Guitar Hero
Music games are certainly nothing new for game consoles—they’re a huge phenomenon in Japan, though they haven’t caught on nearly as much here in North America, where they’re more of a cult phenomenon, the popularity of games like Dance Dance Revolution notwithstanding.
Harmonix and Red Octane struck paydirt this past holiday season with a game that harkens back to a Japanese arcade game called Guitar Freaks. In this case, it’s a PlayStation 2 title called Guitar Hero. This was a huge hit—big enough that all the stores I looked for it at were totally sold out. They’ve finally started getting them back in though, and I picked it up at a local Best Buy last night.
Guitar Hero blends a rock and roll soundtrack, a rhythm-based music game and a special controller that looks like a solid-body electric guitar (only smaller). There are five buttons on the neck, positioned between the frets, a “strum bar” and whammy bar.
Playing is simple: Scrolling note markers on the screen show you which notes you’re supposed to hit, which you play by pressing down the fret buttons and hitting the strum bar in time with the song. There are sustains and chords, too.
You can play as one of several different guitarists, all fitting a different stereotype: The dark goth goddess, the mulleted heavy metal maven, the mohawked punker, and more. A deal with Gibson let them license different guitars ranging from the Les Paul to the Flying V, for use in the game.
What’s remarkable is how reactive the game is to what you’re doing—go off tempo, and you’ll hear (and see) the on-screen guitarist screw up. So if you want to hear “Iron Man” played right, you’ll stay on time.
The songs cover a really wide gamut, from old punk standards like “I Wanna Be Sedated” to heavy metal fare like “Smoke on the Water” and “You’ve Got Another Thing Coming.” There’s Edgar Winter, Blue Oyster Cult, Zakk Wylde and Sum 41 in the mix, too. Now, most of the songs aren’t the originals, but those are done by soundalikes that are reasonable simulations of the originals.
A Career mode gets progressively harder as you work your way up the food chain to bigger clubs and venues and higher levels of fame, and multiple levels of difficulty keep your fingers limber, too.
In short, Guitar Hero is the most fun I’ve had with my PlayStation 2 in quite some time. It’s a really fun and challenging take on the ever-changing music game market, tailored very much for the American audience and better for it.
February 11th, 2006 at 9:56 pm
I watched the trailer on the Web site and it looked really cool. It even had a guitarist playing Zakk Wylde’s Bullseye Les Paul.
Yeah baby!
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