Guitar Hero Encore Rocks the 80s is a good rhythm game, it's just not up to series standards
Cons: Song selection is weaker than other GH games; Graphics=GH2 with an 80s skin; $50 is too much for the game
As soon as Guitar Hero became a household name, it was inevitable. By "it" I mean some form of a spin-off that is released between games for some extra sales from song hungry fans. If you are looking for new Guitar Hero songs at any cost, 80s delivers, but GH3 this is not.
Hopefully by now everyone knows the basic formula for Guitar Hero. For those living under a rock (which suspiciously gained internet connection today), on screen you have a scrolling fret board that drags notes toward you in time with the song you are playing. Off screen you hold down a button (or buttons…especially since the 80s version has a ton of 3 note chords) of the same color(s) as the note(s) on screen and move a "strum bar" in time with the song. Throw in hammer-ons and pull-offs (notes not requiring you to strum, thankfully like they are in GH2 instead of GH1), and star power (used to double your multiplier and regain more health with each note) and you have Guitar Hero.
Thankfully the gameplay is in fact exactly as it was in GH2 (which I say is the best rhythm game of all time, so that's hardly a bad thing). Once you get past the gameplay, you start to notice the issues that plague this particular version.
The worst offender is the song selection. One of, if not the biggest factor in making Guitar Hero games so popular was the song selection. Here most of the songs are either boring to listen too, or (more often) boring to play (or both as with the horrendous "We Got The Beat"). The first 3 tiers (half of the game's rather small song selection) seems to drag on with easily some of the most boring tunes in all the Guitar Heroes so far. Then you have 2 tiers where things get better, with some good songs with some interesting note charts. Finally you get to the last tier which finally lets of the goods out, with fun songs, which have the best note charts in the game.
Then it ends.
Veterans of the first 2 games are no doubt the ones who will be most interested in this game, which is why it's such a shame that the songs seem slanted towards new players who haven't experienced Guitar Hero, as opposed to the ones who buy every GH game that comes out.
The second offender is the recycled art. GH2 was a great artistic game, bursting with style. All that style is back, just this time it isn't nearly as original, and feels like no effort was spent on it. Granted the 80s twist to everything is kind of amusing at first, and the game doesn't look bad. It's just not new enough, and if that wasn't enough, you get about half the characters and two less venues. If that's not lazy I don't know what is.
And I didn't even mention price. Although I can think of a number of reasons why this game only has 30 songs, I can't think of a single one saying why it should be $50 without a guitar controller. If the songs had been better, it wouldn't be so bad, but you are paying over half the price of GH2 for less than half the songs, and even less that you'll care about. If you are new to Guitar Hero, I'd recommend you get 1 or 2 as you at least even get the guitars with them. If you are looking for more Guitar Hero, I'd suggest waiting for GH3 (and/or Rock Band) and using a little extra cash to get much more bang for your buck.
Although I've bashed it pretty hard, GH80s is actually quite fun (it is Guitar Hero after all), it's just got enough issues that I can really only recommend it for the Guitar Hero fan who must have every GH game out. And even then they should wait for a lower price.