Lot's of fun... just watch the wrist!

We have had all of the incarnations for Guitar Hero in my house since they came out. My now 11 year old loves playing the game. Surprisingly, my wife is getting hooked on the game. She wanted in on the action. She was very interested in the portable version that came out for the Nintendo DS called Guitar Hero: On Tour. For her birthday, I got it for her.

The unit comes packed in a box about 4x5x2. It is shrink wrapped so you know it has been untouched by human hands (what kind of hands did touch it, we just don’t know!). The contents of the box include:

Guitar Hero: On Tour Game (the part with the multicolored buttons on it)
Guitar Grip
Adjustable Strap
Pick Stylus

This unit plugs into your DS as a game cartridge and wraps around the back of your DS. You then hold your DS so that side with the buttons is on the right side. You slide your left hand around the back of the DS and through the strap so that your fingers are on the multi-color On-Tour buttons. When you do this, the left side screen shows the colors of the buttons that are to be pressed while the right screen holds the strings which you “strum” with the stylus, held in your right hand. Sound complicated? It is at first, but you get used to it quickly.

The following songs, listed alphabetically, are available on the “On-Tour game (I have also included the year that these songs came out):


1999 "All Star" Smash Mouth, Original
1999 "All the Small Things" Blink-182, Original
2006 "Anna Molly" Incubus, Original
2003 "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" Jet, Original
1995 "Avalancha" Heroes del Silencio, Original
1970 "Black Magic Woman" Santana, Cover Band
1991 "Breed" Nirvana, Original
2006 "Ca Me Vexe" Mademoiselle K, Cover Band
1973 "China Grove" The Doobie Brothers, Original
2006 "Do What You Want" OK Go, Original
2004 "Heaven" Los Lonely Boys, Original
2004 "Helicopter" Bloc Party, Original
1979 "Hit Me with Your Best Shot" Pat Benatar, Original
2007 "I Don't Wanna Stop" Ozzy Osbourne, Original
2004 "I Am Not Your Gameboy" Freezepop, Original, Bonus song
1977 "I Know a Little" Lynyrd Skynyrd, Cover Band
1981 "Jessie's Girl" Rick Springfield, Original
1977 "Jet Airliner" Steve Miller Band, Cover Band
1989 "Knock Me Down" Red Hot Chili Peppers, Original
1973 "La Grange" ZZ Top, Cover Band
2004 "Monster" Beatsteaks, Cover Band
2007 "Monsoon" Tokio Hotel, Cover Band
1983 "Pride and Joy" Stevie Ray Vaughan, Original
1975 "Rock and Roll All Nite" Kiss, Cover Band
1985 "Rock the Night" Europe, Cover Band
1995 "Spiderwebs" No Doubt, Original
1981 "Stray Cat Strut" Stray Cats, Original
2004 "This Love" Maroon 5, Original
1984 "We're Not Gonna Take It" Twisted Sister, Original
2007 "What I Want" Daughtry featuring Slash, Original
1989 "Youth Gone Wild" Skid Row, Cover Band

I’m not going to give everything away. When you play in the single player mode, you need to work your way through 5 levels of 5 songs each. Each level has 4 songs you must complete before you can move on to the “encore” song that completes the level. As you move up, the songs get tougher. When you have completed all of the songs in all of the levels, you can then move on to the bonus track, “I am not your Gameboy”. Once a level is completed, you can then go back to any song on any of the previous levels and play whenever you want.

Play:

For those that have never played Guitar Hero in any of its versions, play is not very complex. Here is a very simple explanation of Guitar Hero play: On your screen you see the neck of a guitar. Each string of the guitar is associated with a button on your guitar, or in the case of On-Tour, each of the colored buttons on the side of the DS. When you start a song, the guitar neck starts to look like a conveyor belt. As a string is to be strum, a colored disk appears on that string and moves towards you. When it reaches the bridge you should be pressing that colored button and strumming. If the note is held for a long time, you would see a tail to the colored disk on the string and would hold down the colored button for the duration of the string. If it was just a simple note, you would see just the colored disk. The level you play (easy to expert) determines how fast the notes come at you and whether there are any chords (multiple simultaneous button presses).

Though it would seem that the way the buttons for the game are laid out, playing would be a joy. Well, it is… for a while. There is a certain amount of cramping that result from playing On-Tour for too long. So what this really means is that you might play for a while, resume your real life and then come back for more…. And you will come back for more. Even though it can get painful if you do it too long you will get hooked. It can be a lot of fun.

By the way, if you play this in the two player more, wirelessly, you can compete just like the “regular” Guitar Hero. More fun built in for the same price! A good thing for sure.

Bottom line:

If you are a Guitar Hero addict and just never have enough, the On-Tour is for you. It will allow you to keep on strumming long after you have left the guitar at home. It will have a long play time to it as long as you can get past the wrist stress. I suspect it is partially depends on the size of your hand and the length of your fingers. All of that will create different kinds of stress (or lack of it) shortening or lengthening your game play.

But you will be back; yes, you will be back for more!