Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Video game number one hundred and two: Guitar Hero On Tour

Video game review number one hundred and two in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Guitar Hero On Tour".

This is the final game in what I'm retroactively calling my "Monday, mobile Monday" series of game reviews. As you probably know if you've been reading, I took a road trip to Portland to see an Evening with Kevin Smith with my buddy John. While on the road, I borrowed a bunch of his DS and PSP games to write reviews of while we were driving the 175 miles or so (each way) to our destination.

I saved this one for last for several reasons:

1. I thought this would be the coolest of the bunch, because it comes with a snazzy little Gameboy guitar peripheral thing.

2. I figured playing the most "active" game of the bunch should be reserved for the 1-2am hour of the drive back, when I would be dying to take a nap...but should stay awake to help keep the driver from doing the same.

3. I thought playing DS Guitar Hero in a public place (the line for the show) would be lame, especially because I was keeping my sound turned down. You can't really play Guitar Hero without sound.

Some of these things turned out to be true, some did not.

First, the good: This game has a pretty decent setlist, the graphics are ok (better than I thought they would be, actually) and I think the way they have you hold your DS is actually sort of comfortable.

Now, the bad: Everything else. This game simply isn't as fun to play as guitar hero is. Perhaps if you're a child, this game would be fun...but the little guitar peripheral barely fit into my hand (even at it's longest length, I couldn't get the stupid strap to fit on my hand). This controller is definitely built for tiny children and other people with small hands, and my fingers were smashed closely together on the keys.

Scratching a pick on your touch screen sounds fun in theory (I was excited about it before playing), but in practice...it feels like you're going to break your DS. I've seen what kids do to their DSes. My nephews and nieces all have one, and I believe between the 5 of them, they've broken about 3 or 4. Furiously strumming a plastic guitar pick on a touch screen just seems like you're begging to break or permanently damage your screen. Maybe I wouldn't have...but it sure felt like I was going to.

Overall score: 3/10. Combining my fear of breaking my gameboy with the buttons being so damn close together on the stupid guitar made this unplayable. I couldn't pull off the faster difficulties, and found myself needing to play on easy or medium, which wasn't exciting at all. I played through three songs before I'd had enough. I'm really glad I never bought this game...because as cool as it looks, it's definitely not a game for grown ups.

I'll stick to my full sized plastic guitar, thank you very much.

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