Who nowadays hasn’t gotten their proverbial rock on with some guitar hero by now? Whether it was Ozzy who did it for you in the first Guitar Hero or the sweet sound of the Allman Brothers from the second, chances are you have come across this phenomenon by now. Well in the style of milking cash cows for all they’re worth, Activision gives us yet another game to wet our appetites with. Which ordinarily would be a good thing, right?
We have all heard it before so let me get it out of the way: Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80’s is a $50 expansion pack. There end of review. Oh you want more? Well this is basically a dig at their well. You get thirty songs, which is like the first game. Difference is, you don’t get anything else. 30 songs, that’s the game. Sure it has some characters to choose from, six, and some venues, six and of course lots of guitars to make your dude cool looking, but there is a severe lack of substance. This game just has no meat on it. Breaking it down, we work first on the charactors. You will find there are the classics, good ol’ Johnny, tough as nails Axel, gothic Judy, pop star Izzy, crazy hairdo Pandora, and the store bought Grim. So what is the problem with them? Well taking aside the fact that there are two missing, Winston and Xavior, the characters have a very recycled feel to them, much like the rest of the game. They haven’t really touched them up from Guitar Hero II. Aside from updating their appearance, they still look for the most part lifeless as far as facial and body expressions. While they are playing, they don’t have a guitar strap, (that bothers me to all kinds of craziness!) they have these generic rock pose cycles that they go through that look just plain lame, and they just don’t have a good sense of personality. Given the fact that you only get six characters to express your inner rock, they could have at least touched them up to handle more of the feeling.
The venues haven’t changed with the exception of, again updating appearance. Like the characters, they aren’t all present. Those who liked Stonehenge from the second will be saddened to find it painfully missing from this iteration. Though, to be fair, the track list is shorter so they couldn’t break them evenly. The grand finale is just you exploding no space ship taking you off and changing the stars. (That was a really nice touch I though!) So here again we have a nice solid feeling of recycled napkin or tissue whichever metaphor you enjoy.
That aside lets get down to why anyone in their right mind would buy this game in the first place, the songs man, the songs! These don’t leave you hanging too much. Notably the master tracks, though you may be unsure if Flock of Seagulls is something you want to experience first hand, few can argue with Judas Priest’s Electric Eye. (They even put the Hellion in too!) All in all there are about 10 to 20 songs that you would actually want to play. Does anyone know why X’s Las Angles was added in there? That song is just the worst example of tone deaf awfulness that I have ever had the misfortune to come in contact with. The technical level of the songs on the harder modes still gives that same satisfying feeling which is important. You really feel an accomplishment when you can blaze through Play With Me, or in my case stumble through without failing! The biggest problem in the game, though, is the complete lack of dueling guitars. All the songs play guitar/bass on two-player coop. We all know that Glenn and K. K. wouldn’t appreciate that on their masterpiece and I don’t appreciate it either. This is just another blatant example of how to milk a cash cow without much effort.
So what is the bottom line? I gave this game a 6 out of 10 which puts it at “Fun” on my scale. I would say that if you seriously like at least half of the songs on this game and you really don’t mind paying full price for a half-butt attempt, pick it up. If anything else it gives you just that many more ways to rock out. It is Guitar Hero and that is all that matters in the end isn't it?
6 out of 10 (3 out of 5) > "Fun"
