SFist Raves: The Power of Rock Compels You
We here at SFist not so fondly remember our adolescent quest, our desire to find the true essence of rock and roll. With a puberty induced punk rock fervor, we wanted to be rock stars that would catch panties thrown at us with our teeth, smash our equipment, mosh with the gnarlyist metal heads, and captivate audiences with our own brand of rock and roll mayhem. What we got instead were guitar lessons from new age gurus and burnt out Vietnam veterans. Instead of learning how to rock, we played 12-bar blues and learned to pluck "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." Our young idealist upstart selves needed to feel the raw emotion of rock. Even if our dumb fourteen-year-old selves just wanted to learn how to play "All the Small Things" by Blink 182.
After realizing that we were probably never going to make it past the C, G, and F chords, we promptly gave it up (just like karate, the piano, African line-dancing, and summer school for gifted kids). But our dream to rock was never really deferred. It just got bitter and cynical.
SFist Paolo, contributing
Fast forward approximately five years, with the release of Guitar Hero for the Playstation 2, a joint effort between Harmonix (Amplitude, Karaoke Revolution) and Sunnyvale based Red Octane. These makers of video game accessories have finally realized our, and everyone else's, dream to melt everybody's face off, even if we're just hitting five buttons on a plastic guitar controller. Guitar Hero's presentation totally encapsulates rock and roll, from the Gibson SG Guitar replica that comes in the box (including stickers for maximum rock and roll and a whammy bar) gameplay that takes place in massive sold out arenas to options menus with scales that from 0 to 11 in an obvious homage to "This is Spinal Tap". But what would a music-based game without music? Featuring well made covers of face-melting metal from Pantera and Megadeath, to hipster booty shaking darlings Franz Ferdinand, to bubble-gum and leather jacket punk rockers the Ramones, to the blistering riffs of Jimi Hendrix, out of left field yet vital selections like Blue Oyster Cult and David Bowie, Guitar Hero features one of the best soundtracks in music gaming history.
What impresses us about this game is, despite our learning a minimum amount from our time learning guitar, we could see that the game developers actually stuck through with their guitar lessons and incorporated actual guitar playing theory in game play, such as hammer-ons, pull-offs and killer solos, making this game much more of a music simulator, than other music based games that have come before it.
The rhythm based genre has been stale as of late, with Dance Dance Revolution falling out of grace and In The Groove failing to attract a mainstream audience, but Guitar Hero finds a sweet spot, satisfying our obsession with hitting buttons in a rhythmic sequence with our pubescent desires for madcap rock and roll. Whenever we do play Guitar Hero, for the time we have it on, it turns our SFist test labs (more like our bedroom that we share with our brother) into a temple of unbridled rock fury. Even our younger brother, who gravitates towards Usher and Brian McKnight was found to be banging his head in his own rendition of "Iron Man" by the one and only Sabbath. For those about to rock, with indeed salute you.