Developer
Vicarious Visions
Publisher
Activision
Genre
Rhythm
Year of release
2008

Portable Guitar Hero? Yes please!


Story

You're the guitar player of a band. You play guitar.
There is no real story to speak of to be honest, at least nothing that is important or interesting.

-/10

Graphics

Much like Guitar Hero 3, only downgraded.

7/10

Music and sound

Obviously important in a rhythm game, and it's all good as is to be expected (not much to say about this game yet...).

8.5/10

Gameplay

Console gameplay uses a plastic guitar to play on. On screen you'll see notes scroll by, were you press the corresponding button and then use the strum bar to activate the note so to speak.
This game works by the main mechanics, but you don't have a guitar. Instead, you turn your DS into the guitar by adding a Guitar Grip into the GBA slot of the DS. you then hold the DS sideways like a book to press the frets. Unlike the console versions five, this game only has four frets. Also, both strumming and whammying is done on the touch screen. There is a guitar on there with both strings, which you swipe across to strum, and a whammy bar, which you wiggle to to use.
Also, to activate Star Power, you have to blow into the microphone (or yell "Star Power" into it as the game explains, but the Hell with doing that in public).

After my attempt of an explanation, how well does it work.
The game plays exactly the same as the console versions except for the fact that there's four frets. This only effects Hard and Expert, but regardless I think the game throws the same amount of notes at you.
The strumming feels really unresponsive to me. At times I just don't get why the notes I hit don't get hit in the game as well. It's also pretty hard to accurately press the buttons when the game goes faster, due to your hand being cramped in the strap of the Guitar Grip. Plus the fact that I tend to push the Grip out of the slot a bit while playing, because it doesn't click into the slot >_>
I also noticed that you need way better timing in this game then on the console versions.

There's two modes you can play in: Carreer Mode where you just play the songs normally, and a Battle Mode. This latter works much like the Guitar Battles in Guitar Hero 3, where instead of Star Power you get battle items. The problem here is that you have to press the battle item which interrups your playing, and that you can't really see what your opponent is doing...

Though the gameplay itself is solid, the Guitar Grip needs some modifications to make it work as a whole.

6.5/10

Lenght

Five Tiers with 25 songs in total, which can be played in two modes on four difficulty settings. It'll take a while to 5 Star all songs on all difficulties I guess, but other then that it's still rather short.

6.5/10

Difficulty Level

Easy to pick up, difficult to master, and even more so due to the controls (see gameplay).

7/10

Fun factor

Most people complain about the set list, since they're used to having fast adn rough rock and metal songs on this series, while On Tour gives us mostly pop-rock and more easy going rock songs. Personalyl I have nothing against the setlist since I like all songs on this (which is different then like GH3, since there were a good amount of songs that I didn't like there). The fun factor really depends on how much you can look past the somewhat sucky controls (which as said, doesn't really show untill the Hard difficulty setting) and what you think of the setlist (it's worth noting that there are two versions of this game, one released in NA/UK/AUS, and one in the rest of Europe. Difference is that the European version has five different songs then the other one. For some reason, the UK version was being sold where I bought it.. not that I mind, since I feel it has the better tracklist anyway).
As for me...

7/10

Replayability

Not too great I guess. You could come back to try and 5 Star every song, but if you did that the only thing to come back for is to just play a song for kicks.

5/10

Overall grade

Good game, but I hope it gets some work with the next installment.

7/10


Disclaimer: Pics taken from Wikipedia.