Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades – NDS – Review

It’s a pretty good day when a game
as popular as Guitar Hero makes it on to the DS, much less makes it on and is
a decent game that manages to capture some of the fun and excitement that is
dominant on the original. I think we will all agree that playing with the
guitar controller is more enjoyable than the DS, but that the DS does a good
job of making the gameplay engaging. Either way, a scant four months after the
first DS guitar hero, we get the "Decades" edition.

Ok, so the reason it says,
"Decades" is because the game is more focused on the songs of the 70s, 80s,
90s and 00s, which makes no real sense, because pretty much every other Guitar
Hero game can say that there is a song from all of those decades. But in all
fairness, the game’s setup has you playing four songs from each decade (with a
fifth, bonus song) chronologically. Although there is some lameness in the
fact that they call the modern selection of songs a decade since they are just
really recent songs. It’s predictable, but the need is there I suppose.

 
"The 70’s may have had some great rock
music, but the footwear stunk to high heaven."

So what about those songs then?
Well, like virtually every music game featuring this sort of gameplay, you
simply won’t like every one of them. I told myself way back when I reviewed
Guitar Hero 2, that if any game in this genre features 75% of the songs I like
then I have to consider myself lucky. Granted, I like rock music to
begin with, so the chances of me liking a good chunk of the songs is pretty
much a given. Still, there are bands and songs I simply do not like.

Some of the songs featured in the
game are as follows:

These are some of the songs I did
like, I am not a fan of Alien Ant Farm’s version of "Smooth Criminal" or Edgar
Winter Group’s "Free Ride" and a couple others but I would say that I liked
about 22 or so of the game’s 28 tracks. Sadly, there are more double’s in this
version as well. If you have some of the other Guitar Hero or Rock Band games,
you will see that there are some songs that seem to be creeping into multiple
game titles. I like the band Journey, but I don’t need to play their song in
three different games.

 
"She looks kinda dangerous, lemme borrow
a guitar pick."

The gameplay is the same as
before, which should be good since before the gameplay was pretty good. The
same gaming engine was clearly used and these past few months the developers
were pretty much just working on getting the tracks tuned in and ready. This
is evident by the same characters hopping around the same backgrounds as seen
in the previous version. The  characters and guitars and all that jazz looks
the same, but its not like you notice since you focus so much on the guitar
neck and the notes coming down the pipe. Fortunately the touch screen still is
dialed in and the cool stylus pick feels like the real thing.

OK, now I should mention that the
game takes a step in an entirely weird direction this time as the difficulty
shows. In previous titles, including console versions, the further you got in
the game, the more difficult the songs became. Not this time around,
difficulty is all over the place with songs being medium, easy, hard, easy,
easy, hard, medium (random, but you understand). So with this unevenness, I
gotta kick Red Octane and Activision in the shins. Had I not been an awesome
player I may have gone goofy wondering what was wrong with me.

What was really cool was that I
was given a second copy of the game so I could really bang out the multiplayer
bells and whistles. Well, I rocked and my son and nephew rocked back. They
really should have thought about bundling two of these together with two
add-on controllers. The multiplayer section really does a bang up job of
breathing life into the game once it has been beaten. Players can swap play
lists too and from earlier versions of the game and in games to come. So
potentially you can get all sorts additional songs as the series continues on.
Pretty slick. Not to mention its just plain fun rocking out together on songs,
 

The game has some additional play
modes to increase the length and life of the title. Things like lead guitar,
bass/rhythm, guitar, guitar duel and three difficulty modes. There are even a
couple of bonus surprises to be discovered for those willing to beat the game
on hard.     

Gameplay: 8.4
Pretty straight forward; if you have played the other game, then you
are a good to go. If you have gone in for wrist surgery since the other game,
then you may want to take a pass.

Graphics: 7.0
Its pretty much a bunch of
recycled visuals from the other one, but you really don’t care, cause your
trying for a perfect score and, oh, whoop, you just blew it, thanks for
interrupting me!

Sound: 9.0
I have yet to hear a really
stinker selection of songs from any of these games. They do need to stop
repeating them though from one title to another.

Difficulty: Medium

Concept: 7.5
The idea is still sound. even
though the game uses recycled graphics and pretty much the same gameplay, but
rockin is still the order of the day.

Multiplayer: 9.0
The game gets a serious boost with
innovative multiplayer downloads and guitar face-offs.

Overall: 8.2
If you have played the first one
and enjoyed it, then you are golden; if you didn’t then its time to put down
the iPod loaded with country music and get crackin’.