Guitar Hero: On Tour Review - DS

3.5

Gameplay: 3
Graphics: 6
Audio: 7
Multiplayer: 5
Innovation: 4

Introduction

Most of the appeal of Guitar Hero comes from you holding a stupid plastic guitar and for a few minutes feeling as though you: a) actually know how to play an instrument, and b) can do so damn well. It is a simple premise for a game, but it’s a rather elegant one, and if nothing else, it’s fun. Well, with the DS selling about four units per second per person per country worldwide, the obvious thing to do was to bring a Guitar Hero game to the system. But just how good can a Guitar Hero game be without the guitar?

Gameplay

Okay, that’s a bit of a misleading statement. Yes, you don’t get a life-size plastic guitar that plugs into your DS. What you do get, though, is half of a guitar. The front half, to be precise. Yes, as you no doubt already know, Activision, Vicarious Visions and Red Octane took the bold move of developing an extremely cool fretboard accessory for your DS’s GBA cartridge slot. You slot the hardware in (an adapter is provided for those of us with older DSs, though you’ll need a small screwdriver), slip your hand through the grip and you’re ready to go.

The game is oriented in the book style, with your hand wrapping around the back of the system (secured by a strap) and your fingers peeking over the GBA slot to align above four fret buttons like the end of proper Guitar Hero guitar. Strumming is done with a pick-shaped stylus (that slots into the grip when not in use – thumbs up for thinking that one through) anywhere on the touch screen, in time with the notes rolling down the non-touchscreen. If you’re right-handed, that would be the screen on the left.

The game contains just over twenty-five songs, ranging from new hits like OK Go’s “Do What You Want”, Smash Mouth’s “All Star” and Jet’s “Are You Gonna Be My Girl” to older classics like Rick Astley's “Never Gonna Give You Up” Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl” and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “I Know A Little”. You’ll play these on all the usual difficulty levels, through the normal single player (progressively unlocking more locations and songs), practice, quick play and multiplayer modes.

So how does it all feel? Great. For about five minutes. The problem with On Tour is that the hardware isn’t comfortable to use. You will literally only be able to play for fifteen minutes before the spearing pain in your wrist becomes too much to handle. If you want to view the screen horizontally, you need to hold your wrist horizontally, and that just isn’t easy to do for long periods of time. It’s not so much that the accessory poorly fits the shape of your hand, it’s just that there's no obvious comfortable way of holding (continued next page)