GregHowley.com

Today is my birthday. Freakin' Thirty Three. In expectation, I bought myself a copy of Guitar Hero on Friday, and played it on and off all weekend.

For those of you not in the know, Guitar Hero is a Playstation 2 game much like another of my favorites: Dance Dance Revolution. It's a rhythm game. But whereas in DDR you're stepping on a pad in time to the cues on screen, in Guitar Hero, you're playing an actual guitar. That is to say, you're playing a plastic controller shaped like a very small guitar.

Yes, in purchasing the game, you must also purchase a special controller, which of course costs a few extra bucks. That's actually why I didn't get the game sooner. But it's a lot of fun. I think Brandon of Suburban Joe put it very well...

The reason Guitar Hero works so well in this regard is the controller. There is no way, with the best of controllers, that pressing a button can make you feel even remotely like you have just put some guard in a headlock. There is no trigger on any gamepad that can make you feel like you just put a round of buckshot into a marauding alien. The disconnect between the controller and the things we're controlling in games is just too wide. Not so with Guitar Hero. Yes it's a smaller, infinitely simpler guitar, but it is a guitar. You strap it on like a guitar, you plug it in to your PS2 with a long cord like a guitar and you strum it and hit the whammy bar like a guitar. Yes, you feel like an idiot for the first 5 seconds but then the opening chords of "I Wanna Be Sedated" come out of your speakers, by your own hand no less, and those feeling evaporate. It is as if the Gods of Rock have come to Earth, been made plastic and placed in your waiting arms. You want to rock and no one, not even Doug Neidermeyer can keep you from doing so.

I don't think I'd enjoy the game half as much if it didn't have such a great list of songs. Ozzy Osbourne, David Bowie, Boston, Blue Oyster Cult, Cream, Stevie Ray Vaughan, ZZ Top, White Zombie, Black Sabbath, Queen, Megadeath, Deep Purple, Incubus, and the list goes on.

The first CD I ever bought, back when CDs were relatively new, was Boston's Third Stage. I loved that music - I have vivid memories of listening to it while driving to my senior prom. So when I finally got around to playing More Than a Feeling on Hard mode, where I had to use all five fret buttons with only four fingers, I knew it was going to be tough. But I was amazed when I managed to hit almost every note in the complex solo at the middle of the song - not because I was able to keep up with what was on screen visually, because I certainly wasn't - but just from knowing the song very well and having a sufficient musical background. That was my ultimate Guitar Hero moment. At least for now. I plan to continue enjoying the game.

A couple of the things that make Guitar Hero especially cool reside within the controller itself. So you're plucking at the little lever where the strings would be while making sure to hold down the correct fret button(s). Therein resides 90% of the game. But in addition, when you hit extended notes, you can use the guitar controller's whammy bar to bend the pitch. In a few cases (such as More Than a Feeling) I can use the whammy bar to imitate the sound the actual song has, which is damn cool. But the gameplay function of the whammy bar is to charge your "star power" meter when it's used. Once your star power is ready, you activate it by raising the guitar controller upright, which causes the crowd to go crazy, cheering loudly and often clapping along with the music. It also doubles the points you earn while it's in effect. Sadly, tilting the controller like that usually screws me up, but I still think it's a very cool gameplay element.

I've always been a piano player - I can't hold down those damn guitar strings worth a crap without hurting my soft computer programmer's fingers. But Guitar Hero is the closest I'll ever come to rocking out in front of a crowd, and it's a lot of fun. Let's just hope that Uwe Boll doesn't get ahold of it and make it into a movie.