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Tuesday 16 Jan 2007 Backstage, you’re sitting nervously, beads of sweat forming on your brow, each bead falling with every note you go over in your head. The crowd is outside waiting, cheering, stomping - the metronome to your internal rehearsal – the sound echoing in your mind, creating images of the packed out stadium. More beads form, again more note rehearsal, still the cheering and stomping continues. It continues. It continues. But now it’s getting faster, louder, and the screams more shrill. You get the signal, you pick up your one, your only, your Gibson guitar and you head towards the stage doors, more beads, more notes. You walk onto the dark stage, the cheering deafening, still no image of the crowd before you, only complete darkness, but the stomp stomp stomp of their feet so quiet now, drowned by the beating of your heart. The lights go up, it’s your time to shine!
Guitar Hero for the PlayStation 2 puts you right up there, on stage, as you shred your way up the charts to becoming one of the greatest rock and roll bands of all time. What must be one of the greatest rhythm based games for the PS2 without a doubt, it will have you rocking out to music from the legends such as ‘Bark at the Moon,’ ‘Smoke on the Water’ and more recent songs like ‘Take Me Out.’ Even the songs you don’t know will have you dropping to your knees whilst those sweet licks come streaming out. Oh man, you haven’t experienced a game like this in a long time.
The game makes use of the specially designed controller, which has been modeled from an original Gibson SG guitar. Other than the standard start and select buttons, the guitar has five colored fret buttons, a strum lever and a whammy bar. The game makes use of two different types of playing. Firstly you can play a single note in which the player will hold down the specific note and then continue to strum on the strum lever, if the note has a tail behind it the guitarist will have to keep that fret depressed for the entire duration of the tail.
If you have ever seen the arcade machines of Dance Dance Revolution you will understand how the music notation works in this game. On screen you will see your fret board containing five allys, each one of these allys corresponds to the buttons on the controller fret board. You will then see what I like to refer to as the Note UFO come flying towards the bottom of the screen, and the objective is to play the note as it crosses over the indicated section (which is also in time with the music naturally). It may seem simple but it does take quite a bit of getting used to, practice and co-ordination wise. Stacks of Tracks I Love Rock & Roll - Joan Jett & The Blackhearts
Bonus tracks Fire It Up - Black Label Society
There is no doubt that this game has helped boost the sales figures on the PS2 in its sunset years, although I can assure you that there are still a few gems heading its way. The outstanding success of this game has led to the developers creating Guitar Hero 2. These guys have done it right, every little inch of this game has been well though out and conceived beautifully, the best way to tell if it’s successful or not is, “Did it make you feel like a Rockstar?” and I’m going to bet my money on you replying “Hell yeah!” Good: Excellently conceived rhythm game; awesome track list.
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Purchase:Please check back for places to order this item from in the near future. |
You’re the Hero Now!
The second way is chords, which are played by holding two fret buttons down whilst strumming through on the strum lever. Other than those, the guitar also picks up hammer and pull off notes just like a real guitar, but those techniques require a lot of practice. You will also be able to initiate star power, a built up power bar for hitting star marked notes or getting a good combo, by tilting the guitar vertically as it has a direction sensor built inside of it.
Songs usually have three parts to them: the lick (a repeated pattern that forms the base melody in the song); chords (mainly played during the verses and chorus); and the guitar solo (a really difficult flurry of notes get hurled your way and you are expected to play them all). But like any good game there are difficulty levels, four of them to be exact. Easy is really simplified and only uses the top three frets, normal is exactly that and it makes use of the top four frets. Hard gets more difficult as it uses all five of the frets (which means you are going to be moving the position of your hand during the song) and is almost exactly like the notes you would have to play on a real guitar. Then there is expert mode, lots of practice will have to be put into this game to master expert, and I can assure you there will be bleeding fingers and maybe even spraining.
Guitar Hero
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