Guitar Hero Review

Aspiring rock artists, dads with dodgy hair do's and gamers alike can finally realise their dreams with the release of Red Octane and Harmonix Guitar Hero for the Playstation2. Coming on top of widespread success in North America from the team who created Sony's mesmerising music titles, Frequency and Amplitude, Guitar Hero has steadily been making a name for providing a unique and entertaining experience. Undeniably Harmonix know a thing or two about the rhythm/action genre, however it's the inclusion of a mini Gibson SG peripheral that will draw your initial attention and hopefully assign the practise of air guitar to the period books forever.

Taking control of the lead guitarist in a new band, Guitar Hero presents six levels of stardom, each offering five different songs to perform. The style and structure will be common to anybody who's had the fortune to sample Harmonix's previous efforts, whilst the core gameplay marks a return to the staple dynamic introduced in such titles.

Five columns are featured on the screen each corresponding to a button (fret) on the peripheral. Although the guitar peripheral look's uncannily close to Fisher Price "My First Guitar" and destroys any illusion of trying to look more convincing then strumming along on a tennis racquet, it completes the experience and realises what Guitar Hero is all about. No longer tied to four face buttons on a joypad, Guitar Heroes' peripheral features the aforementioned frets, a strum bar to plunk along on (though it's more like pressing) and a whammy bar to distort the sound. Spots appear on the columns indicating when to play a note, whilst longer bars require the player to hold a note and chords involve the combination of at least two fret buttons. The challenge intensifies as the game progresses, demanding players to perform deft note changes, intense chords and much more. True to Frequency and Amplitude, Guitar Hero does a good job of introducing you to the game and keeping you hooked via its learning curve. You'll have granny rocking around the Christmas tree on the easiest difficulty setting, however the challenge certainly picks up on normal, and you'll need cyborg reflexes or Jimi Hendrix dexterity to master the game's expert stages. Because the peripheral isn't actually much like a real guitar you'll probably find yourself at a disadvantage if you've played the instrument before, the art is much more mechanic in the sense of pressing buttons then playing chords with strings, however this shouldn't detract you from discovering what Guitar Hero has to offer.

In true Harmonix tradition the game is driven by an engaging combo score mechanic, which rewards the player with score multipliers for successfully stringing a song together without missing a note. Playing well also builds your guitarist's Star gauge, which allows you to pull off a guitar pose, hair flowing in the wind, by titling the guitar upwards and gaining a further boost to your score and heightening the audience's attention - ideal when you're struggling with a song and similar to such "get out of jail" features in Frequency and Amplitude.

There's little doubt that the game provides instant gratification, and like other peripheral games, will have you smiling and showing yourself up even when you're not playing. Aficionados of Harmonix previous efforts will probably notice that the peripheral nature of the game results in a slightly shallower effort then before, the core gameplay doesn't appear to be as challenging or pure as Amplitude, however Guitar Hero more then makes up for such inadequacies with the novelty of its peripheral.

Guitar Hero is also very much a labour of love for the music maestros at Harmonix. There's a great sense that the team behind the game know their rock music inside out, with little nods to classic rock details such as the amps going all the way to 11 and DM drumkits replacing the DW Drum Workshop. Your performance on the stage, and ultimately your sense of immersion within the game, is dramatised by the reaction of the crowd, who clap along when you're performing one of the grandest solos ever to be performed in a stadium, or conversely booing, hissing and harassing you, when everything goes wrong trying to replicate the intricate chord sequence of Queens of the Stone Age' "No One Knows".

On the subject of songs, Guitar Hero presents an impressive sounding 47 tracks to perform and perfect, though only 30 of these are covers of classics from the likes of Black Sabbath, Queen, David Bowie and Jimi Hendrix. Ultimately you're left asking for more in typical rhythm/action tradition, however that's not necessarily a complaint, more an indication of how quickly the time goes (and the game with it) when you're having fun - a problem that should be eased by today's confirmation of Guitar Hero 2.

At the traditionally escalated price of peripheral based games Guitar Hero is a somewhat self-indulgent game, that manages to entertain initially but begins to dwindle after a few weeks have passed and the tracks perfected. It's an experience that should be seen and needs to be played by all, but one that is hard to recommend as absolutely essential given the novelty nature of the game as a whole.

Certainly if it's something that sounds appealing and you're not baulking at the price-tag give it a try, there's nothing quite like Guitar Hero (and Samba de Amigo before it) when it comes to a game that everybody can enjoy, whilst the announcement of a sequel suggests you'll be getting your money's worth later in the year.