which guitar hero if you could only pick one?

[Niode]

Guitar Hero 2 was the last good one. GH3 was just garbage. Guitar Hero died when Harmonix ditched the IP and made Rock Band which is so much better in every single way.

[retrosportsgamer]

^ Rocks the '80s only came out on PS2 (i thought?)

I would vote for Guitar Hero III - the pinnacle of the series imo because then they went to the full band mode like rock band. I loved GH III and also the re-release of Guitar hero II for the 360 (had a number of new tracks plus a cool guitar).

I played a lot of the original Rock Band but interest in the series died off with all the releases and overkill.

They didn't go full band until World Tour, which was Guitar Hero 4. In 3 you could only play guitar.

That's what I was trying to communicate. Not great sentence structure by me.

[vgmastercleveland]

Yeah, GH3 was best for me too. I played through it on easy, medium, hard, and I even made a failed attempt at expert. I have played through GH1 and 3, some of 2, world tour, and warriors of rock. After world tour it seemed too much like rock band to me. So yeah 3 is definately best.

[Not_a_sockpuppet]

Being sincere I would rather recommend Guitar Freaks, it's a superior game. You can emulate it with DXTMania both the original (3 button) and XG (5 button).

Concerning the GH I have played, 3 has a somewhat better soundtrack but the notecharts are terrible, with many awkard hand movements and a lack of flow. This also applies to 2 but it doesn't have the terrible hand-stretching moments GH3 has.

[Inazuma]

Being sincere I would rather recommend Guitar Freaks, it's a superior game. You can emulate it with DXTMania both the original (3 button) and XG (5 button).

This.

Guitar Freaks is the best guitar simulation game. There are games on the PS1 and PS2, all of them are good. The music is about 100 times better than Guitar Hero, and best of all, there is no DLC.

[Zing]

Yes, with Guitar Freaks you get to play all your favourite rock songs from well-known artists such as:
Mutsuhiko Izumi
Thomas Howard Lichtenstein
Kelly Cosmo
Jimmy Weckl

…and many more!

But seriously, I think most people prefer to play songs from bands they already know and enjoy. They aren't sitting around wishing their favourite Dance Dance Revolution artists would make a guitar game.

[Not_a_sockpuppet]

But seriously, I think most people prefer to play songs from bands they already know and enjoy. They aren't sitting around wishing their favourite Dance Dance Revolution artists would make a guitar game.

In my experience, if the songlist is good, people will like it. Licenses only attract but they won't make you stay more than an unknown good song.

I'm also going to nitpick and say that very few if any DDR artists write music for GF/DM and there is a healthy number of licenses.