No 'Stairway'?!!??
You’re judged by how well you do at a song by the rock meter on the right hand side of the screen. Miss too many notes, or play the wrong notes and not only does the guitar portion of the soundtrack cut out but your rock meter drops, showing the audience’s disapproval. Run that meter into the red and you’ll be booed off the stage.
String enough decent notes together and not only will the crowd go wild, but your score multiplier goes up too. But on top of this is the star power meter, which you fill up by hitting key notes as they come down towards you. Now we’ve all seen our favourite bands giving it some up on stage and Guitar Hero let’s you emulate that in real life as well as on the screen. Once your star meter is full give the guitar a jerk upright in a power chord frenzy and the star power kicks in. This not only double up whatever multiplier you’re currently on, but your on screen persona will start performing some cool moves too.
Now it’s worth mentioning the music here as this is key to the game itself and I’ve got to say that although there’s a few tracks I’d like to see in here, Guitar Hero pretty much covers all the bases for musical taste. You’ve got the full range from Joan Jet and the Blackhearts’ I Love Rock and Roll and Franz Ferdinand’s Take Me Out through to Motorhead’s Ace Of Spades and Cream’s Crossroads. Those later songs further down the playlist represent something a challenge even on the easy level, so don’t expect to breeze through the game with no trouble at all.
The music itself has been re-recorded for the purposes of the game using the original artist’s vocals wherever possible. In places, because of key-changes or whatever, sound-alike artists and I have to say that these are some of the most stunning sound-alikes you’ll ever hear… ever. I bet if you pulled the vocals off Guitar Hero’s tracks and off the original artist’s tracks, you’d not be able to tell the difference in the instrumentals. All the songs on Guitar Hero are superb recreations of the originals. These aren’t cover versions with a bit of extra added or taken away, these are as faithful as they can be to the originals.
Now everyone has some song or other that they’d like to see in a game of this type and there’s no way that Red Octane, the makers of Guitar Hero have any chance of getting in everyone’s favourite rockin’ tune. Me? I’d liked to have had a crack at Born To Be Wild by Steppenwolf as well as Layla by Eric Clapton and perhaps something from Mark Knopfler… and where the hell is Stairway to Heaven?? Now I think about it, I’d have liked to have seen a few more recent bands in the music line-up because as good as the classics that are in here are, there’s plenty of modern stuff that’s just as good. That said, given the success of Guitar Hero over in the ‘States, there’s bound to be a sequel so let’s hope for something in that one, eh?
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