| Re: Guitar Rock Tour
Well sorry for the late review but I finally have this game now. It seems that the release was delayed a bit as I've seen it in quite a few shops recently. This is very similar to the two GH games on the DS as you'd expect, only this time you can play drums too and there is a different control method. You can finally do away with that really uncomfortable/unwieldy GH Guitar Grip contraption as GRT just uses the touchscreen and a few buttons. Instead of having the DS turned side-on, you just have it facing in the normal front-on direction. The bottom screen is used to play all the notes and the top shows the band playing and the various cutscenes/tutorial scenes. When playing guitar you have 6 coloured buttons along the bottom to represent each of the guitars 6 strings and the usual conveyor belt down which the coloured dots stream. You simply tap on the corresponding coloured button when the appropriate note passes over it, this takes a couple of go's to get used to I found as I was used to the slight delay that I was accustomed to in GH, plus you tended to hold down the fret button before it passed over the actual on-screen button as you anticipated it (sorry that doesn't sound very clear). You play chords by sliding/dragging the stylus in a line over two/three etc buttons at the same time as the notes pass over them. To activate star power, or in this case the "superstar effect", you just press either the A button or the right d-pad button (depending on which hand you are using for the stylus). You can also trigger another effect called the Pyro which allows you to clear all the notes on the screen momentarily should you get to a particularly frenetic section with lots of notes etc. I have to say I think the touchscreen controls are much easier than using the normal guitar grip of the GH franchise. You can easily glide between notes and once you get used to the timing and remember to not actually press them until the note is actually lined up with the button (as oppose to GH where you press it just before it reaches the coloured buttons on the screen), then you'll find it a real breeze. I should tell you at this point that I have only been playing the game on easy mode at the moment so I'm sure it will become more challenging on medium and hard modes.
For drumming you are faced with a slightly different graphical interface. On the bottom screen you have a blue drum on the left - I'm guessing this is the Tom?? (bare with me as I know nothing about drums), on the right is the red drum - this is the kick/bass drum (woohoo I know one!), above these at the top on either side are the yellow cymbals/snares. In between all the drums is the conveyor belt and at the bottom of the track is a blue button and red button to correspond with the two main drums at either side of it (I could really do with pictures at this point or some sort of Powerpoint presentation, lol). Anyway, you have various options to play each of the drum's parts/notes, you can either touch each of the drums themselves or for the blue notes you can press either any button on the d-pad or press the L button. Smilarly for the red drum you can press either the X, Y, A, B or R buttons. To trigger the snares/yellow notes you can either touch them on the screen or press both the L and R buttons together or a combination of any direction on the d-pad along with any of the X, Y, A and B buttons at the same time. It's that simple, lol!
Onto the main game types, you can have multiplayer (although I haven't tried this), career mode or quickplay mode. In career mode you are part of a band that is trying to rise up the ranks and gain fame and fortune by touring the world playing various gigs. You can choose which character you want to be and your band name by signing a contract using the stylus on the screen, so practice that autograph of yours! The selections of songs on offer is varied and very good I thought, something for everyone however you may end up repeating the same songs as you change gig location which is a bit annoying, although I suppose it's another chance to try and get a 100%. The story's cutscenes at the completion of a particular event are quite funny and not very long and just simply require you to read some short text and look at an accompanying picture.
Overall I would have to say that this is a great game and is possibly better than GH simply because it's easier to play it and won't result in severe cramp or you accidentally knocking out the guitar grip cartridge as you try to hold on to it for dear life like in GH. It could do with a few more songs but seeing as you get to play drums and guitar I don't think that's too bad. I would give this game 9/10 and recommend to everyone, fans and non-fans of GH alike as I think it is a lot more accessable for people to play it.
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