A much better effort than the first Guitar Hero game for the DS
The set list contains some pretty good songs from the 70's to 2007, of course this depends on your tastes, but you're more likely to find a song you like on Decades than the original. There's a wide variety of costumes to dress the characters in but the game is missing licensed guitars, not that that hinders the gameplay, you'll be spending far too much time looking at the top screen trying to hit notes.
Visually the game still has the same clunky 3D animations of the first game just on flashier backgrounds, but the layout of the menu system has been improved and no longer do you have to beat every song on every difficulty, beat a song on expert and it checks it off for all other difficulties as well. Difficulty wise, it's challenging but not to the point of frustration.
A nice addition is the option to play either rhythm or bass guitar which adds a whole lot more gameplay value for your money.
The multiplayer option of song sharing is a pretty good idea, i just haven't had a chance to test it out yet.
Overall it's a pretty solid game, and to be honest you already know if this game is for you or not so I'm not going to try and make it out to be anything other than a much improved Guitar Hero title for the DS, that is just plain fun!
Oh and yeah the guitar grip still makes your hand cramp up like a &$%*@