Guitar Hero On Tour Decades

Review from Cav - Thursday, 14 May 2009 @ 4:51pm

“Great Warrior? Heh! Wars not make one great!”

That is a quote from everyone’s favourite, green, intergalactic muppet. Now I am going to tweak it a bit, but you can still do the voice in your head if you want.

“Great Portability? Heh! Portability not make games great!”

And in a midicholrian filled nutshell, that’s how I feel about Guitar Hero On Tour Decades.

Firstly, let me say that I am very average at Guitar Hero and couldn’t hold a candle to the performance that our friend Yahtzee gave at eGames last year. I did review Guitar Hero:Aerosmith on the Wii last year, but that is probably because I am the only sucker with GH on the Wii! Ahh, there’s no real difference is there? Although the WiiMote does use it’s inbuilt speaker, which is cool. Anyway, even though I used to play a bit of Bass and now still muck around on my daughter’s guitar, my skills at this game kinda suck…. Now that I think about it, my skills at most games suck. But we all know I was employed here for my devilishly good looks, boyish charm …… and my abundant ability to spin shit.

Flip? I thought this was Guitar Hero not Tony Hawk!

Guitar Hero itself is a great concept that will be really well suited to the environment at Yug, Pras and Yahtzee’s Mana Bar, but I don’t feel that this portable version is really all that good. I believe that GH is an experience that needs to be shared and not be kept to one’s self. So is it the peripheral or the game itself letting this title down? No doubt in my mind (no matter how scattered it sometimes is) that it is the peripheral. This had to have been made for the Japanese market as the Guitar Grip attachment was way too small for my hands. I spent well over half an hour trying different variations and positions with the strap for the guitar grip only to find that I was most comfortable with just my thumb through the strap and my wrist on an angle. I was finding that when I had my hand entirely within the strap, the unit would ease its way out of the slot slowly and that the red button just wouldn’t respond. I want to blame that on the age of my close to release date DS Phat, but I changed the adapter and had a crack with my daughter’s DS Lite and kinda had the same problem although it was only slightly better on the comfort scale. It’s like the DS Phat wasn’t even thought of until the last minute before shipping when someone said “Oh crap! This thing doesn’t fit in my old DS!! We better make an adapter so it works or someone’s gonna be pissed!” It’s really hard to access the mic too while playing, which, for those of you who don’t know, is located at the bottom left hand side, just below the touch screen. Now you can see from the photos below, that a players hand covers the mic during play ….. pretty silly. During Career mode and Quickplay, your star power is activated by shouting into the mic, but I just resorted giving the mic a quick tap with the plectrum stylus. So why is the thumb on my hand holding the grip, hovering just above the shoulder button, doing bugger all? Couldn’t I use that to activate star power? Also during Battle modes, your opponent can set your guitar on fire and although I would love to pull a Jimi Hendrix and kneel before it in worship, you have to blow out the flames by blowing into the mic. So once again the faithful original DS owners are behind the 8-ball... but not as much as DSi owners who miss out on the portable Guitar Hero experience all together.

Now you see it

Now you don't!

Now the actual game itself is not bad. Being called Decades sorta gives away the fact that there is music from several decades and it’s a pretty good mix. There are some great tracks although the speakers in the DS do not do them justice and neither do a set of headphones. And here’s me thinking that the Squirrel at the start of the game, who recommended I wear headphones knew what he was talking about. Dumb Squirrel. In the game, you find yourself venturing to different clubs that represent different eras to play gigs. It’s the usual four songs and encore affair, with a few unlockables. Gigs get you money, you buy clothes, same old, same old. The difficulty increases aren’t to nasty in their progression so once you’ve belted through Easy, stepping up shouldn’t be a problem, IF you are comfortable with the grip. What separates this hand held version and the home console version is Battle Mode. The when you are attacked, other than the flames mentioned earlier, it’s stylus time! I like the broken string attack where you have to replace a string on your guitar by drawing it back into place with the stylus. The autograph attack is also good, where you have to autograph on anything from a shoe to a skateboard, to unblock your view of your guitar strings. These are very creative and work in well.

Come on baby, light my fire!

I personally think that we will never see another version of this game for the portable market. Not unless they bring out some sort of wireless grip. I CALL THAT ONE! I WANT MY CUT ACTIVISION. Anyway, was it fun while it lasted?

Well I’d rather do it on the big screen ...... and my name would be Cannon Long.... sorry bad porno joke.

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