An enigmatic game...who would have thought a prolonged quicktime event could be so much fun?
At this point you might say, so what? Well, I think achievements perfectly summarise what is Guitar hero's most prolific strength yet greatest weakness, It is bloody difficult...
This was my first Guitar hero game, and from the outside it looked like a rubbish game, I was hooked on COD 4/Halo 3 when this was released, and i couldn't understand why anyone would pay nearly double the price of a normal game for what looked to be a massive game of simon says?
Now clearly, in the business world, numbers speak louder than words and I don't need to tell you Guitar hero was a success. There's big money in the FPS market, and it needs a lot less effort, but if you want the respect of your market, you need a quality product, innovation such as guitar hero is what hooked me in the end. I tried the demo, even with a controller, 4* ing Even Flow on Medium felt great, when i got the game itself it felt like a step backwards, learning how to strum and press the buttons made the simplicity of the controller much more alluring.
Let me just give you a run down of the basics, You hold a plastic guitar, pretend you have some shred of talent, a moving fretboard comes towards you at a speed ranging from no legged grandma to cheetah on motorbike. Coloured circles appear on the screen, and you being the submissive type, you press the coresponding buttons on your guitar and strum the strum bar at the same time.
It's hard to describe just how addictive this was for me, I started on easy, and thanks to a frankly painful tutorial process, i was up and running in no time! The thrill comes from playing a song, then looking back, thinking 'Did i just do that?' It's wierd but satisfying.
Part of this satisfaction comes from the song list. There are over 30 tracks here, of which over 20 are ones I love playing, they span over 50 years of what can loosely be defined as 'rock' you have such 'classics' (not that i would know) as 'Paint it black' by the rolling stones, right the way through to contempory hits from the killers and AFI. There's even some slayer thrown in for metalheads. The track list is brilliantly composed, fun to play, and strikes an interesting balance for both young and old. Which is Ironic considering how the old songs are becoming hits again (such is the power of guitar hero.)
The graphics are...ok the game goes for a stylised approach to the characters, but then trows in slash and tom morello looking pretty realistic, it's inconsistent and makes me wonder if the artistic direction is neccessarily the right way to go for this type of game. However, the stage and the band (with the exception of the abhorrently awful drummer) looks fantastic, the lead singer especially has great lip syncing as well done to the Dev team for hiring bret michaels to do some movement for it.
The presentation is also well done, the whole game parodies the 'rocker lifestyle' with some geniunely funny loading screens, over the top character animations, and messy (but professionaly messy) menus.
I mentioned earlier about the difficulty, and the game has learning curves right the way through. You start by just getting used to playing, easy passes you by and you learn to cope with more notes, by the time medium arrives, you start hitting notes faster, taking a little while to get used to the blue fret. Then a sharp rise in difficulty towards the end forces you to go back and get better, then you have hard mode, and the orange fret takes days of getting used to, then days more to master. At which point you brace for impact as expert approaches, then find that those songs you struggled over on hard mode, are harder than most expert songs (although clearly you wait for the nigh impossibility of the raining blood song) Then there's dragonforce.
The thing is, this difficulty isn't neccessarily a bad thing, challenge is good, but when you ramp it up to 12/10, it can be overwhelming, and, let's face it, 'practicing' guitar hero just feels wrong. While the payoff of increased difficulty is increased satisfaction, if you want to get to the right level you need to prepare yourself for the long road ahead.
The single player kept me hooked for long enough to finish medium, but multiplayer kept this game in my disk tray long enough to overshadow COD 4, playing on XBL was fun with a friend, but it still has a way to go, there was almost no lag in any game i played, and the options that were there were sufficient to keep me playing, I did notice some notable emissions from MP though...
Firstly, Co-op songs need to be fine tuned, reptillia, for example, had the most boring bass part in the history of forever, I'm frequently reminded that bass is there to keep rhythm, but this is a GAME, so make it more interesting. Secondly, Co-op career cannot be played online, so how they expect you to get some of the co-op achievements i don't know, good luck having your daughter play anything above easy seeing as she cant reach the blue fret.
Also, after every match, you're returned to the main menu, meaning no offense to neversoft but WHAT THE HELL? I pretty much only play private matches, why can there not be a lobby system in place. Speaking of lobbies, A nice addition would be a lobby that could hold 2-4 people, with perhaps a round robin system, and people alternating who they play against?
So, to summarise, Guitar hero is addictive, fun, and tremendously innovative. But the intensity of the difficulty, coupled with some multiplayer ommissins stop me rating it too high. As a side note, it will be interesting to see how the series moves on, I can see long time vets getting tired of the same old same old, with aerosmith on the way it doesn't look like that's about to change anytime soon. Also, the difficulty spike means that neversoft will need to keep the difficulty at this intensity for those of you who can play Through the fire and flames, I think a new difficulty needs to be incorporated.
But get guitar hero, it's cheaper than rockband, is a lot of fun, and should keep you hooked long enough to get your money's worth
8.9