- This article is about the first video game in the series. For other uses, see Guitar Hero (disambiguation).
Guitar Hero is the first game in the Guitar Hero series. Guitar Hero was released for the PlayStation 2 console on November 8, 2005 in North America, April 7, 2006 in Europe and June 15, 2006 in Australia.
Guitar Hero received a Greatest Hits reprint on 2006 in North America and was also reprinted in a bundle pack with Guitar Hero II on October 31, 2007 in North America and July 3, 2008 in Australia for PlayStation 2.
Gameplay
In Guitar Hero, players use the strum bar along with the fret buttons to play notes that scroll down the screen along a fretboard. The Easy difficulty only uses the first three fret buttons, that is, the green, red, and yellow. The Medium difficulty uses the blue button in addition to those three, and Hard and Expert use all five buttons. If playing Career on Expert, all note will be in play.
Scoring
Guitar Hero's screen during gameplay.
A single note in Guitar Hero is worth 50 points. After a player correctly plays 10 notes correctly in a row, the score is multiplied by 2. This continues until a 4x multiplier is achieved. Star Power can double the score at any multiplier, and can bring the multiplier to its highest possible 8x. A single note would then be worth 400 and a chord worth 800. As you keep the streak going, the Rock Meter (opposite side of the multiplier), goes up. If the player misses a note, the streak breaks and the Rock Meter goes down. If the Rock Meter hits the other side, the player will fail the song with no score except the percent of said failed song and has an option to retry or to go to another song.
Career
Career is the primary game mode of play in Guitar Hero. Players progress through the game by beating every song in a tier, then they play the encore song for that tier. Once the player has played every song in all six tiers (five in Easy), they have completed career mode.
Completing songs in Career gives the player cash which they can be used to unlock content from the Unlock Shop (not available on Easy difficulty), including guitars, bonus songs, characters, videos, and more.
Quick Play
Quick Play mode allows the player to play any unlocked song. However, saved high scores will not be displayed in Quick Play's song selection screen.
Multiplayer
Guitar Hero features only one multiplayer game mode where two players take turn playing small parts of the Guitar track in competitive play, aiming for a high score. This specific multiplayer game mode would be known as "Face-Off" in Guitar Hero II and onward.
When there aren't two guitars connected, said mode is locked.
Tutorials
Tutorials teach the player how to play the game. The tutorials will focus on the first three frets for the most part including the green note, red note, and yellow note.
- Basic lessons: This tutorial lesson will teach the player how to strum notes. This also includes playing different note colors and playing long notes and chords. It will also briefly teach the player how Rock Meter and Scoring works.
- Star Power lessons: This tutorial lesson will teach the player how to achieve and activate Star Power. This also includes the use the of the whammy bar to acquire more Star Power energy on long notes during a Star Power phrase. Once Star Power is activated by pressing the Select button or tilting the guitar controller, other upcoming Star Power phrases will be disabled until the player's Star Power meter runs out of energy so use Star Power wisely.
- Advanced lessons: This tutorial lesson teach the player how to perform hammer-ons and pull-offs (HOPOs). Hammer-ons and pull-offs are glistened single notes that can be tapped without strumming as long as you are in a combo. They appear after another note that is less than than an eighth note distance.
- In the first Guitar Hero, to perform a hammer-on (playing a note from left to right), you must hold down the lower note you just strum before tapping (or hammering on) the HOPO on the right and keep it held as you tap the HOPO note. To perform a pull-off (playing a note from right to left), the next note's fret must be held before releasing the higher note.
- Compared to newer Guitar Hero entries, hammer-ons and pull-offs in the first Guitar Hero are more difficult to play with these strict rules in mind, thus it's usually recommended to strum HOPO notes in the first Guitar Hero instead of attempting to hammer them in (fast) guitar solos.
- These strict rules for HOPO notes were dropped ever since Guitar Hero II where players can simply tap HOPO notes without any additional rules other than being in a combo.
Soundtrack
- Main article: Setlist in Guitar Hero
The game features 47 playable songs; 30 of these tracks are covers of the originals played during Career Mode. The additional 17 songs are by lesser-known groups are unlocked as bonus songs through Career Mode's Unlock Shop. Many of these groups feature members of the Harmonix development team, while some are indie Boston area groups. Drist's guitarist, Marcus Henderson, provided lead guitar on 20 of the game's 30 cover tracks.
All cover tracks are credited on screen with the phrase "as made famous by" (e.g., "I Love Rock & Roll, as made famous by Joan Jett & the Blackhearts").
Additionally, two extra songs "Trippolette" and "Graveyard Shift" are found within the game files but are not accessible by normal means without a third-party cheating device such as Action Replay, Codebreaker, or Gameshark, but they can also be unlocked from the shop for $0 in the unofficial Guitar Hero Deluxe game mod developed by MiloHax 2.0.
Other game features
Other features presented in Guitar Hero including playable characters, venues, and cheats. For more details on the list of cheat codes, see the Cheats tab.
Characters
Players can select their own character in the character screen before selecting a song. Guitar Hero features 8 playable characters and 4 non-playable characters that support the player's band. 6 of the 8 playable characters are available to be picked from the start while the other two can be bought from Career mode's Unlock Shop for $5000 (Izzy Sparks) and $8000 (Grim Ripper). All characters featured in the first game become staple characters throughout the franchise for most Guitar Hero video games excluding on mobile, which feature few of these main characters.
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Cheats
- Main article: /Cheats
Guitar Hero features seven cheats that can be enabled by pressing a sequence of fret buttons using the yellow, blue, and orange frets on the main menu. When activated, the cheat is active for the current game session until the game is reset or shut down. Most cheats are cosmetic changes and the game can still be saved when using cosmetic cheats. There a few cheats that can affect gameplay including Rock Meter Stays Green and Unlock All but these cheats disable the ability to save game or save score on leaderboard and on the Xbox 360 version.
Venues
Venues are stages or arenas where the player's band performs in front of a crowd. There are six venues in Guitar Hero and new venues are unlocked in Career as the player plays songs in Career. Here is a list of venues along with the gig/tier name associated with them in Career mode.
- The Basement (1. Opening Licks)
- The Freak Pit (2. Axe-Grinders)
- RedOctane (3. Thrash and Burn)
- Rok Theater (4. Return of the Shred)
- Vans Tour (5. Fret-Burners)
- The Garden (6. Face Melters)
These venues can be disabled in-game for the current game session by entering the No Venue cheat code on the main menu (B→Y→O→B→Y→O). This is a cosmetic cheat so saving the game and high scores are still allowed.
Reception
Guitar Hero was very positively received by many major reviewers. Jeff Gerstmann of Gamespot praised its set list and accessibility to newcomers.[1]
References
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This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Guitar Hero. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WikiHero, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License. |