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Review : Guitar Hero : On Tour for the Nintendo DS
Rating : 91% Rocks Pretty Darn Hard!
On monday I rushed out the store to get my copy of Guitar Hero : On Tour for the Nintendo DS.
It's an original Guitar Hero game built for a guitar like controller with four strut buttons that snaps into the Gameboy Advance cartridge port on the Nintendo DS Lite. The controller is held in place by a strap and house a detachable guitar pick stylus. You hold the Nintendo DS on it's side and grasp the back of the guitar controller with your left hand on the strut buttons. There is only four strut buttons instead of Guitar Hero normally having five but I don't see how they could realistically squeeze five on to such a small area. I have some pretty big hands and this was just about big enough for me. When I started playing it I had my wrist turned and got some minor cramping. After I saw the notice about keeping your wrist straight the discomfort went away and good times were had by all. Star power is triggered by talking into the DS's microphone port, I usually said "Rock out!". The virtual whammy bar is controlled by moving the pick over the screen while pressing down. When you strum you need to lift the stylus off the screen and sort of tap it.
You strum a virtual guitar on the vertical Nintendo DS touch screen on the right using the pick stylus and work the frets with your left hand. You can flip it for lefties and there is an connector so the controller can snap into the original Phat Nintendo DS. This feels like a first party accessory and I love the idea of additional controllers snapping into the DS and I instantly took to playing along to the songs. Having an actual pick to strum was more fun than I had expected and it would be sweet to see it on a large guitar controller.
The only real complaint is that it is way too short. There is only 26 tracks in the game and five venues to play in. That is a lot of music but the disc based Guitar Hero games had a much bigger selection. There is in room mulitplayer over Wifi but there is no online multiplayer.
The music sounds great. They used some good compression and it when you turn it on the game encourages you to play it with headphones. As a first for Guitar Hero games they had some band do covers of songs but put their own take on them. I think it paid off but they also have plenty of tracks by the original bands. I got a kick of of having "Jessie's Girl" by Rick Springfield, "We're Not Gonna Take It" by Twisted Sister, and "Breed" by Nirvana in Guitar Hero game.
The graphics really push the Nintendo DS and it is instantly recognizable as Guitar Hero. The style reminded me more of Guitar Hero II and the freaky giant mouthes singer of Guitar Hero III was luckily toned down in general freakatude. Graphically it is pretty impressive for a Nintendo DS game. The note interface was clear and easy to follow.
The game was developed by Vivacious Visions who made the Tony Hawk games for Gameboy Advance and Nintendo DS and Red Octane built the controller.
It is a bit more than other Nintendo DS games at $50 but it is totally worth it. It is about half the cost of Guitar Hero 3 and compared to the cost of the giant Rock Band combo it's down right affordable.
This is a real Guitar Hero game. I was way more excited about this one over Guitar Hero : Aerosmith this summer or Guitar Hero IV : Rock Band "Clone" coming this fall. I got the feeling it's not a pure cash in game.
It is the best Nintendo DS music game since Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan.
It was a pretty respectable effort and a very successfully conceptualized and executed game. I have no doubt that this is going to be one of the best selling Nintendo DS games of the year and I am impressed with the sheer amount of rockatude that they were able to cram into such a small form factor. This game rock hard but now in a friendly portable size.
Jake at June 23, 2008 
Reviews
Comments
At first when I saw this campy trailer I fought ZOMG this is campy (but looks fun) and now I think you this is fun (but still looks silly)!
Can't wait for it. ;)
Posted by: Jim at June 24, 2008 11:51 AM
At first when I saw this campy trailer I fought ZOMG this is campy (but looks fun) and now I think you this is fun (but still looks silly)!
Can't wait for it. ;)
Posted by: Jim at June 24, 2008 11:55 AM
Of course it is silly. But it is awesome and fun and that is the whole point of playing games.
Nintendo DS + Guitar Hero = Two great tastes together at last.
Posted by: Jake of 8bitjoystick.com at June 24, 2008 12:01 PM
Looks like something I might have to pick up!
Posted by: Danh at June 25, 2008 10:27 AM
it says you can push one of the face buttons for star power. I'd rather not yell at my DS since that would just kill it for me. Do the shoulder buttons work to activate starpower?
Posted by: xxhennersxx ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.8bitjoystick.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at June 25, 2008 11:43 PM
Great insight into the title, I think that Vicarious Visions always pull out all the stops with the DS hardware and it shows in how most of their DS titles use the diverse feature set to its fullest.
Posted by: Daniel Primed at June 26, 2008 5:29 AM
