Guitar Hero Games For All Video Consoles - Are They Any Good?

By Amanda Isbitt

What could be better than living the life of a rock star? Who cares if your fans are all in your living room, you are the man, or woman! Into the world of video games has come the latest interactive game. Guitar hero takes you from the role of interested observer to full rock and roll participant. In other video games, you have a controller and varying views that draw you into game play but with the invention of the guitar controller, you get a full-on experience tough to find in other games.

Guitar Hero has come out with six different games so far for a plethora of platforms. It was made available for Playstation 2 & 3, Xbox 360, and PC and more recently for the Nintendo DS. With the exception of the DS, game play and peripherals have been much the same on all platforms. Of course, due to the size of the DS a full size guitar controller was not practical so the creators came up with a guitar grip that plugs into the second slot of the console. One major difference between platforms is that Guitar Hero 3 can be played online with the Xbox 360 console only.

Overall, the impact of this game has been phenomenal no matter which console it is played on. Game play includes different levels of difficulty, tour and arcade mode, cooperative play as well as competitive.

Guitar Hero was challenged last year with the release of Rock Band, a similar game idea but one that incorporated the whole band. You could play guitar, bass, drums or sing with Harmonix answer to Guitar Hero. The challenge would be short lived, as the equipment did not quite measure up.

Soon, RedOctane and Activision will follow up this challenge with Guitar Hero World Tour. Kids and parents alike have been waiting with baited breath for the latest release in the Guitar Hero family. The play promises to be intense as drums and vocals are added. Another plus is that though the new guitar is awesome you do not have to purchase it to play. If you have the earlier version of the game, the guitar will be compatible. They have also announced that for Xbox 360 the Rock Band instruments will also work. This is not the case for Playstation 3, though Sony says they are working on making the units compatible.

Guitar Hero World Tour may very well be on the Christmas list of all little girls and boys. If past performance is any indication that is, in 2008 Activision released that total sales from the Guitar Hero franchise has exceeded one billion dollars. The craze has led some bar and grills to have a Guitar Hero night instead of karaoke. One in New York reported that business triples on those nights.

It is obvious that Guitar Hero has just begun to make an impact on the kids that play and sounds like their parents as well. A terrific idea that has so far been perfectly executed. Look for the new release soon and expect that all the kids are going to want one.

For all of the latest products and news visit Guitar Hero Games

Dead Space - PlayStation 3 Review

By Gabriel Chau

Silent Hill: Homecoming was somewhat disappointing mainly because of its outdated graphics. I know it is not sufficient to judge a game solely based on game play. Although new elements were added to the game such as new combat system and new item/weapon navigations. And I was not happy with the new navigations by the way because you can waste your healing item, mainly the serum which heals you completely, by accidentally move your L3 button and have it selected without even knowing. The game play was kind of expected and I was really hoping for graphics that are next-gen. Ok, enough ranting and time to move on.

Dead Space generated a lot, and I mean A LOT of hype with all the animated trailers, comics and game trailers. Does this game live up to all the hype generated? I would, with no doubt say YES.

Story and controls

The story is about a repair ship which crash landed on a large mining ship called ISHIMURA. And as you can imagine, all the horror begins here and almost right away. Some of the controls are rather different from say, Call of Duty, like in order to run, you need to press L3 (move) and L2. The new controls might take a while to get used to but nothing major. If you have been keeping up with your first/third person shooting skills, the aiming should not be a problem either. Again make sure you aim the hands and legs and not the body unless you want to waste ammo. You can also treat your gun as a melee weapon at close range as well as pressing L2 for some foot stamping.

Game play and graphics

Dead Space uses a new and innovative user interface for accessing your items, weapons, map and missions etc. Its actually a holographic screen that is projected right in front of you in real time. So for example, you can have the map up and move around at the same time. So far I though, I can't feel the "survival" part of this game because you get lots of ammo and healing items, I've picked up so many that I have to put them in the safe. (I'm playing on normal not easy by the way) Finally, safe points are in many places so I don't really have to worry about having to restart from far back.

Speaking of which, there is also a store which you can buy healing items, upgrade your suit, called the Rig which increases the amount of items you can store as you go, new weapons, power nodes which are for upgrading your Rig's max health(which is your health) and your weapons' damage, ammo capacities etc. Weapon upgrades using the power nodes are performed by accessing another system though.

Even though both Silent Hill:Homecoming and Dead Space are survival horror, the former doesn't really make you jump like Dead Space does. Being a survival horror fan for so many years, I'm pretty used to all the scare moments but I was constantly on my toes while playing Dead Space and got a few jumps actually.

First thing first, I'm sure everyone would want to know about this, YES the game supports 1080p high definition video output. Strangely it defaults to 720p similar to Call of Duty 4. It will only output to 720p unless you explicitly set your console, in my case PlayStation 3 to only output 1080p. And speaking of graphics, it is VERY graphical with tons of blood and body parts all over walls, floors, windows and anywhere you can imagine.

Also just to mention there's no online multiplayer component, it would be even better if there was but with this game, it doesn't really matter because the single player is just that exciting. And besides, I'm not sure how you can design the multiplayer side based on the story, hmm maybe there could be two races, the humans and those mutated humans? Just a thought.

Sound

Sound effects are top notch as well, you can hear random screams, objects banging onto other objects. One thing I dislike and makes this game a little bit less difficult and cuts some of the suspense is every time before monsters start coming at you, you will know because you will hear some "horror" noise. So whenever you hear it, you can pretty much expect to ready your limb cutting gun. But like I said before, I still managed to get a few scare from my 2 hours of play time.

Final Verdict

Is this game worth the $59.99? I would definitely think so, at least I didn't regret buying this game like I did with Silent Hill: Homecoming. For those looking for a sci-fi + survival horror and those that are into limb cutting, then Dead Space will be the game.

There may be a part 2 if I find anything that's worth mentioning so keep checking back! I will also be reviewing MotorStorm: Pacific Rift demo tomorrow so stay tuned!

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