A broken string doesn't force you to stop and endlessly mash a fret instead, you can quickly restring it with the touch screen.
This time around though, the item-based attacks are more fun than frustrating, with skill and reflex playing a larger role than luck and patience. You can face off against an actual opponent via local wireless or duke it out with an AI character, and as with Guitar Hero 3, you earn items by hitting all the notes in a certain combo. I still didn't do all that well, but I got further in Blink 182's "All the Small Things" than I did on an earlier attempt.īut where the game really shines, and where I feel it surpasses Guitar Hero 3, is in its item-based Duel Mode. I had to retrain myself to keep it low to the screen, to alternate left and right strums instead of going in one direction. On the DS edition, I found myself instinctively lifting the pick away after each strum. In the console versions, this can be accomplished by strumming up and down instead of just down. Simple strums will suffice in the early songs and lower difficulties, but to advance in the higher tiers, you have to learn to be more efficient with your strumming. So much for the missing button making the game easier.ĭon't be fooled: While On Tour seems pretty pick-up-and-play friendly, it sports the same kind of learning curve and nuances as the console editions. However, the second I tried anything beyond Medium in On Tour, I didn't do that well. Don't get me wrong, I'm no master, but I can get by in Rock Band and Guitar Hero on Expert. I wasn't expecting the game to be so challenging either. Star Power? Yell in the mic, or just press one of the face buttons during a slow bit. Whammies? A simple matter of holding down the stylus and shaking it back and forth. I wasn't expecting the transition to be that seamless. And I didn't miss a note, at least at first, which surprised the hell out of me. The part where I was about to strum the touch screen with a pick stylus didn't factor in. The second that No Doubt's "Spiderwebs" started playing, it didn't matter that my hand was curled around a DS instead of an actual toy plastic guitar. In fact, I think it does some things better than the console editions of Guitar Hero 3. And when the first prototype was presented to Nintendo, Bala says they were stunned.īut the really, really amazing part? For all the unwieldy-looking peripherals and wacky ads, the Nintendo DS entry, Guitar Hero: On Tour, really is Guitar Hero. "It was never in the plan to do that."Īs Bala puts it, the whole thing came out of the Vicarious staff playing around to "see if it was even possible to do a really good music rhythm game on a handheld." Twenty-three prototypes and a few cardboard guitars later, a breakthrough came in the form of a "crazy Frankenstein GBA cartridge" wired with fret buttons.Īctivision and RedOctane thought it was insane. "People thought it was ludicrous," Vicarious CEO Karthik Bala told me at a Guitar Hero event earlier this week. No one at studio owner Activision, fellow Activision subsidiary RedOctane, or Nintendo believed it was even possible. No one asked Vicarious Visions to make Guitar Hero for the Nintendo DS.
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