Guitar Hero
Developed by: Harmonix
Published by: Red Octane

Guitar Freaks V
Developed by: Beatmain Wrestmania
Published by: Konami

WARNING: My guitar lingo is bad...very bad...so no making fun of...OK? OK!

Skinny: Old and infamous Harmonix brings its unique gaming into the Guitar world and tries to take the crown as the best Guitar/Music/Rhythm based game out there, while Beatmania continues with it's DDR-esque style of gaming. Is the new comer better then the originator? Can America beat Japan in the guitar Gaming business? All this and more in the review.

It was either a big surprise or not so big when people heard that Harmonix/Red Octane would try and make another music/rhythm based game using a guitar. With their recent flop with the game Rez, such people thought it just wouldn't make sense for them to try again. However, Rez was a unique game all on it's own. The only problem was that it looked really confusing to play, so they needed a way to not make it look so confusing. And with the recent success of the Guitar Freak games, it seemed easy enough for them to do it.

EXPLANATION

In both Guitar Hero and Guitar Freak V you play the game using a toy guitar. The guitar is the key to the whole game. On the guitar there are 3 (in the case of Guitar Freak V) and 5 (in the case of Guitar Hero) colour coded buttons all aligned in a vertical row (so from top to bottom). And at the bottom of the toy guitar, where you usually strum the guitar is a strumming button. So exactly how does this all work? Well, it's actually quite simple. Muck like in DDR when colour-coded circles (or lines in the case of Guitar Freak V) make there way to the part where it tells you to press the button. You hold down said button and flick the strum button in time and you here your note being played. For example if the line/circle is red, then you hold down the red button and then wait for the right time to strum it with the strumming button (pretty easy eh?).

Both games offer songs where you use this method of rhythm based gaming to apply what the games are about. So when you press said button in time with the music, you make that sound of the guitar heard. If you miss.... well you don't hear the note. Maybe it sounds a little odd but these kinda things are better left done then said.

GRAPHICS

Both games offer something different visually. In Guitar Hero the place where you see the notes come down is in the bottom centre. You see the notes come down to a certain line where blank circles are shown. This is where it tells you when you should flick the strum button. And the rest? Well, this is where the games differ. In Guitar Hero you choose a character to be the guitarist in a band. You can choose a venue to play be it a basement some late night club an outdoors event or some really really big arena. And each venue comes either a small or large amount of fans listening. As you're playing the game you see the character along with the rest of the band playing to the music. You see the drummer drumming, the bass player bassing and the singer singing of course along with your character. When your character plays the guitar you can actually see his/her moving there fingers up and down the rift. While I haven't payed much attention to the other band members, they do seem to at least move their bodies in time with the music.

Depending on what character you use he/she will have different body movements. One may just moderately play looking like they're having a fun time while walking around to meet the other band members. While others can be.... well.... they'll be humping there guitar... (>_>). Each character has a different look and can be classified into different categories. The Glam rocker, The Old School Rocker, The Alt Rocker, The Rap Rocker etc. they do look very different (sadly none of there girls are THAT hot... but I guess that comes with the territory (HAH!)) and are all enjoyable to watch moving around the area. Not only can you choose your character, but you can also choose your guitar (ZOMG!). There are quite a variety from the V to the double guitar and even the acoustic looking one. Another surprising note is that they got the rights from the brand Gibson to use some of their guitars. So that means that your character will be play official Gibson brand guitars.

In Guitar Freak V however it certainly is a different look. They have this weird light brownish metal colour thing going on. The lines that show which note to play is going up instead of down and it's either on the left or right. In the middle of it all is a music video that's being played while the music is going on. As you can tell there isn't much going on in Guitar Freak V in terms of graphics since there isn't much to talk about.

It really is bit of a transition going to one from the other. But hands down Guitar Hero is dominant in here. They really did seem to go the extra mile then just add a pretty looking interface with some video in the background. That said you have to remember Guitar freak is made by the same people who made DDR so the look is similar to that game.

AUDIO

So now the important. Sure you play a rhythm based game using a guitar but what songs are used?

Well Phil, you'll be happy to know that Guitar Hero features over 30 songs. Songs include: I Wanna be sedated, IRON MAN, Ace of Spades, Fat Lip, Take it Off, Cochise, Killer Queen, Smoke on Water, No One Knows, Cowboys from Hell, Sharped Dress Man, Bark at the Moon, You've Got Another Thing Coming, GODZILLA and more.

If you're reading though the list and saying "The hell what are these songs?" then well you don't like old music do you? Yes most of these are old time songs but... I mean.... Freakin' Godzilla is on it (and no, not that Puff Daddy one). This seems to be the draw back in Guitar Hero (but not the only) is that most of these are old songs and kids nowadays won't exactly be feeling it.... (Looks at Jude). While yes there is Fat Lip and Cochise there aren't that many "recent" songs for the kids.

One of the huge draw backs, and I mean HUGE, is the fact that all these songs are Karaoke'd. Meaning that though the songs were allowed to be played, the artist did not perform them.... at ALL. Musically you don't really notice a difference (unless you're THAT hardcore) but vocally is where it all goes down the pipe. For one song such as Fat Lip it just sounds like 16 year old emo kids trying to sing... and it's just done bad. Though again if you never really heard of these songs.... then it doesn't really matter now does it?

Here I am going on about Guitar Hero when Guitar Freak V isn't even mentioned. So... what songs are featured on Guitar Freak V you asked? Hell if I know. This is a port game and its origins are from Japan so most of these names are written in Katakana or Hiragana and I have enough trouble remembering how to say "you don't have to pay". And don't forget Kanji..... that's like.... ugh sweet Jesus. ANYWAYS you'll be happy to know that there are some songs that are English. One is a screamo fest and the other is a well known song by the famous band Vanilla Ninja and the song is from the hit movie MotorCross.... remember it?

The songs in Guitar freak are well.... interesting. They have a few well known bands from Japan and the others..... well they're DDR-esque. A lot of fast paced techno sounding songs that make you wonder..... "do you really play these songs with a guitar?". But that doesn't take away that most of these songs are fun to listen to.... if you're like one of those Japanese music lovers... well .... maybe.

The songs in both games are very different. While Hero is considered to have a more Rock sound to it, Freak V is that and some popish songs. So really it comes down to your taste in music. Like classic rock? Don't really care for Japanese music? Then Guitar Hero is for you. And well.... if you're fan of the DDR music then Guitar Freak V is more for you. That being said both have enjoyable music.

One surprising feature that was in Freak was that if you miss the note by half a second you'll hear the note being played but it's out of tune. So it sounds really bad that only seems to be at certain points and during the rest if you make a mistake.... well the music goes on. While in Guitar Hero if you miss the note by half a second then it'll just have a weird scratchy sound telling you you're WRONG. In Hero's favour, though, is that when you actually miss a note you hear the guitar stop playing until you get back on track. So when you make mistakes for a long time then all you'll here is the Bass, Drums and Vocals.

Guitar Hero's audio seems to stand out more during the in game play. Why? Because they put more of an emphasis on the guitar. So while you're playing the guitar will be louder than anything else being heard. Which is a nice thing so you can hear exactly what you're playing. And in Freak, well.... it does seem to have its moments when you hear the guitar more then anything. BUT most of the time the rest of the music will be louder then what you're playing. In fact it only really seems like when it's time for the Guitar solo to be played is when you actually hear yourself playing the game.

GAMEPLAY

At its core both games are very much alike. Try to hit the note in time with the music, the more notes you hit in sequence the more points you get, miss too many points then it's game over.

The real difference is how each song is played. In Hero you get 5 buttons to press instead of 3, making it more challenging since you have move your fingers down the neck of the guitar and back up. It's a nice feature and does allow more flexibility when the game gets hard and it makes more sense to start on the third button then go back up to the first when the note sounds lower. Also in Hero they offer 3 other things.

1. Is the "Star Power Mode" where you have to tilt the guitar up till you see a flash and all the notes become light blue. You see your character do a crazy animation (like spinning the guitar over his head or making the guitar move around their body using.... the force?) and the fans clapping to the beat. While in star power mode the points you get are doubled and when you're playing on a harder mode and having a tough time using this will bring you back to the top of the props (wasn't there a show called top of the props?). This leads to more points and better scores.

2. The Whammy bar feature: During some songs you'll experience a note that has to be held down for a certain length of time. You see a line after the note that tells you to hold the note for a said duration. During this the Whammy Bar (which is to the right of the Guitar) can be used. Moving the bar up and down will result in the note going all distorted. I don't know name of what it's called (maybe Phil or Derek can help me out?), but it goes like: "wwwwoooooooOOOOOOooowww" notice the bigger O's stand for the part where the whammy bar is used. Not only does it sound more fun but you can also hold it down to keep the sound as "OOO" and the further down you hold it the more distorted it gets. *PHIL'S NOTE: The whammy bar on a real guitar lowers or raises the pitch of a note depending on whether you push it down or pull it up. Done quickly up and down, it creates a wavy sound!

3. Hammer-ons and Pull-offs: Much like a real guitar you won't have to strum a note if it's below the other note (Which is called a Hammer on). Or if you're holding all notes down strum once and let go from bottom to top you hear all notes that were held down (known as a pull off). I know these explanations are half assed but I don't really know how to word it. Doing it does take some practice and for the much harder songs this needs to be done. (Phil I don't know how you do it). *PHIL'S NOTE: It's basically hitting or releasing buttons (or frets on a real guitar) while only strumming/picking once and letting the sound ring out. Normally done on a single string on a real guitar.

Also, Guitar Hero has a two player mode but it's quite odd and different. When playing 2-player you're both playing the guitar. Meaning that one part may be 1st player while another part is 2nd or both. It is actually interesting but it really does take away from the experience of competition when your friend nails a guitar solo and all you get are some minor notes. Also you can only choose one difficulty. So if you're playing with a complete noob and you're extreme hardcore then playing beginning won't be as fun for the hardcore extreme person.

Then in Freak V you only have 3 buttons to press. So the difficulty isn't so much in going from one note to another, but in seeing how fast you can press the notes. And when they come, it's fast and furious. One of the songs called Last 1000 seconds is like..... unbelievably hard to play since everything is so damn fast. This game also features a wailing button but it's not as nice since all you have to do is press the wailing button and that will make that note go longer. There isn't really much of a challenge for that and I guess you get extra points. Freak also has a 2-player mode and it's better then Hero's (surprisingly). It's pretty much just like one player but with another person so I don't have to do much explaining. Freak didn't do anything special or different in this department which was a good thing.

Probably one of the better points about Freak V is the customization you get when playing. You can choose the speed, whether it be x5 or x10 and also having the ability to not show the lines that tell you when to strum. I haven't exactly played with these features but the customization is unbelievable. So when you're done mastering the game on the default settings you can go ahead and make it even harder.

Both games can also be played on not just the guitar, but also on the controller. Hero pretty much uses the same method as previous Harmonix games where all the buttons you have to press are the shoulder buttons... except for the fifth.... you have to press X for that. The whammy bar is the left analog stick except that it doesn't work quite as well as the actual whammy bar, and star power is used by pressing the select button. The only real problem with this (or maybe not) is that there isn't a strumming button. So if you're unaware of the configuration you can't press one of the buttons to see which colour it represents or else you screw up.

In Freak V however it does feature the strumming button. Unfortunately... it doesn't work quite well (or maybe it's just me). There are 3 separate configuration buttons for the game and all use the strumming button. So the problem basically is the strumming button. At times it is hard to forget to strum since you have to press the buttons which could be on the left side of the controller or on the opposite. It's actually fine for the easier modes but once you want to play the harder songs it really is nearly impossible to play them.

Both games also feature unlockable songs and such which is a good thing. I'm not sure about Freak but in Hero you can unlock other guitars, characters and some behind the scenes stuff as well. Freak doesn't offer visual guitars or characters so that's unfair for me to say but there is more unlockable stuff in Hero than Freak.

Surprisingly the winner of the gameplay department is.... Guitar Hero.

OVERALL

Maybe you're a Guitar Freak fan and you know a lot more about it than I do and you're saying I have a biased opinion. Well, that's probably true but there really is no comparison between the two. Guitar Hero is much more of a polished product than what Guitar Freak V seems to be. So which game is better? Guitar Hero by far.

However, Guitar Freak V is just that... number five of the series. So maybe it was good when it first came out but now coming into it's fifth iteration it has shown no improvement over the others and is starting to show its age. Hopefully Guitar Hero will show improvement over its future iterations and won't suffer the same things Guitar Freak has. Though it is hard to think of what else to build on other than more songs.