Single Player Modes

Solo Career

With 14 of us visiting Neversoft, as well as various NS staff hanging around and playing throughout the day, and "only" five GHWT setups, we didn't really have much of a chance to play with the solo career. However, from what we did look at, it appears as though the solo career is a little less linear than before. Songs are organized into some short "setlists", all the ones we saw were of two or three songs. The interface for selecting setlists (again, at least at the beginning), is set up like a bulletin board, with sheets of paper posted in a sort of "Band Wanted" style. Finishing a setlist may cause new requests to be posted, and thus available for selection. One thing to note is that these setlists can be resumed, if you get interrupted. At one point, one of us had started a setlist, finished the first song, and then quit out to play some band play. Upon returning to solo career later, only the second song in the setlist had to be played to complete it.

From information available about the game (including the setlist), we know that the career mode must include things such as instrument battles against famous musicians such as Zakk Wylde, but unfortunately none of us were able to proceed far enough into a solo career to experience one of these. We did progress far enough to get to see Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins fame step out onto the stage to sing his own song "Today", so cameo appearances are more prevalent than they used to be.

Quickplay

Quickplay mode hasn't changed much from what we're used to. When selecting songs, the game now defaults to setting up a setlist, which maxes out at six songs. After selecting your first song, you remain on the menu screen and can select up to five more, until you press Start to proceed. It's nice to be able to choose setlists, but the limited nature of it will likely turn some people off towards the gesture. Just as a quick note on something that we go more in-depth with later, the Quickplay setlist presentation is HORRIBLE.