Guitar Hero III Through The Eyes of a Guitarist

Being a guitarist of about 8 years experience, I always scoffed at the prospect of games such as Guitar Hero or Rock Band. I considered it gimmicky, air guitar with a high score even. But a few weeks ago when I was offered an opportunity to play my curiosity got the better of me, so I took hold of the plastic replica Les Paul and selected a difficulty. I chose medium but very quickly moved to hard, because I figured it can't be far enough removed from the basic mechanics of playing as to render me useless. What transpired was a nail-biting and elating few hours that ended in my purchase of the game. I now venture to compare the game with the real thing and how neither is like the other, but the one contributes towards the mastery of the other.

Firstly, I was right in my assumption that the game is like the real thing. You press a chord,and strum the note. You also have a tremolo arm(referred to by its fashionable name of whammy). It feels surprisingly like playing a guitar, although the lack of weight makes it a little tricky to keep stable. To play the songs a certain degree of timing is needed, especially on the more difficult songs where offbeat notes and different time signatures come into play, such as the intro of La Grange.

There are also elements that remove the game from the real thing. The fact that 6 strings and 22 or more frets with an infinite combination is reduced to 5 buttons with no open note(when no note is fretted). The strumming is also turned into more of a button being hammered than the actual motion of strumming. There is also no such things as palm-mutes, an integral part of most rock songs. But my main complaint is that the buttons give no feedback. You need to press them relatively firmly and the only thing telling you where your hand is on the 'fretboard' is a little mark on the middle button. On a real guitar, you can feel a definite edge where your fingertips move over the fret's edge. You know what the strings are doing under your fingers. But this is all a result of taking a fundamentally analogous action and turning it into computer inputs.

Now the bright side. I've come to the conclusion that Guitar Hero, besides being a very fun and addictive game, is also a very good stepping stone to learn to play the guitar.

When you endeavour to learn the art of guitar playing, there's a typical development curve: For the first few weeks you feel like you'll never get it right and it's a waste of time. Then when you get the hang of it, you progress very quickly and you can literally feel and hear yourself improve as you play. Guitar Hero helps to overcome the initial stupidity of learning the guitar. You're going through the motions of your first few guitar lessons, but you don't have to listen to the dull twank sound of your efforts. You're rewarded by a throbbing crowd of cartoon moshers. It's then relatively simple to shift over to a real guitar and 'fill in the gaps'.

I had to think twice about writing the next bit, because it could potentially insult many of my guitar playing friends: Guitar Hero can get you over The Wall. After a few years most guitarists hit a wall where just playing guitar isn't enough anymore and you need to start thinking about the technique and theory behind your playing to progress. Many guitarists are happy to stay by this wall, and turn into the sing-along players at the bonfire on the beach. The guitarists that commit to conquer the wall will end up the riffing superstar that you see in Guitar Hero. This is where techniques such as hammer-ons, pull-offs, sweeps, arpeggio and chord structures become important. The hard and expert levels in Guitar Hero do a very good job of helping you onto this path. The main benefit the game provides is the timing between your hands. I struggled for many a lonely evening to get my right hand to pick at the same speed as my fretting hand presses the notes. The game makes it all part of the progression. When you turn away from the game and pick up a real guitar, you can feel that your hand-to-hand coordination has improved.

The game has it's gimmicky elements, such as the battles where you can break a string on your opponent's guitar, or get their bridge stuck requiring them to furiously manoeuvre the whammy bar. There are also elements in the game that seasoned guitarists will appreciate, such as your star power indicated by a row of valves lighting up as you play and the not-so-subtle placing of name brands such as Line 6 and Mackie.

All in all it's a very fun game that can be enjoyed by anyone with a relative ear for music. I expected the game to hurt my guitar playing by getting me used to buttons instead of strings, but it turns out the game actually helps your playing. Now the only thing I need to get over is the dent on my ego when my friends see me standing with a small plastic Gibson X-plorer(pictured right) draped from my shoulders...

Words:
"We both know that the promise of simulated rock stardom will always bewitch the pasty nabbish fantasies that are gaming's core demographic."
-Zero Punctuation