Trade in your old air guitar for a plastic guitar and play one of the best rhythm games there is
The basic gameplay of Guitar Hero is alot like the DDR games, except you use a guitar instead of your feet. Guitar Hero comes standard in a bundle with the guitar controller that is highly recommended. So even if you can find the game for cheap, buy the guitar controller too. There are 5 fret buttons on the guitar controller, with a strum bar, a whammy bar and a start button. While playing, you press the corresponding fret button and strum the note when it crosses the screen. Its as simple as that. But it does get harder as you work your way through the game's 4 difficulty levels. The easiest difficulty level only uses 3 fret buttons and the notes scroll by a slower pace. The next level adds the 4th fret button and the notes speed up a tad, also adding in 2 button chords more often. Then the 3rd level adds the 5th fret button and speeds up even more, while the 4th level is just the ultimate test of your virtual guitar playing ability. But it doesn't matter what level you play on, the game is alot of fun to play. You get graded after each song based on how you did. As you play each song, a meter and score is shown in the bottom lefthand corner so you always know how you're doing. If you're facing a tough song, or want to maximize points, there is also Star Power to use, which you accumulate by successfully playing specific stringed star note sections. Then you tilt the controller to activate the star power. Since you are paying attention to the upcoming notes, its easy to miss how good the graphics are. The graphics are surprisingly really good as the character models for the band on stage, as well as the stages themselves, all look very good. Add in a good variety of different on-screen guitars, and the graphics really are better than you would think for a game like this.
The big selling point though is the music. And there is alot of variety here, from Sum 41, The Donnas, Franz Ferdinand, Bad Religion and The Exies all the way to Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, Jimi Hendrix, Motorhead and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Now here is the only downfall to that great list of music, while the songs are those performed by that particular band, a cover band performs the songs in the game. Still, it can be hard to tell that a cover band sang all the songs, except for the bonus songs which are indie songs. Besides after playing most of the songs numerous times, I almost prefer the Guitar Hero version of the song versus the actual version of it.
Guitar Hero is a blast to play. If you don't have any musical talent, you can feel like you do playing all the rock music in the game. If you love the rhythm genre, Guitar Hero is one of the best games to come out of the genre in recent years.