Guitar Hero: On Tour

"It may look small, but this isn't Guitar Sidekick."

It may look small, but this isn't Guitar Sidekick

Introduction:

This game is Guitar Hero: On Tour, the fifth Guitar Hero game ever to be released. The previous games, Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero II, Guitar Hero: Rock the 80's, and Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, have all been for consoles. Guitar Hero: On Tour is the first portable Guitar Hero game and is for the Nintendo DS. The console Guitar Hero games all had guitar-shaped controllers with five fret buttons, a strum bar, a whammy bar, and Start and Select buttons. On Tour has its own controller, although it only has four of the usual five fret buttons. Before the controller was ever unveiled, there was a lot of speculation as to what it would look like. But no one expected what they finally came up with. I've been playing this since release (which was, as of this writing, almost a week and a half ago), and it's definitely a Guitar Hero game, not just some kind of milking a cash cow.

Gameplay:

Guitar Hero is usually played with a special controller shaped like a guitar. It has five fret buttons, a strum bar, and a few other things. The player picks a song and difficulty level, and then during the song, “gems” that match the colors of the fret buttons on the controller flow down the “note highway” to a line of colored circles that also match the fret button colors. To hit notes and chords, the player holds the fret buttons that match whatever colors are coming and presses the strum bar up or down. Somehow, this proves to be pretty addictive.

On Tour has a controller of its own called the “Guitar Grip”. This device has four fret buttons on it and a slot for a guitar pick-shaped stylus. The Guitar Grip itself fits into Slot 2 of the Nintendo DS, and the DS is held like an open book while this game is played. I'll be writing from a right-handed perspective, since I play right-handed. The note highway and gems are on the left screen, and there is an image of a guitar (along with various gauges and numbers) on the right screen, which is also the touch screen. When the gems come down the note highway, the player holds the appropriate fret buttons and drags the stylus across the touch screen, as if strumming the image of the guitar on the screen. It sounds like it would be very uncomfortable to hold, but the company has included tips that appear every time one starts up the game on how to avoid injury. This modification to the usual formula actually works quite well, and still makes for a fun game. Even though there's only four frets, the gameplay really feels like Guitar Hero. I've got high hopes for the version of Guitar Hero 4 that's supposed to be on the Nintendo DS.

Also, returning from Guitar Hero III are Guitar Battles (called “Duels” in On Tour). These battles were introduced in GHIII, and the goal of the song was not to pass it yourself, but to make your opponent fail. The mechanics have been slightly tweaked for On Tour's duels, and now, one just needs a higher score than his opponent to win. It's impossible to actually fail a song in On Tour's Duels, but scores can certainly be low. To make an opponent miss notes, one can play certain phrases of a song and get Battle Items. These items can be used one at a time against one's opponent (or for oneself, if it's a helpful item). Some of these attacks return from GHIII, and some are DS-specific. And unlike previous versions of Guitar Hero, Duels have their own Career Mode in On Tour.

Graphics/Sound:

The graphics look pretty much the same as other GH games, just without that fifth fret and DS-quality 3D. Also, one member of the band is missing, so the lead singers have become the bassists as well. And the patterns are missing from the note highway (though this is a good thing, because it's not as distracting).

The sound is pretty good, actually. The game's 26 songs are somewhat compressed, and the game is quite quiet at full DS volume, but this is easily fixed with headphones, which are recommended by the company on a screen that comes up every time the game starts. The songs are still very recognizable, and the sound in general in Guitar Hero: On Tour is some of the best sound on the DS. The company has also done a great job of matching the placement of the gems to the sound of the Guitar tracks of the songs.

Play Time/Replayability:

26 songs may not sound like a lot, but they take a good few hours to get through once. The GameFAQs message board for this game has noted that the song list is more than two hours long. There's four difficulties to regular Career Mode, and four difficulties to the Duel Career Mode. That's eight full runs through the song list. Two hours of songs times eight runs through those songs is sixteen hours. And that's just to play through everything once. You'll be playing more than that, since the hardest-to-get unlockable requires five stars on every Expert song. And that is no small feat, even with only four frets. I'd say maybe 25-30 hours for this game if you've ever played Guitar Hero before. It'll be many more than that if you've never played Guitar Hero before.

And who needs to replay the game, when you've got a full song list to play? Playing songs and trying to get an ever-increasing top score is part of the fun of Guitar Hero. Of course, you could erase the game's data and play again if you want to. But I can't see any reason to want to do that.

Final Recommendation:

This game's pretty good, but not without flaws. There are some problems with strumming, but not enough to significantly impede gameplay, unless you're really going for a perfect playthrough. And even then, half the time, your misses will be entirely your fault. So the strumming problems are less significant. This game is really good, and really feels like Guitar Hero. It doesn't feel like some cheap rip-off. It doesn't feel like someone's milking a cash cow. The song list is very good overall, except for one or two songs. I don't think anyone could be disappointed by this game, except by the fact that there's only 26 songs.

I give this game an 8/10 by GameFAQs' standards, which describes this game perfectly: “Great – fun to play, some minor but no major flaws.”

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/01/08

Game Release: Guitar Hero: On Tour (US, 06/22/08)