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The Guitar Hero franchise should need no introduction; millions of gamers, hardcore and casual alike, have embraced the rock and roll fantasy and spent countless hours shredding in front of their televisions with fake guitars in hand. Now the rhythm game sensation has arrived at its smallest venue yet: Nintendo DS. Thankfully, Activision was kind enough to settle for more than a quick cash-in and gave the job of shrinking the platinum selling series to Vicarious Visions, one of the better DS developers out there and the folks who brought Guitar Hero III to Wii. Guitar Hero: On Tour is the name of the final product, and it essentially offers more of the same, sans television and guitar. visuals Vicarious Visions has always been devoted to making good-looking DS games and On Tour is no exception. First of all, the single most important part of any Guitar Hero, the descending notes, are clearly displayed on the top screen and come at you without any frame rate hiccups or other distractions. Behind the notes you are treated to your virtual virtuoso’s concert. The performances, while not as engaging as the console games, are fairly detailed and take place in a variety of interesting and creative locales, including one venue that should please all you Cher fans out there. The band is also quite detailed and well animated, though the singer has now picked up bass duties and looks as freakish as ever. Overall, everything looks good for a DS game, although does not match the flair of the console games. The bottom screen is much less flashy, but still important, seeing how it displays your score, combo meter and star power gauge. A large image of your character’s guitar that reacts to all your strumming is also shown. audio Music games live or die by their song selection and On Tour manages to get by, although not without a few scratches. Taste in music is completely subjective, but plenty of people will be disappointed by the number and choice of songs. At a mere twenty-five songs, On Tour is the shortest entry in the series, but realists probably won’t be bothered by this. DS cartridges only have so much memory and trying to jam more songs in would require compressing the files and drastically lowering the sound quality. Vicarious Visions struck a decent balance between the number and quality of songs: the twenty-five tracks sound slightly worse than MP3s but are definitely passable. Headphones, incidentally, are highly recommended. As for the choice of songs, this is where things get questionable. Activision obviously wanted to give On Tour the broadest appeal possible, so they reached into that fuzzy boarder between rock and pop and pulled out the likes of Smash Mouth and Maroon 5. Plenty of folks will love playing This Love, but others will scream bloody murder. The decision to include a handful of songs from Guitar Hero III is also questionable. It is nice to finally get the master recording of Pride and Joy, but was there really that big of a demand for the return of Hit Me With Your Best Shot? Ultimately, On Tour comes out in the positive thanks to a strong final two tiers with solid entries from Skid Row, Incubus, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ozzy and other class acts. gameplay Before playing On Tour you need to do a couple things: first, turn your DS on its side like you would with Ninja Gaiden DS; and second, slide the Guitar Grip accessory into the GBA slot. Without a full size guitar controller to jam on, the developers played around with a bunch of substitutes and the Guitar Grip was the cream of the crop. Unlike previous games in the series, On Tour only has four frets, for better or for worse. The touchscreen serves as the strum bar, and you can either use your standard stylus or the pick-shaped stylus included with the game -- neither offers a noticeable advantage. Once everything is set up, you play just as you always have before; you press the proper frets as the notes descend on the top screen, and then strum across the touchscreen when they reach the bottom to earn points and build up a multiplier for longer note streaks. Star Power is earned by hitting special glowing notes and is activated by either pressing one of the DS’s face buttons or yelling/blowing into the microphone. Even though all the mechanics of Guitar Hero have been shrunk down for DS, there are still several flaws with the whole setup. First, the Guitar Grip has a nasty tendency to start sliding out of place as you play, and if it goes too far, the game will stop and you will have to restart the whole system. Thankfully the grip rarely ever slides all the way out over the course of one song so you can push it all the way back in between tunes. Second, the touchscreen does not always register your strum during intense musical parts that require lots of back and forth strumming; this problem will lead to a lot of ruined combos for the Hard and Expert difficulty levels, but shouldn't hamper Easy and Medium players too much. Third, and last, there is the pain. The Guitar Grip can feel small, and folks with big hands and long fingers will have a hard time wrapping their hands around it and hitting the blue fret in particular. Chances are you will play a couple of songs and want to smash the contraption, and not in a good, Townshend-esque way. But if you play through the pain, you will eventually become accustomed to the new peripheral and the discomfort will subside. The options included with On Tour will be familiar to fans of the franchise. Single player modes include Practice, Quickplay, Tutorial, Career and Guitar Duel (a single player take on Guitar Hero III’s battle mode). Career mode plays out like as you would expect; you progress through five venues, each featuring five songs. Experienced players should be able to storm through the career within a day or two thanks to the short song list and relatively easy note charts, though I Don’t Wanna Stop has a wonderfully difficult solo that might take a few tries to overcome. Completing the career might be a quick and relatively easy job, but unlocking all of the guitars and character outfits will require you to score five stars on every song on every difficulty. Of course, the real long term appeal of any Guitar Hero game is mastering all the songs and aiming for higher scores, so Guitar Hero addicts should find twenty-five reasons to keep coming back. multiplayer On Tour continues the tradition of being great at parties and offers up plenty of local multiplayer options. Both Face-Off and Pro Face-Off make their triumphant return, and the inclusion of co-op should please the less competitive shredders out there. Where Vicarious Visions obviously put a lot of effort is in the aforementioned Guitar Duel mode, which places even more emphasis on the DS’s unique qualities. Instead of Star Power, competitors earn attacks that can be collected and then launched at opponents by pressing the corresponding icon on your screen. Most of the battle mode attacks have been reworked to incorporate the touchscreen and microphone and new moves have also been added. Broken string now requires you to reconnect the strings on the touchscreen, while Pyrotechnics lights your guitar on fire and prevents you from playing until you use the microphone to blow it out. Overall, Guitar Duels are a decent distraction and use the DS well, but if you never liked Guitar Hero III’s battle mode, you won't care much for this either. The only thing that really knocks down On Tour’s multiplayer offering is the complete lack of online support. But even if they could not have pulled off quality online play, games like this absolutely scream for leaderboards. overall On Tour truly offers the Guitar Hero experience we all know and love, albeit with a somewhat inferior, if passable, peripheral. So long as your expectations for this game are realistic, you should be satisfied if you take the time to get used to the Guitar Grip; in other words, do not simply play a couple of songs and then complain about how your hand hurts and toss the game away. Hopefully Activision will continue to support the series on DS and fix some of the strumming problems in the process. So, On Tour is not the best game and the series and does little to progress the franchise, but Guitar Hero fans now have a decent distraction while away from home.
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