Rock Out!

To say that Guitar Hero is a smash hit is quite the understatement. Video game company RedOctane released this riff ripper to nothing short of paramount success. Gamers, including this formerly unappreciative rock listening reviewer, flocked to this title in droves, scooped them up, and just about obliterated their guitar controllers in an effort to wail out a good solid runthrough of Pantera's "Cowboys From Hell" on Expert.

But enough of that for now. Let's get to the game.

Premise
It's quite simple. Pick up your mock Gibson guitar controller, strap it on, and play. The tutorial does a good job of explaining the basic idea. Players have five fret buttons located on the top of the guitar and a white strumming control on the bottom. Press the corresponding fret button while strumming the control to play the note. For long notes, strum and continue to hold the fret button until the conclusion of the note. If you want, wiggle the whammy bar control beneath the strum to "bend" the note. This feature is most helpful when the long note is electrified; the whammy bar will fill the Star Power gauge more rapidly as it is being manipulated.

As you play through the various difficulty settings, you come that much closer to playing all of the notes in the actual song. Easy Mode lets you get away with plucking at the melody while Expert will have you earning your stripes rocking through all of the riffs, note changes, up-tempoes, down-tempoes, and so forth.

Gameplay and Mechanics
The tutorial makes the learning curve on this game deliciously low. It certainly doesn't require any musical talent -- just a bit of dexterity to get the controls. Some rhythm might help too, but since most songs tend to run melody-chorus-melody, you'll get the beat when the chorus gets here. It also helps if "I Love Rock and Roll" seems marginally familiar. (But, c'mon, even I know that one...)

The graphic design doesn't really push the boundaries of the PS2, nor does it need to, really. It's just you and the long arm of your guitar. Notes approach your playing zone at the bottom of the arm and it's your job to nail them. The more notes you play correctly in succession, the more points you earn. The amp on the left side of the screen tracks your current score multiplier (as notes are worth 50 points at piece) and score. The right side tracks your audience reception -- as it goes into the red, be careful -- and your Star Power.

Star Power is probably the trickiest element to deploy as it requires you to thrust your guitar vertical, e.g. perpendicular to the floor. For reference, check out guitarists when they rock out to their soloes. You'll get it when you try to flip your guitar up a few times and it finally goes off. Points and multipliers double, if successful, and what was once a tomato nearing your character's face is now a standing, cheering ovation. And the audience will clap to the beat of the music, too!

Like I've suggested earlier, the game is incredibly easy to pick up and play, very fun, and it's highly addicting. It's not odd to want to practice either, as you've got to get good at hitting strings of notes in succession in order to garner the highest reviews.

Perhaps this is the greatest source of frustration for up and coming Heroes: mastering the hammer-ons and pull-offs, a technique that requires you to rapidly depress neighboring frets with one strum or, alternatively, holding all applicable frets and releasing them one by one. The tutorial does a better job of showing how to do this, but it's difficult. Second, as the songs that require them are on Hard and Expert modes, you won't get the practice time in unless you're already playing at that level. And, unlike Dance Dance Revolution, you can't really practice the technique itself in an isolated setting or accessing that certain rough spot in Decontrol, Cowboys from Hell, or any number of titles. I just gave up and took my chances trying to pluck-strum those half-notes as fast as I could.

Other Controls
How thoughtful that the designers included a controller configuration for left-handed people. Select Lefty Flip in the options menu, and you can rotate your character to play left-handed (meaning that you strum with your left, not right, hand).

Career Mode
This mode will help you unlock all of the bonus songs, videos, characters, and guitars for your game. Select a character and play through the venues. The better your reviews, the more money you'll earn to unlock bonus features. The cool thing is, once unlocked, the goodies will stay accessible in all other modes of the game.

If I recall correctly, you can easy unlock everything through Medium mode and scoring four- and five-star reviews on everything. That might be your safest bet if you want to get it all without mauling your good strum hand, you know?

And the Total Addictiveness...
Seriously. I got addicted to this game because a buddy of mine had a Guitar Hero setup at his place. Two guitars, a loud stereo system backing his TV, and enough swill to go around. The glory of this game is that, with another Hero at your side, it's very easy to get consumed and play all night. Hero is very much a public game even if you only have a bit of playing prowess.

The cool thing about Multiplayer mode is that it splits the song into congruent halves. Sometimes one player will play melody and the other will do harmony, or more often the first player will get a string of notes that the second player must mimic. Victory depends on who deploys Star Power at the best time, though good consistent playing never hurt anyone.

The moral of this story is...
Buy this game.

Obviously, I'm always going to love RPGs and they will make up the bulk of my gaming adventures, but a gem like this only makes an appearance so often. It's fun and exciting. And unlike investing a few hundred dollars in good dance pads for the Revolution, a cool $100 will buy you a couple of guitars and a title. To my knowledge, my guitars have retained their durability all the while reiterating how a good joystick needs to be broken in a bit.

It's worth every cent.