Review - Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s for Playstation 2
Overview: Guitar Hero has become the rockin'-est game franchise in pretty much all of video game history. (Though most likely about to be dethroned by Rock Band.) Its simple concept and good times are easily appreciated by all gamers. And now they have a special extra edition that focuses on a specific decade. Rocks the 80s brings a lot of cool hair band and new wave songs to the table, but does it do much else? And does it need to?
Shininess:
Do we need to go through this? It's friggin' Guitar Hero. You don't focus on the graphics at all. Yeah, it might feel a bit odd if the band playing in the background scene was absent during the song, but I really doubt you'd miss it that much if it was gone. And in this game, it's all just re-skinned rockers and locales from the previous games, made to look like like 80s, duh. But it would have been nice if they had put in the effort to make some new characters or venues. The music is fun and has got some nice hair band and speed metal riffs, but only has a couple of really iconic 80s tunes. Most of the songs are recognizable, but they're not mega hits. Although they did get permission to use a couple more master tracks than in Guitar Hero II. The lack of bonus songs is pretty disappointing as well.
Funness:
Though it doesn't have a ton of extras and such, it's still a crap ton of fun to play. Ever since the first GH came out, I have been wishing (as many of us have) to see some choice songs selected in future editions. I was happy to see that one of the songs I really, really wanted to play in Guitar Hero actually showed up in this version. I was rockin' Extreme's Play With Me in a manner not entirely unlike Dokken. After I had unlocked it in Medium career mode, I went straight to freeplay and tried it out on Hard and it kicked my ass. Awesome.
Worthiness:
While I was lucky enough to acquire this game as my first received trade through Goozex, to otherwise purchase it would be a full $50 bucks. For a game that was thrown together with new skins on previous game models and has a much smaller track list, fifty bucks is pretty much highway robbery. (Though the bonus packs from XBLA for GH2 are even more expensive, when calculated per song.) This game should have been a budget title at $30 at the most. But if you are really, really hard up for some new music for Guitar Hero, this is where you should get it, unless you just want to wait for Guitar Hero 3.
Score: 3/5 It's more Guitar Hero.
What say you?!