We were lucky enough to be invited to have an ‘Eyes-On’ look at Activision’s Guitar Hero: On Tour for the Nintendo DS. It is being developed by Vicarious Visions, the fine people responsible for the Wii version of Guitar Hero 3. Unfortunately with it being an eyes-on look, it meant we were unable to play the game ourselves. But rest assured, we got a very good look at the title and hardware, and we’re in a very good position to pass judgement. Head inside for more..
To those of you who are unfamiliar with the Guitar Hero franchise, let us tell you to crawl out from the rock you have been living under for the past 3 years so we can give you a quick run-down of the core game play. The series is distinguished for its use of a guitar-shaped peripheral to simulate the playing of rock music, represented on-screen by coloured notes that correspond to fret buttons on the controller. Players create their own band and play the guitar, advancing through and unlocking a series of songs. The series also supports various multiplayer and online modes, and are especially popular as party games. The Guitar Hero franchise has become a phenomenon, being referenced in many parts of popular culture, and even having a South Park episode dedicated to it. (That’s when you know you’ve truly made it). The series has sold over 14 million copies worldwide, so it comes as no surprise that Activision is developing a game for the DS handheld. The new “Guitar Hero Grip” is the centrepiece of On Tour. It is a device that has 4 fret buttons on it and slots into the GBA slot on the DS. Owners of the original DS are catered for as well, with an adapter packaged in so that they are not left out. It also sports a hand strap, similar to what you’d see on a video camera, and a detachable faceplate. The faceplate is transparent with a stylised design printed onto a removable insert beneath it, so that it’s fully customisable. Activision Australia has no plans to release any additional design inserts or faceplates, but we’re sure we’ll see something from the 3rd party accessory manufacturers. There’s also a slot at the back of the grip, which holds a pick-stylus that you use to “strum” the touch screen. Gameplay-wise, the game is every bit guitar hero as the rest of the series. The core gameplay mechanics are, for the most part exactly the same. You hold down the corresponding fret and strum. “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is the mantra that the developers went by when making this game. The two deviations of the gameplay, while minor, are how Star Power and the Whammy Bar work. The DS’ built-in microphone activates star power by either yelling “ROCK ON!” or simply blowing into the mic. The whammy bar is activated by using the pick-stylus to move the on-screen whammy bar on the touch screen. We did not notice any hammer-ons or pull-offs during our session, but that could have just been because the game was only being played on Medium in the first set of songs. When we do know the answer to this, we will be sure to let you know. A question that’ll be asked by most seasoned GH players would be “Where’s the Orange fret!?” Well we asked that, and were given a pretty good reason why it’s not there. To use the orange fret, you normally have to move your whole hand down the neck of the guitar to get to it. Due to the design of the Guitar Hero Guitar Grip, that’s just impractical. You can’t move your fret hand down since it’s strapped to the grip of the DS itself. Another note about the frets is their size; they’re quite a bit smaller than the ones on a normal GH guitar. This was down to two things; one, they had to be made smaller otherwise the grip would be too large and not as portable. And secondly, the DS (whether some like to admit it or not) is mostly owned by people with smaller fingers. This leads us to the play list. While we were only allowed to see the first 5 tracks in the game, we’ve been told that the a lot of the track list will be tailored for a younger demographic. This was evident by the tracks we saw:

• Ok Go – Do What You Want
• No Doubt – Spiderwebs
• Jet – Are You Gonna Be my Girl
• Blink 182 – All the Small Things
• Twisted Sister – We’re Not Gonna Take it

Twisted Sister is the exception to the rule here, but GH fans shouldn’t fret (sorry!) as we’ve also been told that among some of the 20+ tracks in the game, some songs from previous GH titles will be making an encore appearance. (Nirvana was one name that was mentioned.) Vicarious Visions have used up every bit of space on the limited DS game carts to try and fit as many songs on there as possible, so there’s no space wasted. Single player Career mode will not be as in-depth as it was in Guitar Hero 3, as boss battles have been dropped and there’ll be no celebrity characters. (Sorry Bono fans!) But there are some new characters in On Tour, as well as some returning ones. Johnny Napalm, Judy Nails and Axel Steel all make a return and are joined by 3 less extravagant characters and a new bassist, drummer and vocalist. If the new guitarists (two ladies and a gent) were to be categorised, we’d peg them as indie. We personally preferred them to the over-the-top caricatures from GH3; it was like a breath of fresh air! There are also 5 new venues, although it seemed that there was no crowd visible to cheer you on. We assume this is due to the limitations of the DS, which is fine in our books because you’re hardly looking at that section of the screen anyway. You can hear the crowd though, which is great because as you know in the GH series sound is half the game. For that reason Activision strongly suggests use of headphones, a fact that you are reminded of every time you start up the game. Multiplayer consists of the 4 returning play modes: Co-Op, Face-Off, Pro Face-Off and Battle. All take advantage of the DS’s local WiFi feature, but sadly there’s no going online with On Tour at this stage. The only mode we got to see in action was Battle mode. It was much more in depth than GH3’s battle mode for the consoles. There are more choices of attack, most of which are interactive and take great advantage of the DS’s features. We found this version of Battle mode to be much more tactical and fun – players are able to play through the whole song with a winner being declared at the end, as well as having an intuitive item selection interface on the touch screen. There are also a much larger variety of attacks, which is good to see, as the small amount of attacks in Guitar Hero 3 made battle mode repetitive. These are the attacks that we saw in action:

• Steal – When activated, this attack lets you steal any one of the attacks that your opponent has in their inventory.
• Pyrotechnics – A pyrotechnics display at your gig goes wrong and your guitar gets set on fire! You have to put the fire out by blowing into the microphone.
• Signature – A fan has jumped on the stage and wants you to autograph their t-shirt! Basically you sign the screen with a signature. There’s no pre-set signature of sorts, so you could (in theory) just draw a scribble or swirl on the screen and it would allow you to continue.
• String Cut – Similar to the attack in the console version, one of your strings is cut, and you cannot use that string. But unlike the console version where you had to press a button repeatedly to repair your string, this time you have to use the touch screen to reattach your string. This was probably our favourite use of the touch screen in the game.
• Shield – The shield makes you invulnerable to any attacks from your opponent, as well as not giving you any notes but still giving you points.
• Bomb – Bombs start appearing on top of random notes, (much like star power and battle notes), but unlike those two, you have avoid the bombs, otherwise they will explode.
• Reverse – The two screens swap over, but you have to still try and play like normal (strum/whammy on the touch screen). The person playing was very disoriented when affected by this attack.
• Amp Overload – Your amp overloads and you have no sound for a small amount of time.
• Higher Difficulty – Exactly the same as it’s console counterpart, this attack simply moves your opponent’s difficulty level up.
• Lower Difficulty – Like the above move, this changes the difficulty setting, except it makes your difficulty go down. (Some seasoned guitar heroes may see this as a disadvantage)
• Hyper speed – Similar to the Higher Difficulty attack, the hyper speed attack speeds up the flow of notes considerably. The amount of notes does not change however, so it basically gives you less time to see what notes are coming your way.

Guitar Hero: On Tour certainly does not appear to be lacking in modes compared to its console counterparts, as tutorials for all aspects of the game are also included, and Practise mode makes a return. Vicarious Visions appear to be cramming as much as they can into that tiny DS cartridge. All up we were very impressed with the title, and look forward to its release in June. Pre-orders are currently going for $89.95 at some Australian retailers, and if that turns out to be the correct price, then sign us up. Combined with a big advertising push from both Nintendo and Activison, it’s sure to be on many people’s wish lists this winter. Thanks to Joel at Activision for allowing us to come and see the game in action.