I didn't believe it at first, until I saw this thing staring at me while on a day trip up to New Hampshire. Not wanting to give it a miss (because it was rather hard to ignore this thing blaring at you), I went over to try it. Here's what I noticed. The Machine The game itself looks exactly like that picture up there, but when I first saw it I saw it from the back and mistook it for another DDR game. When I got around to the front of it, I understood what it was. Those two guitars are heavy. They weigh about as much as the real thing and are modeled after the Kramer controller used in GHIII. If you look closely, you'll notice something's missing: no whammy bar. For me, that was a major disappointment, because I like using the bar on a hold note to get Star Power. Also, it took a bit more effort to tilt the guitar up to activate said Star Power. My biggest gripe though - and it might be because of the arcade I played this in - was the price. It costs $1 per play, and you only get to pick one song. Compared to the DDR machine behind me, which cost $.75 to play and could net you 3 songs, GH seemed rather pricey. For 2 people to play, it was a dollar per person. It would cost you $6 to play 3 songs. That's a lot of quarters. The Gameplay So I caved and decided to take the game for a whirl. There's 50 songs to choose from, from GH III and World Tour. The characters are all the ones from GH III, including unlockables such as Slash. I didn't choose single player mode so I didn't see what was offered there, but Multiplayer Mode offers Face Off, Pro Face Off, and Co-Op. There was a lack of Guitar Battles, which I feel could have been a selling point for this game. While playing, I missed more often than I hit, either because the game was slightly out of sync, or because the controls were so new they were still sticking as opposed to my well-worn guitar back home. Missing was even more insulting because the notes were exactly the same as their home-console counterparts. When I would get Star Power, just enough to fill the meter halfway, a message would show up on the screen telling you how to activate it. It was distracting and in the way, and didn't disappear after a set period of time. When the song was over, as I mentioned before, it takes you to the title screen and asks for more credits. I was half expecting it to give you a second song if you did over a set percentile, much like how DDR will let you continue if you score over a certain grade. But it doesn't. You get your score, see the high score board, and game's over. So while it was interesting to see them take a home console game to an arcade rather than the other way around, unless you have enough pocket change to make your pants droop, it doesn't seem worthwhile to me.
