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Guitar Hero Review - PS2

Introduction

Everyone wants to be a rock star growing up. It’s a fact. I’m sure most of us either flirted with the idea of starting a band or actually did something about it only to come crashing back to earth do to a lack of talent. I did take up guitar once - self taught, no lessons - and I stunk. My dreams of rocking the house as hard as I can would not come true. Members of Red Octane obviously shared the same dream and have created the next best thing, Guitar Hero - a failed muso’s salvation.

Gameplay

First of all, Guitar Hero has the best controller going round…yes, we’ve all seen the ads- it’s a guitar. There are 5 buttons on the neck representing the frets and a strummer and whammy bar. The guitar also comes with a strap for those of us who like to do our thing standing up. The guitar itself sits quite comfortably in your hands and it can also be flipped around quite easily to be played left handed. It’s also quite light so going postal on it after a killer set really isn’t advised.

So we’re ready to rock and roll and jumping straight into the game couldn’t be easier due to its simplistic gameplay. Basically you have to strum the right notes/cords at the precise same time as they appear on the screen. The notes onscreen are colour co-ordinated which corresponds with the colour of the buttons on the neck of the guitar. There’s an excellent tutorial which will teach you techniques such as hammer-on and pull-off which will need to be mastered if one is to progress during the harder levels.

If you start missing notes continuously a rock meter starts dropping and the crowd gets a tad restless and starts booing- miss a few more and you’ll fail the song. Stringing note combos together not only increases your score significantly and keeps the crowd happy but if you hit the star shaped notes a star meter bar increases. Get it to a certain level and you can access Star Power. Star Power is activated by tilting your guitar to the rock gods transforming your player into an acrobatic axe-wielder, bringing the crowd to their feet and increasing your rock meter. This is a handy tool when the crowd starts getting restless or you’re coming up to a tricky solo. This kind of feature adds a bit of strategy to the game and it’s a nice touch. The whammy bar is also a nice addition- it basically serves as adding a “personal touch” to a song - most probably won’t use it but it’s a great way to show off to mates. You basically whale the whammy during a long note- altering the song from its original version.

In career mode, all the songs are grouped in sub-categories and you’ll have to pass 4 out of 5 to open up the next sub-cat and 5 (continued next page)