The rhythm music genre has become stagnant. This year, all of the big names are making tweaks to the framework in an attempt to entice new and old gamers to buy their next iterations and keep music gaming in the forefront of everyone’s minds. Activision has chosen the semi-RPG route with Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, giving you a Quest Mode as opposed to the standard single player fare. With other changes and updates in store, is the game a platinum album or a one hit wonder? Read on, friends.

The new Quest Mode is the heart and soul of Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock. Most sections of the Quest have you playing as a single character who possesses a rocking power, such as acquiring bits of Star Power for 10 note streaks and getting extra Stars for overflowing the crowd meter. By completing each of the character’s challenge areas, you’ll power up that character to rock god status where their special power doubles (or higher in some cases). Group challenge areas occur after you unlock a few characters where you team up to roll through a playlist, where each of the characters’ powers is available for all of the songs. It’s an okay addition to the game, but doesn’t give me any more desire to keep going than typical single player modes for music games. The only real compelling reason I had to keep playing Quest mode (aside from this review) was to unlock all the songs in the game. That’s right, Activision brought back the dreaded requirement of needed to play through single player before you can unlock all songs for Quickplay. This does not please me. Not one bit. Especially since Rush’s “2112″ album is part of this unlocking mess.

Other new additions include Quickplay transforming to Quickplay+, where you can complete various challenges on each song to earn as many Stars as your fingers allow. Whether you hit a certain number of notes or get a certain streak, you can level yourself up in Quickplay+ to unlock new gear and instruments. The Achievements are largely tied to the challenges in Quickplay+, so even if you go through Quest Mode, Achievement junkies will need to replay many of the songs in the game to rack up their Gamerscore. I personally don’t care about what Achievements I get, but I have no problem replaying songs in Warriors of Rock as I strongly prefer this setlist to previous versions of the game… other than Nickelback. I hate Nickelback. Thankfully, I was able to skip them and have no touched any Nickelback songs.

While playing guitar is spot on, I’ve never been a giant fan of how Guitar Hero games have handled drums and vocals compared to the competition. It’s never felt as fluid and fun, and this remains the case in Warriors of Rock. It’s a combination of hit windows and note charting that leads to a disconnect from the game. I tend to stick to guitar to maximize my return from the game. I also experienced quite a few Disc Read errors during my review while playing on my Xbox 360 Slim. Installing the game to the hard drive eliminated the issues, but keep them in mind if you don’t have that luxury.

If you hate RPG’s, you may not be a fan of the game’s new single player mode. But most of you aren’t in that boat, so you’ll be fine. I loved being able to play “2112″ by Rush in its entirety and export my previous Guitar Hero games via download instead of popping in the disc (including Guitar Hero Metallica being a free export at press time). It’s a fairly solid package, but not a major leap forward. The setlist is the driving force and Activision did a great job in that respect. It’s worth checking out.

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