Guitar Hero: On Tour - DS (From Croydon Guardian)

Guitar Hero: On Tour - DS

5:27pm Wednesday 20th August 2008

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Guitar hero was instrumental (no pun intended) in making gaming both more interactive and more accessible.

Groups of young men have changed their drinking habits in order to accommodate the need for hand-to-eye coordination during a lad’s night in with Guitar Hero.

Furthermore, you are likely to have at least one friend who has stayed in alone with a bottle of Jack Daniels and a copy of the game while emulating Slash, Hendrix or Gene Simmons badly.

For those of you who have never played Guitar Hero, the premise is simple.

Following prompts from the screen, players must complete a famous song by tapping coloured buttons on a plastic guitar in time to the music.

Points are achieved by how many correct notes you hit, and the artificial crowd responds differently depending on how bad you are.Being booed off stage denotes utter failure.

With Guitar Hero IV out later this year and with a bursting catalogue of spin off’s, including various expansion packs from different decades, what would make people buy this game for the DS?

This is the first outing for the game on a hand hold console, but instead of the plastic guitar, which for some was the selling point, Activison have fashioned an add-on to the DS which acts as a substitute.

With the “career mode”, you can customise your character with the money you make from gigging, which includes different stage outfits and guitars.

With only 4 buttons (as opposed to 5 on the guitar), it’s not necessarily easier than any of its predecessors, but you really notice the loss of machismo and dynamism with the disappearance of the guitar.

It feels more like you are playing a miniature Japanese accordion, and playing it alone with your headphones really lets reality hit home, and I initially felt self conscious.

The fact that you have to shout “Rock on” into the mic, in order to activate the “Star power meter” and therefore earn more points just makes this worse.

Although this is not a bad game, it doesn’t feel like a Guitar Hero game of old. If you’re a die hard fan of the series then this is a perfect excuse to get the virtual axe out and fantasise about your rock persona.

However, with only 25 songs to choose from, this is simply a taster for Guitar Hero IV (out later this year), yet it does show just how versatile the DS can be. Rock on!

3 stars out of 5