Let's face facts - Guitar Hero is one of the most original, accessible, and just plain enjoyable rhythm games ever.
The game I'm going to review today is a game that made me say "Oh, cool!" just like the aforementioned ones. Actually it might have been something like "Oh, ****Ing awesome!" but still, it gives the same sort of effect. This game gave me this enthusiasm not because of its features, its aesthetics, or its mechanics - it's because of how original the concept of Guitar Hero is.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's never been a truly great game that encapsulated the feel of playing guitar and feeling like a stereotypical rockstar. You know, the kind who trash hotels, get drunk a lot, wake up hung over the following night, wash, rinse, repeat, etc. That sort of dude who doesn't really care how he behaves in public as long as he looks cool and inspires the fans he plays guitar to almost every single night.
You undertake one of those roles in Guitar Hero - you're the guitarist in a soon-to-be incredible rock band and you play various songs and concerts to various misfits standing in the crowds.
The game revolves around hitting colour-coded notes by strumming a bar located on the body of the guitar at the same time that the note hits the bottom of the screen. Notes are propelled towards you via a scrolling fretboard, and they all correspond to a different coloured fret on the neck of the guitar. You're meant to press the right colour fret at the right time when the note hits the marker at the bottom of the screen - hey, just like playing a guitar. When you hit a string of star notes you can tilt the guitar up to activate Star Power - a short burst of lunatic energy that will send your rockstar into a frenzy and it will earn you twice as many points per note. Hit a lot of notes in a row, and your multiplier will steadily rise, and star power can maximise that out with its double-scoring premise. OK, I confused you there, but honestly, it's one of the most innovative concepts in gaming I've heard of in a long time - and it works perfectly. It may sound tricky at first for those who don't have the right hand-eye co-ordination, but luckily the game's difficulty levels scale pretty evenly and the game will start off by playing relatively simple songs for you to get the basic skills down to a tee. Then it will eventually start throwing more advanced techniques at you, such as chords (fretting two notes at the same time), hammer-ons and pull-offs (hitting strings of notes with only one strum) and a LOT of soloing, which require your fingers to spiral up and down the fretboard increasingly quickly. It's a concept that will appeal to guitar players and people who would like to play guitar, but generally, everyone you know will be scrambling for a turn and they'll be laughing when they fail or grinning in triumph when they prevail. The game works well at parties, and because the developers know that, they even included a multiplayer face-off mode, where you test your skills against another player and see who can get the highest score. Predictably, whoever has the highest score at the end of the song wins. The song list in Guitar Hero is quite simply perfect for a game of this time. The game mainly comprises of classic rock, but it has thrown in some occasional metal in there and some more recent alternative and punk which don't work as well as some of the others. Instantly recognisable riffs like Iron Man, Smoke on the Water, Ace of Spades, and Killer Queen are all in here - and immensely complex solos such as Edgar Winter's Frankenstein, Stevie Ray Vaughn's Texas Flood and Jimi Hendrix's Spanish Castle Magic are present and correct. Unfortunately there are a few recent compositions that actually feel quite out of place - Sum 41's Fat Lip shouldn't be anywhere near a game labelled Guitar Hero, and, regrettably, Franz Ferdinand's Take Me Out (a song that always been one of my favourites) is a bit of an odd inclusion. Overall, this is despite a few flaws, an ultimate rock-and-roll soundtrack that has a song that everybody will recognise. One of the greatest appeals of the game may sound like it's for the completionists, but endlessly trying to improve your score and improving your rank (out of 5 stars) is horrendously addictive and it will keep you coming back to the career until you've 5 starred every song on Expert. There's also the next-to-impossible task of getting a perfect score on every song and hitting 100% of the notes, but it's not even believable for people who have seen the whole thing on expert.
In the aesthetic areas, the game scores reasonably highly. Technically, the graphics aren't anything special, and there are a few rough edges here and there in the character models, but from an artistic standpoint, the game excels. The game is filled with little cartoon doodles here and there, consistently presented with a rockstar edge, and oozes charm from every pore, whether it's the stereotypical way that the rockstars themselves are dressed and designed, the way that the crowd will bounce up and down on the soles of their feetin applause just like the mosh pit on a Friday night, or just the way that the game has a "who-the-hell-cares" attitude everywhere you look.
The audio always has to be of a certain standard in games like this, and, fortunately, Guitar Hero pulls through. Most of the covers are pretty close to their original versions, for a start, and add that to the fact there's already an outstanding soundtrack and you have a game that is truly a joy to listen to. The whammy-bar included with the guitar allows you to distort long notes and sustains to make your own sounds that will sound completely ridiculous if you go too far, and it's a really fun inclusion. It will just take a while for you to get used to the game and if you use the whammybar in your novice stages you'll probably lose your rhythm in the song and have to start all over, so I wouldn't recommend using it too much until you're suitably good at the game. Nevertheless, it's just a genius thing to put on the guitar. In the end, it's just so hard to put this game down. It makes you feel like you're playing the guitar, and while it does, it has a very addictive nature that keeps you coming back. I've said this before, but the "one more song" comes into place here, and it will keep you up all night rocking out, and that's part of the game's value - despite how much the novelty will wane, there's always that perfectionist role you can undertake in trying to get the highest score possible and the best ranking possible. In short, Guitar Hero is worth the extra price. It's essential. Buy it. You'll love it, I guarantee.