Guitar Hero: On Tour (DS) Review

I was stumbling around a Future Shop in Vancouver the other day (because NCIX was closed) and lucky me, it just happened to be release day for GH:OT. Being a fan of GH-like games, I picked up a copy.

I'll admit, I was intrigued at the prospect of being able to play GH without having to lug around one of the guitar-sized controllers, or look like an idiot playing Frets on Fire with a keyboard.

The controls are an interesting adaptation: a 4-finger fret board connects through the GBA slot, and has a hand-strap to keep it steady. You strum (and whammy) by using the touch-screen. Star-power is activated by saying something into the mic (Tutorial suggests "Rock on" or something of the like), or pressing a button on the front of the DS.

The gameplay is virtually unchanged from GH1-3 - fret the notes and strum on time, or suffer the consequences of the crowd hating you. It takes a few songs to adapt to the controls, but if you've ever played GH before, the learning curve is small. Adapting from having your hands in horizontal alignment to the fret board on GH to orthogonally-aligned on the DS takes little time.

Graphics are what you would expect out of a DS. You're not going to get the shader-drowned perfect lip-syncing performers you do on the 360/PS3 versions, but it gets the point across.

Content is quite impressive for a DS game. You get 26 tracks to play with, and you can do multiplayer, but Ad-Hoc only, no Nintendo WiFi.

Only beefs are:

Unless you rest your wrist flat (be it on your lap, a desk, etc), hand cramps develop rather quickly in your DS-holding hand. I suppose they recommend taking frequent breaks for a reason.

Also, because of the controller, my DS is now out of it's carrying case, and the controller will not fit in the case's storage compartment. Looks like I might need to find a better carrying case.

In all, for $50 (or $179 bundled with a DS), it's a good value. Overall, I'd give it an 8.5/10.