Rocking out to the NEW Golden Oldies

Author's Rating:

Pros: 
some good songs, fun guitar-oriented gaming

Cons: 
small song list, some really bad tunes, nothing new in gameplay

The Bottom Line: 
It's more like a bonus pack of songs than a full game. Don't pay full-game price, but if you like 80's rock check it out.

Author's Review
Yes, I will admit it. I’m addicted to Guitar Hero. I’m not one of these people that is in danger of needing carpal tunnel surgery from playing too much, but I am on track to owning every title. Being such a fan and a child of the 80’s how could I NOT own Rocks the 80’s? Initially I wasn’t thoroughly impressed, but much of it has grown on me after playing a bit.

Rocks the 80’s is essentially GH 2 with a slight retool (not counting the song list, of course). The venues are the same. The characters are the same except they have elements of the 80’s in their costumes (Ripper has glowing 3D glasses! How funny is that?) The images are all the same with the exception of some color changes. The gameplay is the same, but that’s to be expected since all the early games were pretty similar. It hasn't been until World Tour that it has changed drastically. Speaking of which, keep in mind that this game predates the full band functionality of the later titles though you can get some of the songs in the Smash Hits game.

For the benefit of any readers who don’t know anything about Guitar Hero and just came to read this review because you got curious about a game revolving around 80’s music here are some basics. This is a game that plays music while you recreate the lead guitar track. A series of colored gems slide across a virtual fret, and you follow along by pressing the appropriate fret buttons and strumming similar to what you would do on a real guitar.

To me it sounded like a Fisher Price game – My First Guitar – “Now you can teach your toddler about sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll!” It wasn’t until I was talked into trying it out that I learned how much fun this really can be. It gets challenging. Be a rock star in your own living room! I hope you have some hand-eye coordination.

You have a variety of virtual guitar players to choose from and a selection of guitars to give them (with some highly unusual ones available for unlocking – hows about a bass guitar? And I’m talking about the fish not the musical term). Which reminds me: the funky unlockable guitars also appear to be the same ones from GH2.

Once you've chosen your rocker and his/her axe a band plays along with you during the songs creating a music video feel to distract you while you play and provide a bit of entertainment for anyone watching although in my experience most people tend to just watch the fretboard anyway. Oh, the singer isn’t synced to the music like in the other games. This time a blur effect is used so you can’t tell the lips don’t match the songs. Hey, this is supposed to be an encore, not a full game.

GH 2’s multiplayer options are here. Hook up another guitar and get to playing with someone else on bass as well as lead guitar. Bass isn’t available for playing as part of the main game, though, only multiplayer.

Graphics and stuff are swell and all, but they don’t mean squat without the core of the game: playing some rock and roll! Being an “encore” rather than a full game, the compilation of songs here is much smaller than the other games – 30 songs total. A few of them are master recordings, but the vast majority are studio covers. This isn’t always a bad thing. I mean the Pretenders have a lawsuit over the fact that the cover of their song sounds TOO MUCH like the original. That seems pretty ridiculous to me. We’ll give you license to cover our song but you better not sound too much like us or we’ll get mad! Anyway, the covers on some of the other games can leave something to be desired, but this time around they tend to sound pretty good.

Unfortunately, songs that sound good don’t mean much if the songs themselves suck. This, of course, is going to be a matter of pure opinion that will differ from player to player. I’m not going to go through the entire list since that is readily available with a Google search, but I will hit some of my personal highs and lows. Essentially if you like 80's rock at all you're bound to love some songs and hate others.

-“Turning Japanese” – how did this garbage even get on the radio? This is one of the worst songs in the entire GH series. I set out to beat it as quickly as possible so I didn’t have to hear it anymore.
-“Because It’s Midnite” is by a fictional band called Limozeen. It’s not an 80’s song but is done with that style in mind. Unfortunately it stinks. The lyrics are goofy and the vocalist has a terrible voice. The guitar solo on this one is stupid hard, too.
-“We Got the Beat” just doesn’t sound like a song that should be on his game. It’s completely out of place with the other songs.


On the other side of the coin:
-“I Ran So Far Away” was one I was initially not excited about, but it turned out to be one of the most fun to play. I was hoping it would be included in Smash Hits so I could sing it. Everyone else is glad it's not there so they don't have to listen to me sing.
-“The Warrior” is probably worth the cost of the game just by itself. It’s a great song and is fun to play.
-“Wrathchild”: I’m not normally an Iron Maiden fan, but this is a great, great song. I was shocked to find myself enjoying it so much. It’s now in my regular iTunes rotation. How did it get passed over for “The Trooper” in Smash Hits??

There are a few other good ones, and some that have gown on me slightly, but my list would have been considerably different. Where is “Poison” by Alice Cooper (maybe that one's too late 80's)? How about Greg Kihn’s “Jeopardy?” “Comin’ Atcha Live” by Tesla would have been a particularly good one. So would “Owner of a Lonely Heart” by Yes. I guess it’s too much to ask for them to have all my favorite 80’s songs, but even so they could have done a better job with the list. I personally couldn’t care less about Dio, Accept, Asia, and some of the others.

The difficulty level is low. There are 4 settings from easy to expert. Starting off on easy everything moves slowly and you only use 3 buttons. Speed and complexity increase with each level up to 5 buttons, more combinations, and rapid-fire notes. I enjoy the division of difficulties and appreciated having the easier levels as a new player. Honestly they get pretty boring now that I’m used to the harder difficulties, and I only play through them to unlock guitars. However, it's still nice to have them for friends who don't play often.

Like the other early games (but unlike the newer ones) the difficulties are like having individual games. So instead of having a list of song with a change of difficulty, you have to choose the difficulty to get the list of songs for it (although the songs are in the same order all 4 times).

Currently I’m a decent player; I find the hard difficulty not enough challenge on most songs but can't necessarily blaze through expert on some of the most difficult tunes. For this game “Play With Me” on expert is the only one that has given me any high amount of frustration although there are a couple like “Electric Eye” that don’t look like they are going to yield a 5* rating to me anytime soon. So overall difficulty I would say is comparable to the first game and easier than any other game.


FINAL THOUGHTS:
Guitar Hero is a great series of games, and the 80’s is a fine addition if you just want 30 more songs to play. Just understand this is not a fully unique game and is a different experience from World Tour or anything after that. Check out the song list. If you like it enough to shell out the purchase price (which hopefully has dropped a bit from its initial release) you'll enjoy the game even if you're not impressed with the graphics and such. With only 30 songs and several of those not worth the 3-5 minutes it takes to play them there is not a lot of bang for the buck, but it's probably worth $20. I'll give it 3* for the fun I have playing the songs I like minus the negatives.