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Guitar Hero (video game)

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Guitar Hero
Developer(s)Harmonix Music Systems
Publisher(s)RedOctane
Designer(s)Harmonix Music Systems
Platform(s)PlayStation 2
ReleaseNA November 8, 2005
EUR April 7, 2006
AUS June 15, 2006
JPN TBA
Genre(s)Music video game
Mode(s)Single player, multiplayer

Guitar Hero is a music video game developed by Harmonix Music Systems and published by RedOctane for the PlayStation 2 video game console. It features a guitar-shaped peripheral (resembling a miniature Gibson SG) as the primary controller to simulate the playing of an electric guitar. Guitar Hero was released on November 8, 2005 in North America, April 7, 2006 in Europe and June 15, 2006 in Australia.

Although it is similar to Konami's Guitar Freaks, Guitar Hero's gameplay and look are somewhat different. Guitar Hero has won many awards from major video game publications and its success spawned the 2006 sequel, Guitar Hero II for both the PlayStation 2 and the Xbox 360.

Gameplay

Guitar controller

The mini Gibson SG guitar controller, an approximately 3/4 scale reproduction of the actual guitar

Guitar Hero is played using the included Mini Gibson SG controller, although a standard PlayStation 2 DualShock controller may be substituted. RedOctane and Guitar Mania have also released wireless versions of the guitar controller. In addition to the standard start and select buttons, the guitar controller has five colored "fret buttons" on its neck (green, red, yellow, blue, and orange in descending order), a "strum bar," and a whammy bar. Each song is presented on a set of five columns that scroll constantly towards the player. The five columns correspond to the five fret buttons and appropriately colored notes appear in these columns. Left-handed players can play the guitar upside down and choose the "Lefty-Flip" option, which will mirror the notes appropriately. To play a note, the player must hold the correct fret button and press the strum bar. If the player misses a note by strumming early or late or not at all, a three-stage "Rock Meter" will decrease. The Rock Meter is an indication of how well the player is performing and the crowd's general opinion of the set. The meter's stages are colored red, yellow, and green, in order of ascending success. If the meter goes too far into the red, it will begin to blink red as a means of warning. If the meter is totally depleted, the player will fail the song. The meter can be restored little by little by playing notes correctly.

There are several variations on this concept. Long notes require an initial strum followed by a continued depression of the fret button as long as the note lasts. Chords involve pressing two fret buttons at a time. Additionally, Guitar Hero supports common guitar concepts such as the hammer-on and the pull-off.

An additional feature is Star Power. Star Power is activated by tilting the guitar controller upward, or by pressing the select button. Star Power is accumulated from either successfully playing sequences of special Star Notes or using the whammy bar on long Star Notes. Playing a Star Note sequence correctly will reward the player with a 25% Star Power bonus. If even one note is missed in these sequences, the remaining notes in the sequence will revert to regular notes and the player will not get a Star Power bonus. If a Star Note is a long note, the player can use the whammy bar to extract Star Power from it. However, the player must constantly move the bar to get a bonus, and cannot simply hold it down. The primary use of Star Power is to temporarily double the points each note is worth, but because it restores roughly triple the normal amount recovered on the Rock Meter with each correctly played note during its duration, it can also be used to tackle especially difficult sections of a song to avoid failure, giving Star Power a unique strategic element. In addition to the aforementioned, Star Power temporarily turns all notes on the screen a shining blue for its duration.

Modes

To play a note, the fret button and strum bar must be pressed when the solid note scrolls through the corresponding ring at the bottom.

Guitar Hero has four difficulty modes: Easy, Medium, Hard, and Expert. In easy mode, only the first three fret buttons (green, red, yellow) are used. Medium introduces the blue fret button and hard modes introduce the orange button. Furthermore, higher difficulty levels introduce a faster scroll and more notes to hit. Expert mode does not introduce any new buttons, but the difficulty and speed of the songs is increased substantially to the point where the player is playing every note in the song, albeit with five buttons. The song list is designed to have an easy learning curve for beginners but also challenge skilled players, as the songs generally get harder as the game progresses.

The game has three modes of play: Career mode, Quick Play, and Multiplayer.

In Career mode, the player chooses a difficulty level and unlocks the next set of five songs (see Soundtrack) by completing either four to five songs in the current set, depending on difficulty level. Reaching these sets on any difficulty unlocks them in quick play mode. As career mode continues, new venues are unlocked and the player receives in-game cash to purchase bonus content (characters, behind-the-scenes videos, guitars, etc).

Quick Play allows the player to arbitrarily select songs to play that they have unlocked or purchased in career mode. A list of high scores is kept for each song. The four levels of Career mode and of Quick Play each have their own separate high score lists. Players cannot pick a character, guitar, or venue to play at.

Multiplayer is split-screen. In a "dueling guitars" fashion, two players tackle segments of the selected song. Unlike other modes, it is not possible to fail a song in multiplayer, but scoring dictates that one player will generally win.

Soundtrack

The game features 47 playable songs; 30 of these tracks are covers of the originals. Additionally, there are 17 bonus songs that can be unlocked at the Unlock Shop. One of them is Black Label Society's "Fire it Up", and the remaining 16 are indie songs. Many of these groups feature members of the Harmonix development team, while some are indie Boston area groups. Drist's guitarist, Marcus Henderson, provided lead guitar on 20 of the game's 30 cover tracks.

All cover tracks are credited on screen with the phrase "as made famous by" (e.g. "I Wanna Be Sedated, as made famous by The Ramones").

Main setlist

1. Opening Licks

2. Axe-Grinders

3. Thrash And Burn

4. Return of the Shred

5. Fret-Burners

6. Face-Melters

Bonus tracks

Unused Songs

These can only be unlocked through the use of a PlayStation 2 cheat device, such as GameShark, CodeBreaker or Action Replay.

  • "Trippolette" is also known as "Adv Harmony" by Andrew Buch. [1].
  • "Graveyard Shift", which is performed by Windtunnel Syndrome. [2].

Scoring

50 points are rewarded for every note hit. Chords count as two notes. Each time that 10 consecutive notes are successfully played, the point multiplier increases by one and the points each note is worth is multiplied by that number, up to a maximum four times the base amount — for example, after 10 consecutive notes are played, a single note is 100 (x2) points, a chord is 200 (x2) points. If a note is missed, any active multipliers reset back to x1. Star Power allows the player to temporarily double the score on every note, effectively turning a x4 multiplier into a x8 for its duration.

The final score, along with overall accuracy percentage and longest note streak, are reported at the end of a song. It is not uncommon for a song to contain 400-600 notes or more. More complicated songs on Hard or Expert difficulty can contain 1000-2000 notes. A rating of 3, 4, or 5 stars will also be displayed. The number of stars is based on the player's score in that song.

Characters

There are eight playable characters in Guitar Hero, six of them being available from the beginning of the game. Though the characters never speak, their personalities come through their design and playing style. Their biographies are hinted at throughout Guitar Hero, with brief character descriptions in the game's manual booklet and character select screen.

  • Axel Steel
  • Clive Winston
  • Judy Nails
  • Johnny Napalm
  • Pandora
  • Xavier Stone

There are also two extra characters that can only be unlocked in Career Mode through the Unlock Shop. They are as follows:

  • Izzy Sparks
  • Grim Ripper

Sequels

Main article: Guitar Hero II

Released on November 7, 2006, Guitar Hero II includes 64 songs (40 of them being licensed, 24 being independent or bonus tracks). The game also introduced a practice mode, as well as a new multiplayer co-op mode that will let players collaborate by playing lead, rhythm, or bass guitar parts together.

It was confirmed by GameSpot that Guitar Hero II would be ported to "all significant consoles" in 2007. Speculation is that enhanced Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions will be released simultaneously with a separate Wii release. [1]

On September 27, 2006, at Microsoft's X06 Event in Barcelona, Spain, developer RedOctane officially announced an Xbox 360 version of Guitar Hero II that will feature exclusive downloadable content, as well as an exclusive guitar controller, a replica of the Gibson Explorer.

A reported third installment in the series, entitled Guitar Hero: 1980s Edition for the PlayStation 2 will be released in spring 2007.[2]

Neversoft appears to be the lead developer for the next sequel, but no current estimated release date is known.[3]

Activision has also trademarked "Guitar Villain" and "Drum Villain" which may be evil form of Guitar Hero.

Awards

Guitar Hero has won numerous awards.

  • Game Developers Choice Awards [8]
    • Excellence in Audio
    • Excellence in Game Innovation
  • IGN's Best of 2005
    • Best Music Game [9]
    • Best PlayStation 2 Music Game [10]
    • Best Licensed Soundtrack[11]
    • Best Licensed Soundtrack for PlayStation 2 [12]
    • Best Offline Multiplayer Game [13]
    • Best PlayStation 2 Offline Multiplayer Game [14]
    • Best Gaming Peripheral (for the Mini Gibson SG controller) [15]

Trivia

  • The song "Spanish Castle Magic" was recorded with vocals, though they are not present in the final game. The song can be sampled with vocals intact at the official Guitar Hero website. Why the vocals were removed from the song has not been disclosed.
  • While waiting for a song to load, a loading screen is presented with an image of an amplifier. The amp has three volume knobs, each of which turn to 11. This is a reference to the 1984 "rockumentary" This is Spinal Tap, in which an amplifier is discussed for its apparent ability to go to 11 rather than simply 10. Furthermore, one of the random loading screens displays the reference 'Eleven IS louder than ten'. Subsequently, the song "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight" by the fictional metal band was featured in Guitar Hero II.
  • Though many of the loading screens give the player brief playing tips and hints, many of them are also jokes about rock'n'roll culture. One of the screens reads: "They don't really want you to play Free Bird, they're just heckling you." This is a reference to the Lynyrd Skynyrd song "Free Bird" and its frequent request at concerts. Ironically, "Free Bird" would indeed become a playable song in Guitar Hero II.
  • Watching the credits in their entirety rewards the viewer with a number of messages, one of them asking the player if they've started playing a real guitar yet. A similar suggestion can be found for attaining Guitar God status on any of the difficulty settings in career mode.
  • After completing all songs on the expert difficulty, the player receives the "Battle Axe" guitar. At the Guitar Select Screen, the info box next to the Battle Axe states "Judge this race not by its remains". This is very similar to one of the lines in Genesis' "Watcher of the Skies" which states "Judge not this race by empty remains".
  • At the song select screen, if you scroll to the bottom, there is a graphic with the letters PMRC crossed out. This is a reference to the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC).
  • At the character select screen, when the Grim Reaper character is highlighted, the info box on the right side of the screen states, "Do not fear the Reaper," an obvious allusion to the Blue Öyster Cult song, "(Don't Fear) The Reaper".
  • The unlockable bonus track "Guitar Hero" is played by Monkey Steals The Peach, a fictional band comprised of rotating members of the Harmonix art team including Mike "Swid" Swidereck (Level Artist and Bassist), Ryan Lesser (Art Director and Guitarist), Daniel Sussman (Producer and Guitarist), and Jason Kendall (Art Associate Producer and Singer).

References

  1. ^ "Gamespot: Guitar Hero going multiplatform".
  2. ^ New EGM reveals Guitar Hero: 1980s Edition (PS2)
  3. ^ GameDaily - Breaking: Guitar Hero Development Goes to Neversoft
  4. ^ http://www.interactive.org/awards.php?winners&year=2006
  5. ^ http://www.gamespot.com/pages/features/bestof2005/index.php?day=4&page=7
  6. ^ http://www.gamespot.com/pages/features/bestof2005/index.php?day=2&page=21
  7. ^ http://www.gamespot.com/pages/features/bestof2005/index.php?day=7&page=7
  8. ^ http://www.gamechoiceawards.com/archive/gdca_6th.htm
  9. ^ http://bestof.ign.com/2005/overall/6.html
  10. ^ http://bestof.ign.com/2005/ps2/6.html
  11. ^ http://bestof.ign.com/2005/overall/16.html
  12. ^ http://bestof.ign.com/2005/ps2/14.html
  13. ^ http://bestof.ign.com/2005/overall/20.html
  14. ^ http://bestof.ign.com/2005/ps2/18.html
  15. ^ http://bestof.ign.com/2005/gear/3.html

See also

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