Tuesday Gaming: Guitar Hero
The deal is that every Tuesday I am supposed to blog with something related to video games. Kevin as films on Sunday, James has TV on Thursday, and J will try to fit in comics on Wednesday. So lemme tell you about an amazing game that I played for the first time last night.
Over the weekend J picked up the newest crazy-peripheral music game: Guitar Hero. It was developed by Harmonix, the people that brought you Amplitude and Frequency as well as Karaoke Revolution. Think of it as a cross between Amplitude, Donkey Konga, and ROCKING OUT. You buy the game in a giant-ass box which comes with a RedOctane built plastic guitar, so you know it’s built to last everything but a collision with an amp. The guitar controller looks like this:
You feel like a rock god while standing up, but it is possible, though difficult, to play sitting down. The five keys at the top are your fret buttons. The track that runs along the screen looks like the neck of a guitar and like other rhythm games, notes come at you, which you have to play at exactly the right moment. Fortunately for those of us who don’t have magic bendy fingers, the beginning songs of the game only use the top three. You hold the fret key (or keys) down as you strum on the “strum bar” as it is called. Mostly you’ll find yourself pressing both at the same time instead of holding it down before you strum because its much easier for beginners to concentrate on doing the same action with both hands. Especially for people like me who bought a guitar (from Andy) and promptly sold it (to Jimmy) when I realized I couldn’t play for the life of me. (Be that as it were, Jimmy was the one that smashed it while drunk, not me.)
In the game you are the lead guitarist of an up-and-coming cover band. You start in a neighborhood basement and work your way up to the biggest arena in town. As you unlock each venue you unlock five more songs, in sets of increasing difficulty. Harmonix did an amazing job of really picking just straight-up great guitar songs. I rocked out to Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water, Incubus’s Stellar, Franz Ferdinand’s Take Me Out and More Than a Feeling by BOSTON. Words can’t even describe how awesome a feeling that is. There’s hardly a song in the game that isn’t great, and usually if there is it’s probably just something you don’t know. J was rocking out to Sum 41’s Fat Lip, David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, Blue Oyster Cult’s Godzilla, and Clapton’s Crossroads.
How anyone could not have fun with this game is quite beyond me. It’s suprisingly easy to learn but difficult to master. I’m still only playing with the three fret buttons and there are songs that I’ve encountered where the speed at which I’d have to move my fingers just boggles my mind. Hell, it boggles my mind to understand how any guitarist can do it. I’d love to see if that someone who plays guitar is better at this game than the average schmo (like me) who just picks up this big piece of plastic and wants to wail. But no matter what you’re background, if you’ve ever played air guitar you’ll definitely want to find someone with this game so you can play it.
Don’t be intimidated by the $70 price tag, this game is a rocking good time and hopefully some sequels will provide for even more hours of fun. I’m hoping that they’ll make a Guitar Hero 2: Acoustic Legends and Guitar Hero 3: Jam Bands.
