything more for Van Halen than a track pack would have done. Everything about the game just feels rushed. I can see why this was offered free with early Guitar Hero 5 purchases. Even if you got the game through that deal, I doubt you’ll play it more than once.

[A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review purposes.]