Let's Get Ready to Rock!!

I recently had a chance to play Guitar Hero. I had been hearing a lot of good things about it from a lot of my friends and I am glad that I finally got the chance to play this game. Now I see what everyone has been raving about.

First let me just say that Guitar Hero freaking rocks!! I haven't had so much fun playing a video game since my NES days and you salivated at the thought of playing a new game. Guitar Hero is not only fun, it is very addictive, especially if you are a fan of the genre of music that is used in the game.

In Guitar Hero, the name of the game says it all. Your goal is to become a rock legend. There are a few different game modes, including a tutorial and 2-player dueling guitars(requires 2 guitar controllers), but you will spend most of your time in either the quick play mode or career mode. When you first start the game up you get to choose your own unique band name. I don't know whether it was all the anthropology classes my friend and I had taken or the special we had just watched on Discovery, but we decided to name our band Cro' Magnon, lol.

After you come up with your band name, it's time to rock it out. If you choose quick play, you can play any of the songs in the game in any difficulty mode. You are limited at first because there are only 5 songs available for you to play. As you advance in career mode you unlock more songs that can be used in the quick play version. Once you select career mode, you choose the difficulty level(Easy, Medium, Hard or Expert) and then choose your Guitar Hero persona. You can choose from 6 characters at the begining and there are 2 others you can unlock. There are 4 male and 2 female characters and they cover all of the guitar hero stereotypes, from metal to goth, punk to grunge. After you pick your character and your guitar, you go to the career options screen. Here you can choose to play a live venue, change your guitar, change your character, or go to the unlock shop. As you play venues(only in Medium and higher difficulty modes) you earn cash that you can spend on new guitars, guitar skins, songs, characters and behind the scenes videos from the creators of the game. All of these add ons will be available in the game whenever you are using your band.

Whenever you choose to play a live venue, you are taken to a location where you will put on your show. At the start, you play in the basement of a run down house at a house party. Gotta start somewhere right? Eventually you work your way up the ranks and end at Toxic Summer Fest, which is pretty much the Woodstock of the game. At each venue you have to complete 4 or 5 out of 5 songs on the play list. The songs at the begining of the list are easier to play and the difficulty of the songs gets harder as you go down the list and progress to each new venue. Just how do you go about playing these songs you might ask?

The coolest thing about Guitar Hero is the controller. GH comes with a guitar shaped controller that has 5 fret bars, a strum bar and a whammy bar. You hold it and play it almost like a regular guitar, minus the strings of course. You even get stickers so you can customize the look of your guitar. When you go to play a song the notes of the song are color coded and they scroll down the screen at various speeds and occurences, depending on the difficulty level. As you go over a note, you hold down the proper fret bar and hit the strum bar to play the note. Longer notes require you to hold down the fret bar and you can also use the whammy bar to create your own unique sound and rack up more points.

As you play the song there are two indicators to watch. The first is the note streak and bonus indicator on the left and the other is the rock meter on the right. As you hit successive notes, you can get point multiplyers. As you play the song the rock meter will go either red, yellow or green depending on how you are playing. Red, obviously is bad and if you stay in the red too long you will fail the song. There are also special star shaped notes that give you "Star Power" when you hit them. Star Power is important because it can help you max out your score. Star Power gives you an added bonus multiplyer and brings the crowd to its feet. You can use Star Power to salvage a song if you are in the red as well.

When you are done playing a song you are awarded a rating out of 5 stars and equivalent cash, if you are playing on any level above easy. The higher your rating and score, the more dough you get to spend in the unlock shop.

Visually there isn't much to look at in this game, at least you don't have time to look at it. Each stage is represented by the dropback of the stage and shows you and your band as the song plays. The angle will switch from time to time through out your song, but if you are paying attention to this you won't be playing for long, lol. The graphics aren't anything spectacular, but you are so involved in the game that they do not have to be. They are solid enough to where if you look up during a break in the notes, you are like, well that's not to shabby.

Graphics really don't matter in this game though, the game play is so involving you won't really notice them. This is where I absolutely love Guitar Hero. This game totally involves you. I even found myself tapping my feet to the beat of the music and jumping around like I was the guy on stage. It feels good when you hit a couple tough notes in a row or start nailing tough sets of notes. This game gets you up off of the couch and gets you going.

Of course a game that revolves around playing the guitar should have some awesome tunes to go along with it. Guitar Hero does not let you down in this department. Here is just a sample list of some of the songs in the game.

Iron Man - Black Sabbath
More than a Feeling - Boston
Symphony of Destruction - Megadeath
Spanish Castle Magic - Jimi Hendrix
Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand
Sharp Dressed Man - ZZ Top
Killer Queen - Queen

and many more hits from popular artists....


The only gripe I have with the songs is that there should be more. I know it is tough to get the rights to songs these days, but I think a couple more artists could have been included, Metallica and Van Halen just to name two. I also think it would have been cool if they included some way to hook up to the internet to download more tunes, but I know this is kind of asking too much. The songs that are included on the game are excellent though and there is also a good mix of bonus tracks from leser known artists that you can unlock in the shop. Despite the limited # of songs, the change in difficulty level makes each song play differently each time you play it, so it's not completely repetitive. For example, when you play a song on easy, there aren't as many notes and the notes scroll slow. When you move up to Medium there is a significant increase in the amount of notes and the tempo speeds up.

Overall I think Guitar Hero is an amazing game and one of the best games that has come out in a long time. One thing I really liked about this game was how involving it is and the fact that it might actually be educational. I have absolutely no musical talent whatsoever, but I am decent at the game and playing it has actually got me thinking about taking guitar lessons. If it can do that for a 24 year old college grad, it can do wonders for kids these days who seemed to be obsessed with video games. I just think it's nice to see a game that can be somewhat educational in this era of overdone first person shooters and sports games.

The only thing that turned me off about the game was the difficulty at the higher levels. I honestly believe a real life guitar hero would have a tough time playing some of the songs. Easy is pretty cake and provides you with a good chance to learn how to play because you only have to use 3 of the 5 fret bars and you don't have to move your hand at all. Medium is a big step up because it incorporates more notes on the first 3 fret bars and adds in the 4th fret bar. I had a tough time adjusting to this and using my pinkie finger to play the 4th fret bar. The tempo of the songs also speeds up. I have gotten used to this now and I can jam out on most of the medium level songs fairly well, but some of the harder songs still have my number. I have played Hard only a handful of times because it was too frustrating. The tempo is incredibly fast and you have to use the 4th and 5th fret bars quite a bit which means you are using your pinkie and sliding your hand down to pick up the 5th fret bar. This can prove difficult at first and seems like it will require time to master.

The one good thing about Guitar Hero is that it can be tough to put down. Even though I am stuck at the end of the Medium level now and the hard level seems impossible to me, I am willing to keep playing it so I can get good enough to advance to the next level. I'm not sure what it is about the game, but it feels gratifying when you go from being unable to complete a song to pounding out a rocking tune.

Overall I am addicted to Guitar Hero and will probably be playing it for a long time to come. The game can be really fun in group settings where you have a ton of your friends to play with. I hope that you have enjoyed my review of Guitar Hero and that you will give it a try if you haven't already! As always I welcome all comments and suggestions! Thanks again for reading!