Vicarious Visions Speaks out; GH On Tour: Modern Hits Song List Released; DSi Version on the Horizon?

Recently, we had the opportunity to spend some quality time with the preview code of Guitar Hero On Tour: Modern Hits (click HERE for our hands-on impressions).

Today we had the opportunity to sit in on a conference call with the producers and developers of the title including:

David Nathanielsz – Executive Producer, Jesse Booth – Producer, Mike Chrzanowski — Lead Designer, Muhammad Ahmed — Lead Designer, Eric Feurstein — Lead Artist, and Justin Joyner — Lead Audio Designer.

Despite the glut of talent, not a lot of new info was uncovered.  Although, a few gleaming nuggets did get us excited.

In case you haven’t had time to read our preview, this third installment in the GH On Tour franchise not only includes an additional 28 songs with a contemporary set-list, it also still allows for multi-cart song sharing (effectively increasing the playable library to 75 songs) and adds in a new, non-linear career progression via Fan Requests.

Fan Requests essentially are additional challenges that make players not only perform songs well to advance, but also make them meet specific criteria while playing the song in the form of lengthy note streaks, whammying every held note, shredding through an entire song whilst in Hyperspeed, etc. Acquire enough fans and you’ll become a modern rock god.

We also noted in our preview that the game seemed to recognize our strumming much more readily. According to Vicarious Visions, this is probably due to some minor tweaking they have done to the strum detection and wasn’t just a figment of our imagination.

Also, the developers have been working with the same tech for three games now and have become quite savvy with its implementation. As such, fans will notice better compression leading to greater music fidelity as well as more polished character modeling and five new venues that are very nicely detailed. I also liked the fact that all songs in the game are open to players upon firing up the cart – Quick Play will give you access to everything up front, but the Career mode will still be where you earn your stripes.

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to play any of the multiplayer as it was locked out. However, it was confirmed that no new goodies have been included because it would negate compatibility for song sharing. The devs felt that streaming songs from one DS to another was far more important than adding a few new features.

Though the crew at Vicarious Visions was reticent to speak about any future games coming out for DS, it was mentioned that they are looking forward to working with the DSi. Naturally, the DSi with its DSiWare service seems to mesh nicely with the music and rhythm genre. Of course, the lack of a GBA slot means the Guitar Grip peripheral will need to be rethought before launching for Nintendo’s new handheld. Nevertheless, it was confirmed that the team at Vicarious Visions responsible for the Guitar Hero On Tour franchise is very excited about the new hardware.

Below you’ll find a complete set-list of the modern hits that make up the music found in Modern Hits!

• 12 Stones – “Adrenalin”
• AFI – “Miss Murder”
• Angels & Airwaves – “Call to Arms”
• Atreyu – “Falling Down”
• Black Tide – “Shockwave”
• Coldplay – “Violet Hill”
• Endeverafter – “I Wanna Be Your Man”
• Evanescence – “Sweet Sacrifice”
• Fall Out Boy – “This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race”
• Finger Eleven – “Paralyzer”
• Foo Fighters – “All My Life”
• Franz Ferdinand – “The Fallen”
• Kaiser Chiefs – “Ruby”
• Lenny Kravitz – “Where Are We Runnin’?”
• Modest Mouse – “Dashboard”
• Phantom Planet – “Do The Panic”
• Sum 41 – “Still Waiting”
• Tenacious D – “The Metal”
• The Bravery – “Unconditional”
• The Donnas – “What Do I Have to Do”
• The Duke Spirit – “Lassoo”
• The Fratellis – “Chelsea Dagger”
• The Kooks – “Always Where I Need to Be”
• The Offspring – “Half-Truism”
• The Strokes – “Reptilia”
• Weezer – “Everybody Get Dangerous”
• Wolfmother – “Dimension”
• Yellowcard – “Lights and Sounds”