When Guitar Hero: Aerosmith came out, publisher Activision announced one more game was on the horizon for the franchise before we got the release of Guitar Hero: World Tour; in this case, a handheld version for the Nintendo DS titled Guitar Hero: On Tour. Some don't consider the handheld Guitar Hero games as part of the mainstream canon, with it at best serving as a spin-off that many have forgotten; it is one that spawned three games in a single year period, which alone is a breakneck pace that borders on uncomfortable.
Yet, there are some innovations in Guitar Hero: On Tour worth talking about, while also serving as a reminder of the excesses of Activision's strategy with the Guitar Hero franchise. If the goal was to release one mainline game and one side game a year, Activision, seeing the success of Guitar Hero 3 and the continued rise of Rock Band as a franchise rival, kicked into overdrive production of multiple Guitar Hero games by mid 2008. On Tour was the first one to be released, an exclusive title for the DS handheld that is probably more memorable for its tech than anything else, and arguably a sign of the over-saturation of the rhythm game market that really peaked in 2009.
On Tour is a hard game to review because it is easy to respect what it does; Activision would have developer Vicarious Visions spearhead a handheld version of Guitar Hero that would "feel" like a Guitar Hero game in all aspects. To say the least, it was a challenge, with Vicarious Visions going through six months of prototyping ideas before finding one that worked well on the handheld. Some rejected ideas included a mini-guitar plug-in, dubbed the "ukelele" internally, to just have the whole game played with the touch screen and stylus. The result was a plug-in accessory that works and is frankly impressive in terms of tech and innovation.
What On Tour boasts is a hand-grip fretboard with four buttons. Players would hold one side of the DS where the Game Boy Advance slot would be plugged in. Players then strap the board to their hand with a strap, allowing them to grip the board and press down on the fret buttons. For strumming, the stylus would be used to strum a virtual guitar on the touch screen. From there, you simply strum the guitar while pressing the colored fret on the charts like any Guitar Hero game.
This is an innovative peripheral, one that actually mimics the Guitar Hero design ethos without losing much of the feel of it in-hand. True, you only have four notes instead of five for On Tour, but that sacrifice allows for ease of grip that, while not super comfortable, makes the game actually playable and responsive. There are some faults to the peripheral, though; if you strike it too hard, it may pop out of the GBA slot from too much movement or wear and tear, which obviously is an issue. Another problem is how tight the fret buttons are on the peripheral. Your fingers won't have much wiggle room to strike notes, so this leads to extended play sessions being difficult. The game does warn players to change their hand position if the cramps do happen, which is good foresight but also says that, despite the innovations in making this work on a handheld, it still has some limitations.
Ironically, the biggest limitation is the strumming. Since it is a DS title, strumming by utilizing the stylus lacks any feedback for the player since it relies on the touch screen. Without that needed feedback, you may be off timing with your note hits, especially for harder songs. This can make some songs feel almost impossible to 100%. Hammer-ons and pull-offs are present and work well, but are also mostly simplified, with only a few hard exceptions towards the game's end.
It should be noted that Vicarious Visions was primarily a handheld developer, working on ports of several big titles for Activision, so tasking them with porting Guitar Hero to handheld makes business sense. In terms of charting music, however, Vicarious Visions pales in comparison to Harmonix and Neversoft. If you recall, Neversoft received some criticism for making some of the songs too hard in Guitar Hero 3, so for a first outing, Vicarious Visions has the same problem, with a select few songs being almost impossible to get through. The biggest dagger is Ozzy Osbourne's "I Don't Wanna Stop", which is frankly so hard with a note wall of hammer-ons and pull-offs that it just feels wrong that it's on the DS system.
Vicarious Visions also has the problem that the majority of the songs are too easy. This may be a blessing, considering it is on handheld hardware, but for 90% of the game, On Tour's only challenge will be the player making minor mistakes with strumming or button combos that on any given Guitar Hero game would be a cinch to hit. Vicarious Visions utilized the DS features to make the game work, and to their credit, there is some fun there. On Tour does feature a battle challenge mode, where players must survive things like lefty flips, drawing with the stylus, or even using the DS microphone to activate star power. It's not perfect and ramps up difficulty to the point of being a chore, but the ideas are there.
If there is any positive to make out of On Tour, it is that Vicarious Visions mimicked Guitar Hero's feel perfectly for a handheld console. Animations for the handheld are a bit chunky but fluid enough; you have characters, guitars, and even a bonus song to unlock, and ultimately, it gives the feel of a Guitar Hero game, even if playing it like one is very hit and miss. The real issue with On Tour is perhaps its biggest Achilles' heel: its song setlist.
To be clear, the songs all sound great on the DS. Even with slightly truncated sound, you can hear every beat of every guitar strum across the board. You also had a few covers in On Tour that were sneaked by, which don't feel out of place and are quite good. The biggest flaw is that the setlist is mostly on the weaker side and is also a bit recycled, including songs from previous Guitar Hero games.
On Tour has 26 songs, including five bonus songs after the game is beaten, with a lot of pop rock being represented over other genres. This is not inherently a bad thing; in fact, we get some interesting song choices that would never be featured in a mainstream Guitar Hero game, like Smash Mouth's "All Star", Maroon 5's "This Love" and Daughtry with guitarist Slash doing a version of "What I Want." Some more traditional rock and roll songs come in from choices by The Doobie Brothers, the Stray Cats, and Bloc Party, so there is some variety in there.
Arguably the best song in the game is "Pride and Joy" by Stevie Ray Vaughan, but it is the same cover version that was in Guitar Hero 3. Six songs from Guitar Hero 3 and three from Rock Band appear in the setlist. What's more, several songs would be released in full form as DLC or as part of the main setlist for future Guitar Hero games, which limits the exclusivity to the more pop-rock hits previously mentioned. One unique feature was that several non-English-speaking European markets had six different songs, replacing a few of the tracks for the North American and English release, but that doesn't really change much except what is exclusive for your chosen region.
The setlist is ultimately good, but not great, and the song selection is indicative of the direction Guitar Hero is going. Outside of a few tracks, none of the songs scream rock hits. Yes, "All Star" is a hit song, but it's not a major rock song in the vein of, say, "Rock and Roll All Nite" by Kiss, which does have its Guitar Hero 3 cover in the setlist. This is kind of a problem that Guitar Hero will go through for a while; it struggles to maintain its identity as being Guitar-centric, even on the handheld systems. When you bring in Slash to pair him with a guy from American Idol, you know you are stretching just to include a song with a harder guitar sound.
So where does this leave Guitar Hero? After major success, Guitar Hero: On Tour was the first real canary in the coal mine for the series, which is sitting at a crossroads with its upcoming World Tour out in October. Rock Band revolutionized the genre to the point that Activision feels Guitar Hero can only emulate to compete, flooding the market with Guitar Hero games and making them as accessible as possible as party-based games. This is everything that Guitar Hero: On Tour represents; it fits a mandated design philosophy that begins to stray away from what made Guitar Hero unique, and is slowly milking any goodwill out of the franchise.
This is not a knock on the work Vicarious Visions did, though. They effectively did the impossible in making a Guitar Hero game playable on a handheld console. Guitar Hero: On Tour is more valuable for its technical design than being a fun game to play, and it is one of three handheld Guitar Hero games that Vicarious Visions will release all within a span of one year, creating a trilogy of handheld games that, for better or worse, indicate where the franchise is. On Tour is a solid first outing, but even at its best, the limitations of being on a handheld, coupled with some design choices, shackle it from being a novelty for hardcore DS enthusiasts.
Author's Note: Screenshots for the game were captured on emulation and from the YouTube channel IgnoreAmos.