DS Review: Guitar Hero On Tour: Modern Hits

Developer/Publisher: Vicarious Visions/Activision
Genre: Music/Rhythm
Price: $29.99
Pros: Music gaming on the go
Cons: audio and graphic quality low; mechanics are there, fun-factor not

First off, let me just say, “Don’t try this at home…on a DSi.” Guitar Hero On Tour, all iterations, requires a Game Boy Advance (GBA) slot. This slot is used for the unique guitar-esque peripheral that you are supposed to wrap your hand around to “fret” the differently colored notes as they slide down the “highway.” Yeah, Guitar Hero has its jargon. You really need to see this video, though. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to check out this game:

Notice the over-the-top-humor? The “we’re cooler than playing plastic instruments on tiny little handhelds but think it’s fun anyway?” vibe? THAT’S the game *I* wanted to play.

Sadly, there’s none of that tongue anywhere near any cheek whatsoever in this game by Activision. That’s not to say it isn’t fun, or worth the price of admission, but there isn’t the cool-factor I was hoping for. I could REALLY get into a portable music game that does not take itself seriously.

So, what *does* the third game in the Guitar Hero On Tour series have? I’m glad you asked.

How It Sounds

First off, like any good Guitar Hero game, it’s got music. Instead of listing the songs, here’s a handy dandy Wikipedia link. Now that you’ve dutifully hit that link and read through the songs, you might notice something. Not a lot of pop music, right? Bands like Atreyu, The Klaxons, and Wolfmother dominate the list. There are some less metallic songs, as well, and more power pop like Weezer and Kings of Leon, but the main thrust, if you will, is hard rock. Which, you know, makes a sort of sense for Guitar Hero. Personally, I like a more diverse set of music, but your mileage may vary.

Let’s be clear, though – this is a DS. The sonic bandwidth is not the best. Music needs to be highly compressed to fit onto the little cartridge (this is technical talk, dear, no need to worry your pretty head about it), and it sounds that way. Smooshed. Like a really small overly-compressed MP3. If you’re an audiophile, that’s gonna bug ya. If you’re cool with transistor radio sounds emanating from your earbuds or speakers, you’ll be fine with it. Adding headphones to the mix definitely helps the low end, even if the rest of it still sounds compressed. The headphones I have are studio monitors, and that’s a good thing. iPhone earbuds? Not so great sounding with this game. The headphone jack, depending on size (mine’s really big – go figure) might get in the way of your hand, depending on how you hold it on the peripheral, so again, your mileage may vary. Suffice it to say that headphones with good bass response are going to be important if you want to play bass on this puppy.

The track analysis and difficulty curve are fairly superb. The difference between easy, medium, and hard (I am NOT practicing fake plastic guitar on my DS to unlock insane difficulty, thank you very much – I don’t even practice the real guitar that intensely) is consistent and makes sense. I actually like that there are only four buttons, as that avoids the difficulty spike that occurs in Rockband (between medium and hard) when adding the fifth button on the guitar. The notes fall on the “highway” where they should, and if you’re a musician, you can usually figure out how it all works. I’m still working out the hammer on type notes, but I’m sure they’re brilliantly placed.

How It All Begins

So, we’ve got the menu that begins the game, after the requisite “we made this” splash screens. You can choose Single Player, Multiplayer, Training (see above as to my feelings on practicing fake instruments), Options (mic, audio, data, and game settings like lefty mode). Single Player gets us The two main modes: Career and Quickplay. Quickplay is a list of all the songs unlocked so far in Career Mode. If you haven’t played Career Mode, your setlist will be shorter. Choosing Quickplay gets us the choice of Lead Guitar, Bass/Rhythm Guitar, or Guitar Duel. LEad guitar is what you’d expect, with the guitar being the loudest instrument and the most easily heard in the compressed state of the audio. Bass/Rythm shows us a bass with a whammy bar (wha?), but consists of what you’d think of as a bass part. This is another failing of the audio quality/ DS speaker size in that it’s REALLY hard to hear the bass part in compressed music through small speakers.

Choosing Career Mode gets us to the meat of the game – create a band, select a guitarist to front that band, and play through songs in venues to unlock more songs in more venues. Starting a new band, we meet Miss Heather, our promoter. She helps us choose a band name, pick a guitarist from a pre-defined character list of six (three men, three women guitarists), and pick an axe, some of which are unavailable until unlocked. I chose the “Blue Fog” guitar, which looked like something I might actually play, rather than a Flying V or other metal-esque phallic symbol. A tutorial is then offered with the basics on holding the pick, the ds, how to hold the accessory, etc. IT also takes you through some basic strumming and fretting techniques, and offers another lesson on guitar dueling. Luckily, you can quit in the middle of these snooze-fests with the Select button on your DS. If you’ve not played Rockband or Guitar Hero on a console, you shouldn’t be starting here.

So, once we get through the Easy, Medium, Hard, Expert screen, we get to choose to Play Live Show, visit the Guitar Shop, the Dressing Room, the Roster of Guitarists, our PDA, and another chance at the Options menu. All the redundancy will come in handy later when we get bored with our guitarist, guitar, or limited clothing choices. I don’t spend a whole lot of time on the character as I’m usually staring at the notes as they rush by the fretboard, but you may enjoy this sort of thing. If you do, you’ll be sad. The level of customization here is really just some basic choices, and that’s it. Same with the guitar shop. You’re not going to pick separate pieces for wither, and your choices will seem constraining after a little while. Cest La Vie, say the old folks, let’s get to playing a song.

Let’s talk a little about the guitar accessory. Many things have been said about it, and I agree with most of the negative ones. It took me a while to figure out that the GBA slot connector for the DS Lite is too short to really remain seated in the DS Lite, and that the DS Phat slot connector is the way to go. Once I had that screwed into the guitar accessory and seated in my DS Lite, it stayed in. That was after a half an hour of thinking it was broken as the smaller connector kept sliding out of the GBA slot, provoking much cursing and very little “throwing the goat” gestures.

Accessorize Me!

Holding this thing is gonna take some getting used to. Slap that DS Screen flat back, and hold your wrist straight. It’ll be hard to see the screen as well as you’d like, but the save on wrist pain is worth it. I don’t think they’ve truly gotten it, yet. Some sort of wireless peripheral that you can hold any old which way while still seeing the screen well is going to be key to getting widespread adoption of this thing. As I play through the songs, I continually have to remind myself to straighten my wrist out, as I crane my neck around to see the screen without any glare or funky side-view issues. It’s by no means an easy feat. Bottom line? It’s use-able, and I think having some sort of peripheral is an important factor in the appeal of these games.

So, now we’re playing a song, right? Well, sure, but we have to play the same 3 songs at least twice, if not more. The first three are Dimension by Wolfmother, Violet Hill by Coldplay, and Where are we Runnin, by Lenny. You know Lenny, right? Kravitz? Nice guy.

So, play these songs through. Go ahead, we’ll wait. Once you do that, you have to complete some Fan Requests, yep, playing these same three songs. Kind of annoying, really, especially if you don’t like the three songs you’re given. Then you’ll unlock another venue. Then you’ll get more fans, which lets you go back tot he venue you were in before and play as a headline act, which nets you some new songs and fan requests to play. This is all very familiar if you’ve played a similar game in the past. To me, it felt small. LIke a teeny little dressing room with too many unwashed smelly cigarette-and-booze fed bodies in it. Yeah, it’s a portable title and yeah, it’s meant to fit in the palm of my hand, but I have played many games that don’t feel so small. This one does.

So, is it fun? It can be, in the right frame of mind. Let’s get to my main thesis here, echoed by Carter in an article earlier this year: are portable music games worth the time and money? In concept, sure they are. They would seem to offer all the fun of the big console versions with the win-tastic added value of being portable. With this one, I’m just not sure it fulfills that promise. From the hand cramps to the low-polygon count repetitive animations of guitarists and bands, they’ve ported the mechanics of the big console version, but not the fun factor. On my 360, I sometimes forget I’m playing a fake guitar. The mechanics of pressing silly colored buttons at the right time becomes transparent and ultimately disappears, leaving me with the thrill of playing for a huge crowd of people with other people I like to play music with, without all the hassle of actually learning to play the song on a real instrument or finding band mates who won’t show up to practice stoned or shagging the lead singer girl. It’s a brilliant mix of music and video gaming, and we all know it’s selling well.

This portable version, while being a seriously good try, just falls short of the “brililant” mark. I’d recommend you buy it only if you just can NOT get enough of the genre, and spend a lot of time away from your console. Otherwise, give it a rent (if you can – hard to say if they rent the peripheral or not), or wait until they actually get it right. How do I know if they got it right? I find myself thinking of the times when I can get back to playing it. This game? Not so much.

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