Appy Shreddin’ Monday!  I’m not sure what it is that draws me to music genre games.  I can’t tell you much about songs or artists for the last decade or two, and I have the manual dexterity of a rhino (animal and/or record exec).  But I keep playing them anyway.  Since APPraisal has already tackled Rock Band, it’s only fitting to give Guitar Hero a spin.

Premise

If you’ve played rhythm games, you essentially know how to play Guitar Hero.  Notes cascade down a runway, which you need to strike at just the right moment.  As you do so without error, you increase a point multiplier.  Along the way you can collect stars, which accumulate to allow you to activate Star Power for brief periods to double your multiplier.  You can play regular guitar and bass guitar for each song.

The game includes achievements, as well as a ranking system that allows you to unlock accessories and costumes for your character.

Presentation

The game looks similar in nature to other Guitar Hero titles.  The runway area is well defined and the colors are bright and distinctive.  The Star Power mode was a little too bright and washed out though, making it harder than it should have been to see the notes coming down.

The music is not the highest quality but it always sufficed.

As happened with the Rock Band app, I did experience occasional stuttering during gameplay on my 3rd gen iPod Touch.  It didn’t happen with any regularity, but it did happen.

Interface

The game mechanic of hitting the appropriate note as it crosses a note bar is recognizable to anyone familiar with the music genre.  There are also a few mechanics specific to the touch screen, such as sliding from note to note without needing to tap (show in the screenshot above) and “strumming” one direction or the other (shown below).  Miss a note and your multiplier resets.  Collect enough stars and you can activate Star Power (shown below) by tapping a bar that appears above the note bar.

I wasn’t crazy about the design choices in Guitar Hero.  Unlike Rock Band, you actually tap the note bar itself as notes cross it.  I found it hard to get a rhythm going because my thumbs cover up the bar and I’m tapping.  I much prefer to see it.  In fact I’d often miss notes because my fingers would drift down off the bar in a subconscious attempt to see the notes as they cross the bar.  I know, the mechanic is similar in the Tap Tap games, but there you only have three buttons not four, the target ares seem bigger.  Some people think Guitar Hero is less finicky about where you tap than Rock Band when your fingers stray a bit, but I seemed to have more trouble with Guitar Hero.  Also, I don’t like the way you activate Star Power by pressing the bar that appears above the not bar.  You essentially had to wait for an open time in the note cascade to do this effectively.  A tilt function ala Rock Band works better.

Freshness

The game is less forgiving that I expected.  It was not unusual to hit 97% of the notes correctly and still only score 4 out of 5 stars on a song.  I know, when you miss notes greatly affects your score, but I was surprised that missing just a couple of notes would cause you to miss a 5 star level.  The game does recognize perfect playthroughs with a different look to the 5 stars achieved, which is nice.

There is no online multiplayer in Guitar Hero, which was also a surprise.  You can tweet or Facebook achievements and such, but there is no head-to-head or cooperative play.  The dressing room and photo booth features to jazz up and take screenies of your character work well.

Value

The game is definitely priced as a platform for purchasing and downloading additional songs.  It comes with 6 songs for $2.99, and I purchased a Queen song pack for $1.99 that added 3 more.  In that respect it’s not much different from a trial game where they hope to get you hooked into buying more.

In my case, there are very few additional songs that I’m interested it.  Minus the Bear, Band of Skulls, The Dillinger Escape Plan and the like don’t do much for me.  Overall I think I got my money’s worth, and it’s worth getting if you are into this genre of game, but I feel like there are a few design decisions that hold it back from being a great app.

Summary

Premise:  Great
Presentation:  Good
Interface:  Mediocre
Freshness:  Average
Value:  Above Average
Overall:  Good app