Guitar Hero is a series of music games that lets the player simulate being a rockstar. Yeah, it's that sad, really. What's even sadder is that the games are shockingly addictive and really fun. There have been 5 main titles in the series: Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero II, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, Guitar Hero: World Tour, and Guitar Hero 5 (released in September '09).
There has also been a series of neglected, half-retarded spinoffs of the core Guitar Hero games. These are Guitar Hero Rocks the 80s, Guitar Hero: Band (Aerosmith, Metallica, and Van Halen so far), Guitar Hero Smash Hits, Band Hero, DJ Hero (which doesn't feature a guitar at all) and the oxymoron of a game Guitar Hero: On Tour.
Before the development of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, Harmonix (the game's developer) and RedOctane (the controller manufacturer) were bought by rival companies, officially giving Activision full control of the brand, so Harmonix had to make another game. First revolutionizing gaming with the first Guitar Hero, Harmonix then released Rock Band, the first game to feature an entire simulated band. Soon after, Guitar Hero: World Tour was released in a move nobody thought was copying or playing catch-up.
Driving has been simulated with the plethora of driving games, conversations have been simulated with phones and texting, sex has been simulating through the terrifying world of "cyber-sex", evolution has been simulated with Spore and now, talent has been simulated with the Guitar Hero games.
We guess it's only a matter of time until Shit Blaster comes out and you have to simulate bowel movements by syncing up button presses to when a giant lump of crap hits the bottom of the on-screen toilet.
Guess what the controller is
To play the Guitar Hero games, you have to understand its interface. Basically, there is a set of 5 switches at the bottom of the screen, and when the colored buttons hit the center of the switch, that's when you hit the button of the same color on the control while moving the strum bar. Fuck, that sounds complicated, but once you play the game a couple of times, it's just like riding a bike: it's frustratingly difficult and you'll end up yelling at your television like how Glenn Beck communicates with his family. After that, playing Guitar Hero becomes more like a one-night stand: fun for a while but nothing to stay comitted to.
Unless you're like this guy:
Yeah, he actually hacked Guitar Hero 2 and custom chose The Fucking Final Countdown so he could spend hours mastering it and then upload it to YouTube.
WARNING: Guitar Hero does not normally have effects of such dorkitude.
The basic interface can be summed up like this:
Yes, you can reach the orange button. Everyone can.
Which brings us to our next point. In 2008, Activision relesaed Guitar Hero: On Tour for the DS. It featured a peripheral known as the "Guitar Grip" with four colored buttons to be played with. THERE IS NO ACTUAL GUITAR CONTROLLER. Yes, because the game is handheld, there is no actual guitar controller to play the game with. Hey, remember how the whole point of Guitar Hero was to pretend like you were playing a guitar?
Activision sure doesn't!
We here at Cracked please ask all readers not to fucking complain over how hard this song is or gloat how you got 98% on Expert mode. Nobody gives a shit. Every video game has a hard level, but no single level has reached the amount of fandom and analysis as Dragonforce's Through the Fire and Flames.
So to those of you who allocate all your free time to perfect your fake performance of a power-metal song with a plastic guitar, Dragonforce guitarist Herman Li has a message for you.
You guys do know that saying "fire and flames" is horribly redundant, right?
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Cracked Talk on | Guitar Hero
Guitar Hero has never claimed to be a substitute for real guitar training. Anyone who thinks it is needs a reality check; playing a real guitar is worlds more complicated than five buttons and a chart telling you when to hit them. GH is classified as a rhythm game, and it is actually helpful in that respect. I play both piano (professionally), real guitar (amateurly), and GH and found that a few good years of playing GH has actually helped my PIANO playing. This is because all of the fast fretting on Expert mode (which does get extremely difficult at times) has made my left hand more agile, which has been great for me being a righty. I noticed this a couple of months ago when I was practicing a Mozart sonata and found that I was having an easier time reading the fast runs in the left hand than in the right, and the right hand is supposed to be the quicker one. So, GH will probably not get you much closer to playing a real guitar, but it can teach you rhythm and it can help your musicianship in other ways.
I don't usually read comments but this captivating essay you wrote just happened to catch my attention. Activision and Harmonix owe you their praise and thanks for defending them against a Cracked writer making harmless humorous remarks about their fantastic game. I'm so glad the "fast fretting expert mode" has helped you in your (professional) piano playing,and its good to see that guitar hero can help people with their rhythm. Probably a lot more than say, I don't know, A FUCKING METRONOME?
A metronome is used to keep tempo, it doesn't have anything to do with rhythm. Seeing as how he plays piano professionally I doubt that he needs help keeping time.
I'm pretty sure though that if you win the European Champions League on Fifa 2010 with an obscure Czech Republic soccer team a real life Czech Republic team will make you their manager.
Don't get me wrong, despite being terrible at most of GH, I still enjoy it. But my problem with it comes from people taking completing a song massively out of proportion.
For example: If I did a perfect match on CoD, with loads of kills and no deaths, i'd be pleased. I'd bragged about it to some of my friends the next day, and probably mention it the next time I played that level with someone.
I would not, however (as some of my friends do with GH) talk about it everytime the game is mentioned, and imply that I have wasted my life by not being as good at the game as them.