Things for you, the reader, to do right now:
- Optional: Read this review
- Go buy this game
- Invite friends over
- Freaking ROCK OUT!
If you’re still with me, then you probably have some interest in the increasingly popular music/rhythm genre. Even though the US has had it’s share of music games, the big name players, besides DDR, have been missing. Where’s the rest of Konami’s Bemani series? I would’ve thought that the success of DDR would’ve been all the nudging they needed to start brining over DrumMania, Beatmania, Pop’n Music, and of course, GuitarFreaks. Instead, Harmonix has been doing a fantastic job filling the gaps with outstanding titles like Frequency, Amplitude, and Karaoke Revolution. This time, they’ve unleashed a beast in Guitar Hero.
I was an early adopter of Beatmania IIDX with 3rd Mix, and I’ve played my share of Pop’n Music. Those two series are very dear to my heart. GuitarFreaks and DrumMania are two series that have always eluded me, due to rare and expensive or cheap and worthless peripherals. Not having GuitarFreaks has always been particularly painful for me being huge fan of heavy rock music and having dabbled with real guitars. Now it just doesn’t matter anymore because I have Guitar Hero in its stead. Guitar Hero is kind of like an extension of Amplitude. It uses the same view for colored notes sliding down the screen. Now instead of three buttons to contend with, there are five, and they’re saddled on the neck of a real fine guitar peripheral. Modeled after the SG line of Gibson guitars, this controller has the five buttons where the first five frets would be. It has a strum bar with action on both up and down motions and a whammy bar to twink those long sustained notes. There’s also a motion sensor inside that can detect when the guitar is turned upright for Star Power mode. What guitar hero does so well is make you feel like you’re really playing the guitar. The satisfaction of getting a high completion percentage on a difficult song is so awesome. You can’t help but get into that rock posture and really start feeling the song. It makes me want to jump up and down. It makes me want to kick amp when I finish the song. I’m so psyched about it, I have to talk about it when I’m not playing. The game offers up a small tutorial mode, quick play, multiplayer, and career modes. You have to progress through career mode to unlock the songs for the other modes, but once they’re unlocked, they’re available at any difficulty. You can play through a career at easy, medium, hard, or extreme. Once you start, you’ll be playing tier one songs in a basement. Each tier you progress to unlocks a newer, bigger venue until you’re finally playing a big arena concert. Completing a song will earn you some money that can be used to purchase a number of things from the unlock shop. You can buy new characters, guitars for your characters, guitar skins, and 18 other songs (mostly by people in bands that work for Harmonix). Things that you buy in one difficulty will have to be re-bought when you play through career at a different level. The strange thing is you can buy the extra songs again, but you don’t need to since they are unlocked for good after one purchase. Guitar Hero flaunts an impressive line up of songs too. There are 30 licensed covers and another 18 indie/Harmonix band songs. The amazing thing is how great the covers are. Except for a couple of noticeably different sounds from the Incubus and Queen songs, they all sound just like the real tracks. With songs ranging from David Bowie to White Zombie, it’s really a credit to the performers to be able to not only recreate the music, but the voices as well. This game went through a very short development cycle, and the dev team admits that they came up a little short on features in order to make their self imposed deadline. Lack of a practice mode and a pretty weak multiplayer mode keep this game from getting what should be the highest score we award. A good practice mode with selectable measures to train and variable speed would have gone a long way towards helping those of us devoted to getting really high completion percentages on extreme. The multiplayer mode just breaks the song up into pieces. One player plays a part. Then the other player plays a part. Then both play together. There’s no baselines or harmonizing between the two. Regardless of the small knock on the letter grade, I give Guitar Hero my highest recommendation. By yourself or especially with a group of friends, this game is a blast. ::Gives metal:: Thank you, Gaming Age! Good night!
Chris' Thoughts From my first experience with Guitar Hero, plinking away at Symphony of Destruction in a cramped booth at E3, I was hooked. Back then, the game was pretty early, the build only had a few songs, the whammy bar had yet to be implemented, but none of that mattered. Even at that stage, Harmonix had the essentials down, and with months of development time left, they had ample opportunity to expand upon that. Thankfully, the final product doesn't disappoint. With four difficulty levels and over forty songs, Guitar Hero is immediately accessible to even the most rhythm-challenged of us. Furthermore, dozens of full-length songs mean that, even at that simple point, you won't grow bored with a limited selection of songs. And when you're looking for more of a challenge, and trust me, you will, the other three difficulty settings are more than willing to oblige. Part of that accessibility is due to the in-game tutorial, which does a great job of ensuring that players have the rudimentary skills necessary to pass the first few songs. But even intermediately-skilled players will want to visit tutorial mode, if just for the advanced lesson that covers hammer-ons and pull-offs. These techniques, which allow one to hit multiple ascending or descending notes without additional strumming, are essential in the harder settings as the songs become more and more complex. To be successful in those harder difficulty settings will require lots of practice, and that's the one area where Guitar Hero falls through. Though a free mode is available, it only allows one to play entire songs, which isn't very helpful in mastering that one problematic section or solo. But that's Guitar Hero's only flaw, and it's a bit of a minor one at that. Meanwhile, everything else in the game is ridiculously polished, from the mostly-authentic sounding covers to the motion-captured character animations to the unlockable making-of videos. Or the bit in versus mode where player one's guitar only comes out of the left speaker while player two's only comes out of the right. Or the way the camera's movements reflect the current venue, such as the camera clunking down the stairs in the basement venue. Even the guitar controller itself is a solid, quality piece of equipment that shows the crews over at RedOctane and Harmonix really put their hearts into this game. Excellent in almost all regards, and more importantly, a whole lot of fun, Guitar Hero is one of those games you want to run out and tell everyone you know about. It's immensely satisfying to play, and with four difficulty modes, everyone can enjoy it, regardless of musical ability. Even better, the four difficulty settings mean that it'll take a considerable amount of time to completely master the game, especially with forty-plus songs. If you're at all a fan of having fun, pick this up. Score: A-
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