Guitar Hero
Stop reading. Go buy this game.
Published: December 6, 2005
My fondest memory of living here in San Francisco was about six years ago when I got booted out of my apartment after quitting a job in gaming PR. I ended up moving in with now-1UP Editor-in-Chief Sam Kennedy, and along with former IGN editor Dave Zdyrko and current GameSpot Live producer Dave Toole. The amount of booze the flowed through that place would make the most potent of lushes faint, but we had no choice, for the music compelled us.
Konami had completely hooked us with their intoxicating Bemani series (which includes Dance Dance Revolution) that despite having very little in the way of money, I simply had to import Guitar Freaks and the guitar controller a few months prior and rock out, so when I moved into my new digs, we had Sam's guitar and mine, and we proceeded to jam heartily - usually aided by copious sub-$10 bottles of vodka.
So high were we on the experience that at one point we thought of a) hooking the guitars up to a TV with some speakers and playing in the BART/MUNI station for money, b) finding a cute hooker and making her come back to the apartment to play the game so she would pay us to hang out, and c) starting a band with a clever name like "Sam, Sam, Dave and Dave."
I am no stranger to the guitar-based music game, nor to it's uncanny ability to ensnare those that would forego their pride and get down with a little plastic Fischer-Price-lookin' toy. I mention all this because it's important to explain how much I love Guitar Freaks and the close personal and emotional ties playing the game carry with it.
Guitar Hero blows Guitar Freaks the hell away. There's no comparing the two from an actual gameplay perspective because at the upper levels of play Guitar Hero simply ceases to be a game and becomes a simulation of what it would be like to actually play these songs - if you could actually play real guitar, which I can't.
If you can, or at least know the basics of guitar, you'll probably be able to cut right through the easy mode and start tackling songs that are reasonably close to the real thing. For those of us with significantly less nimble fingers, easy mode tucks a couple more complex licks down into simple rhythmic strums of the first three fret buttons on the neck of the guitar. It requires very little in the way of complex movements up until the last couple songs, and serves as a nice intro to the game.
The replica Gibson SG the game uses is a simple little piece of technology. You're given five buttons on the neck of the guitar that serve as the frets, a toggle nub that you can strum up and down, and a whammy bar that lets you modulate the longer, held notes. Then, you simply hold one of the frets (or two for a chord) and strum corresponding color zooms toward you on a field that looks remarkably like Harmonix's other work on Amplitude.
The transition from easy to medium difficulty is smoother than the rest of them onward, but it does introduce a key ingredient that begins the game's slow slide into complete and all-encompassing addition: another fret. You're only given three on easy, and the fourth forces you to either use your pinky or slide your fingers, and the latter's far more difficult. By the time you get to Hard, though, and the fifth is added, sliding is a necessity, and it's by this slow increase in the expanse that your fingers must cross and at great speed that the game gets its hooks into you.
Konami had completely hooked us with their intoxicating Bemani series (which includes Dance Dance Revolution) that despite having very little in the way of money, I simply had to import Guitar Freaks and the guitar controller a few months prior and rock out, so when I moved into my new digs, we had Sam's guitar and mine, and we proceeded to jam heartily - usually aided by copious sub-$10 bottles of vodka.
So high were we on the experience that at one point we thought of a) hooking the guitars up to a TV with some speakers and playing in the BART/MUNI station for money, b) finding a cute hooker and making her come back to the apartment to play the game so she would pay us to hang out, and c) starting a band with a clever name like "Sam, Sam, Dave and Dave."
I am no stranger to the guitar-based music game, nor to it's uncanny ability to ensnare those that would forego their pride and get down with a little plastic Fischer-Price-lookin' toy. I mention all this because it's important to explain how much I love Guitar Freaks and the close personal and emotional ties playing the game carry with it.
Guitar Hero blows Guitar Freaks the hell away. There's no comparing the two from an actual gameplay perspective because at the upper levels of play Guitar Hero simply ceases to be a game and becomes a simulation of what it would be like to actually play these songs - if you could actually play real guitar, which I can't.
If you can, or at least know the basics of guitar, you'll probably be able to cut right through the easy mode and start tackling songs that are reasonably close to the real thing. For those of us with significantly less nimble fingers, easy mode tucks a couple more complex licks down into simple rhythmic strums of the first three fret buttons on the neck of the guitar. It requires very little in the way of complex movements up until the last couple songs, and serves as a nice intro to the game.
The replica Gibson SG the game uses is a simple little piece of technology. You're given five buttons on the neck of the guitar that serve as the frets, a toggle nub that you can strum up and down, and a whammy bar that lets you modulate the longer, held notes. Then, you simply hold one of the frets (or two for a chord) and strum corresponding color zooms toward you on a field that looks remarkably like Harmonix's other work on Amplitude.
The transition from easy to medium difficulty is smoother than the rest of them onward, but it does introduce a key ingredient that begins the game's slow slide into complete and all-encompassing addition: another fret. You're only given three on easy, and the fourth forces you to either use your pinky or slide your fingers, and the latter's far more difficult. By the time you get to Hard, though, and the fifth is added, sliding is a necessity, and it's by this slow increase in the expanse that your fingers must cross and at great speed that the game gets its hooks into you.
