Review – Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades
Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008 at 8:24pm by David
Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades decides to break up the sets into venues that specialize in specific decades of music. You start out in the Modern club playing songs that came out in 2007 (and one from 2005) and then move on to the New Year’s Eve themed club called “2000s” playing songs from 2000-2005. It’s a clever idea and the venue owners who talk to you are actually pretty funny. Other than the pure delight I got from seeing the 1980′s classic Atari style Activision logo when I started up the game, this is where the fun stopped for me.
Since it has been covered ad nauseum, I will skip any discussion of the horrifyingly bad controller grip for this game and jump right into what is wrong with the software itself.
Playing the guitar with a pick is a nice idea and a special pick stylus is included with the grip controller. Unfortunately, if you really start to get into the music and rock out even slightly, you will surely start strumming in an area of the touch screen that will cause your notes to fail.
The music selection isn’t bad, but roughly 1/4 of the songs are on Guitar Hero World Tour. The songs are all digitized to a point where they sound worse than ringtones. The game encourages you to use headphones for the ultimate experience, but I found the DS speakers help to lessen the fake sound of the music.
Don’t buy this game. Don’t rent it. Just skip it. It’s fairly difficult to enjoy for a number of reasons. It would be nice to see Activision/Red Octane/Vicarious Visions/etc inject some of the humor from the cutscenes in this version of Guitar Hero to the full console versions, though. For that single redeeming value, I give it one star.
December 2nd, 2008 at 9:13 pm
i will skip it.
December 2nd, 2008 at 9:28 pm
I’m sorry to hear you don’t like it…I’m one of the apparently very few people who enjoyed On Tour, and I am currently having a lot of fun with Decades (as the songs are an awful lot better than On Tour). As I’m in the minority, however, I’ll stay quiet.
December 2nd, 2008 at 10:33 pm
No, Axel! Please tell us what you thought. Obviously a lot of people have bought the games and like them. I just had a hard time with it and would like to hear what makes them popular.
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:04 am
I really liked On Tour, and I plan to buy Decades. You ask what makes them popular? It’s Guitar Hero on a DS!
To address your points:
1) I have no problem with the grip, and I have ginormous hands. I only use one corner of the grip as a thumb loop and leave most of it tight against the grip. When I tried to put the strap around my hand, it was really uncomfortable, but just resting in my hand it works fine.
2) I have some problems strumming really fast notes, but this is more a tendency to strum one time too many than any problem with the game. I have less problem with On Tour than I do with GUIII and the regular guitar.
3) The loss in sound quality is to be expected. It’s 20+ songs on a DS for cripes sake! In my opinion, they should have dropped the music to Mono and kept more quality (or maybe a few more songs).
4) Some of the songs are on World Tour? So what!? Can I play world Tour on the bus? Then it doesn’t matter, does it? That’s like complaining that Tetris on the DS uses the same shapes as Tetris on the Wii. It is not trying to make a different experience, it is trying to make the same experience portable.
And that’s really the crux. If you are waiting at the airport, or at the doctor’s office, or any of the other hundreds of places outside the house where we sit around, the DS is the only console you have with you. Hell, for millions of people the DS is the only console they own. Instead of comparing “On Tour” to “World Tour”, you should be comparing “On Tour” to “Not Playing”. In that context, it holds up pretty well.
December 3rd, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Alrighty. Maybe the fact that I’m 16 is helping me get past the nature of the Guitar Grip, I find it quite manageable for 15 minute sessions.
I’m a very rhythmically-oriented person, so these kind of games appeal to me more than any other (I play the trumpet and drums, two instruments that require the musician to have an ear for music and good rhythm), so being able to play a game that allows me to keep my skills sharp (aside from EBA, only so many times I can play “YMCA”) is rather enticing. I play Rock Band when I have the option, but for car trips and waiting rooms this is my best bet. This new version has many songs that I know and love and I bought it essentially as a Track Pack to extend my play value (which I believe it was intended for). I am also one of the people who enjoyed Wii Music, even if only for a good time with friends (playing crash cymbals on a drum set over the “Blue Danube” is a riot). The classical song list appealed to me because I’m heavily involved in musical research, etc.
I guess what I’m saying is that there is a target audience for these kind of games, and we aren’t necessarily children or old people in the case of Wii Music.
Wow, I did have things to say after all! I love Infendo, but my opinion hasn’t been meshing much with yours over music games of late. Keep up the good work, though! I’ll be here as long as you are.
December 7th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
I haven’t gotten Decades yet, but I’m planning on it, for the sake of a better track list.
But now the DSi doesn’t have a GBA slot, which cancels out the Guitar Hero games on DS. Maybe the genii who thought of the Guitar Grip can adapt it for the SD slot?
Genii- plural for genius. ‘Cause I’m awesome like that.