Bringing Guitar Hero to the Nintendo DS certainly sounds like a challenging proposition any way you slice it. Faced with the task of converting a peripheral-based game to a portable system while retaining the original feel of the franchise, Activision and Vicarious Visions have ultimately managed to do so in Guitar Hero: On Tour. That’s not to say aren’t a few problems from rehearsal that wound up making it into the final performance, though.
Coming with the game is the new Guitar Grip peripheral that, despite a few minor problems (marketing efforts not included), proves to work surprisingly well. Shaped to fit inside the DS’s Game Boy Advance cartridge slot (it’ll even work with an older model DS if you have it), the Grip comes with four of the game’s famous frets on it along with a pick-shaped stylus. With it, you’ll have no problems at all playing songs on the easier and medium difficulties, but moving up to hard and expert modes are when the issues begin to show up.
Since the grip feels very similar to holding the traditional guitar controllers in your hand with the four frets, note charts on hard and expert restrict you into playing in one particular way which will force some players to change up their styles. In songs where where there are multiple chords and switch-ups, sliding your hands down won’t be an option and you’re stuck to either adjust or fail the song with a cramped hand.
Furthermore, if the grip isn’t firmly in the console it may even begin to start sliding out which will also result in a failed song.
These are also some of the same problems when it comes to strumming on the stylus, and it’ll definitely give Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword a run for its money when it comes to the touch pad use. While it works almost flawlessly on easier settings, faster strumming presents problems on harder settings when it occasionally won’t catch the note you played. On top of that, even if you did miss a note, the following note will play anyway which might cause some tempo problems when you’re trying to get in rhythm with the song.
The game comes with the usual choices of play from a Guitar Hero game, such as Quick Play and Career modes. On Tour also features a new mode, Guitar Duels, which for all intents and purposes is a new take on the guitar battles from Guitar Hero III. Oddly enough, where the former failed at being anything remotely fun to play, the latter is a different story as it’s much better suited for portable play. It’s also improved as DS-exclusive battle icons are introduced, as well as being a separate mode entirely from career (one of the main complaints from GH III). In addition, all the songs are played out in their entirety giving both sides a fair shot to win.
The game’s 26 songs (six of which from GH III) features many popular and mainstream tracks, such as Smash Mouth’s “All Star” and Los Lonely Boys’ “Heaven”, in addition other popular guitar tracks like Incubus’ “Anna Molly” and Nirvana’s “Breed”. All of the songs sound great even without headphones and makes it one of the better sounding DS games with some impressive compression.
And unfortunately, while the soundtrack is decent, it’s also the main cause of many of the problems with the game brought up in this review. When you’ve got tracks like “Breed” and “Helicopter” that feature heavy strumming sections that blatantly show that the control scheme isn’t as refined as the console versions (which will cause you to miss those notes and unknowingly slide the Grip out of place), it presents a problem which ultimately asks the question of why some of these songs were picked to be in the game at all.
In the end, Guitar Hero: On Tour is a solid first attempt that manages to do a lot of things right while also having some missteps in its debut. The Guitar Grip is certainly a mainstay peripheral for the DS now, and if Vicarious Visions continues to improve on the gameplay, this will definitely be a viable franchise on Nintendo’s portable system. Even more so than the console versions of the game though, On Tour is going to inevitably live or die based on the song choices the developers make (that almost sounded Simon Cowell-esque, sheesh) to properly synch the system’s, and peripheral’s, features with the trademarks that are key to the Guitar Hero franchise.
Final Score: 3.0 out of 5
Tags: activision, guitar hero, guitar hero customize, guitar hero song list, guitar hero: on tour, nintendo ds, nintendo ds top games, nintendo ds walk throughs
