Guitar Hero and Rock Band ruled my life for a long stretch of time. I poured thousands of hours into those franchises, and probably even more dollars as I accumulated as much DLC as possible. I even played competitively in tournaments for a couple of years. Today, I still mourn the loss of the genre, which is why I was exhilarated to meet with Echo Foundry Interactive, a team consisting of former developers of Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and other rhythm games, to see their upcoming title, Sound System.
Sound System plays much like the classic Guitar Hero games that introduced the Western world to the guitar-driven rhythm-based genre, with five-lane note highways, background animations, and plenty of engaging rock songs to strum and hammer-on/pull-off your way through. Echo Foundry is taking a smart approach, delivering master recordings of indie songs, while licensing more popular (and expensive) tracks so they can include covers of them in the tracklist – a move the team tells me will help keep costs down and make previously inaccessible songs attainable.
On top of a large list of songs included at launch, as well as a robust post-launch DLC plan, Sound System also includes a built-in custom song creator, meaning you can upload any song and create your own chart for it. For example, I watched the creators upload one of the most iconic rock songs that fans have been clamoring for since the inception of Guitar Hero and design how they think the intro should go. It will certainly take time and knowledge, but I could see a community forming around this feature and sharing charts for sought-after songs. Sound System is set to arrive on PC sometime this year, with the team investigating bringing it to consoles sometime after that.