One of two things need to happen to these themed discs – either they need to be priced cheaper, similar to a SingStar disc, or they need to offer a little more value than a bunch of songs, some new characters which are supposed to resemble the band, and some random pieces of information about said band that you only get to see if you “watch” a song from beginning to end.

After The Beatles: Rock Band, my expectations for band-themed discs for modern music games are much higher. I expect to know a lot more about the band – their beginnings, their progression, their various stages of dress, hairdos and style, maybe even their ideals. In Guitar Hero: Van Halen, Neversoft have just thrown together some songs, ordered them in a seemingly random way, stuck them on a disc and sent it out the door. Like I said – this needs to be cheaper, or better.

Van Halen is a likely choice for the Guitar Hero treatment – Eddie Van Halen is a genuine guitar hero, pioneering all sorts of playing techniques. You wouldn’t know this very well from the game though, unless you’re willing to sit through a self-playing version of a song while watching cartoony Van Halen lookalikes thrash around on stage and read factoids. That’s just about all the theming this game got. There are some stages that are different – in fact they’re more boring than the normal Guitar Hero stages. Oh, you can also unlock some guitar faceplates which are like the ones Eddie used to use.

Nevertheless, the Van Halen songs are good Guitar Hero fodder – suitably fun and difficult. The non-Van Halen songs on the disc are also good, although I couldn’t figure out their link to Van Halen. There are 25 Van Halen songs on the disc (of which 3 are really short guitar solo pieces), and 19 songs from other bands. A number of songs are really fun – like Panama and Jump by Van Halen, White Wedding (part 1) by Billy Idol, Pretty Fly (for a White Guy) by The Offspring, and Best of You by the Foo Fighters, but having a few great tracks on a disc just makes you more annoyed that you can’t bring them in to a central place so that all your favourites are together. You might notice from my choice of Van Halen songs that I wasn’t a fan previously – and I’m sorry to say this disc didn’t do nearly enough to make one out of me.

One of the great things about the original Guitar Hero (and Rock Band) games was their sense of style – the over-the-top characters, the larger-than-life stages that always had some surprise in store for the encore performance, and the sense that you were the band playing the guitar for your adoring fans. A lot of that is lost in a game that focuses on another band, and it’s not replaced in any way by giving you more of a sense of what that band is like (other than their music of course).

If I were a big band I would hesitate to give Activision my music to make into a game because I would want my “soul” to come through – what the band stands for and who we are. I’m still sad that I hardly know any more about Van Halen than I did when I started the game, and what I did learn I learnt by reading factoids, not through any decent mechanism (maybe a montage, or newspaper clippings, or something – anything!)

This disc sits in an odd place – if I were a Van Halen fan I would be glad to be able to enjoy their songs in a new way, but I would be upset at the poor treatment the band got. Not being a Van Halen fan means I’m not really the target market – but I wasn’t a Beatles fan and The Beatles: Rock Band was a wonderful voyage of discovery. I have enjoyed getting to know Van Halen’s music a bit more, and it really does fit the Guitar Hero mould. However, perhaps Van Halen aren’t quite as seminal, or tragic, as The Beatles were, but it’s hard to believe they’re as bland as this game.

Purchase: