Guitar Hero: Praise Band Edition

Ok, so that's not the official title, but it made me laugh to see this. Guitar Praise (there's a video there that you should watch), was stumbled across while reading a blog Stuff Christians Like .

Having led "Praise and Worship" at a couple of churches, retreats, and events, as well as having performed and covered many "Christian Songs", I laughed at the premise. The popular Guitar Hero that this product is imitating, the idea is to make the player feel like a "rock star". Guitar Hero tries to allow the player to hit awesome/notorious/famous guitar riffs from songs throughout Rock history. So "Guitar Praise" allows people to live out their dreams of being a... worship leader? This product allows those devoted to Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) to play along with some of their favorite christian artists.

As far as Praise music goes, if a person picks up a guitar and learns 3-5 chords, a person can play 90% of the praise music out there for real!!! Same goes with a lot of the Christian artists. I'm mostly a rhythm (acoustic) guitar player, but even I can pick out a lot of the riffs from CCM. But Put SRV, Santana, Metallica, Rush, The Who, and the other famous guitar riffs on Guitar Hero and Rock Band in front of me and I sit frozen in awe at how awesome and talented their music truly is.

I'm not saying that there aren't some talented Christian Artists out there. I wouldn't mind some Switchfoot on GH or RB. But that's just it. If you want these bands to be added to the ever-growing list of downloadable songs, the publishers and programmers look at what songs and artists people have requested. This "Christian response" to a videogame franchise (not the first time this has happened) amuses me.

Here's how Amazon describes it:
Product Description Guitar Praise is a variation of a game (similar to the popular Guitar Hero) where you play a guitar to win the game. Instead of playing with traditional rock tracks, Guitar Praise includes over 50 popular devotional rock tracks.

Guitar Praise lets players act out their dreams of leading a rock band by playing along with their favorite Christian rock tunes. As the song and lyrics play, colorful notes scroll down the screen. Players must keep up by matching the notes to the fret buttons on the guitar controller included with the game. Four levels of play are offered. As the player completes songs, more tracks are unlocked and the challenge increases. Guitar Praise features 52 of the most inspirational and pulsating tracks from the Christian rock world, all by the original artists. Today's most popular hits are combined with classics from the 80's and 90's; the playlist includes titles from Flyleaf, Skillet, Stellar Kart, tobyMac, Newsboys, Petra, 12 Stones, Spoken, Whitecross, Thousand Foot Krutch, Paul Baloche, David Crowder, and Red, plus many others.

As players shred through their guitar solos, Guitar Praise records high scores per song. New songs, in sets of five, are unlocked along the way to keep the player's interest. By tilting the guitar, players can activate spinner bonuses; as they increase their skills they can earn new onscreen "guitars" with richer sounds and different effects.

What do you think?