'What's the matter with carpal tunnel syndrome? I like it very much.' by Kara
Monday, June 23, 2008 at 1:10 AM

Can't sleep and the comic's changed over, which means I can rant. Now that I actually have a Nintendo DS (I also have a PS2, but that needs setting up), I can buy games and play them and talk about them.

I think it's fairly obvious that I would've gone out and gotten Guitar Hero on the Road today. I'd play a few songs in between chores/work/naps, so I actually ended up passing it on Medium today. (Easy tends to be too tough for me ... sounds weird, but I follow the music slightly more than I do the dots, so I need to be imitating it to some degree or I'll go nuts.)

Right-o, then.

For one thing, I like how they've handled setting it up for the DS. I saw pictures, but I still didn't quite 'get it' 'til I had it set up for myself. Took a bit of getting used to, but fairly intuitive nonetheless. The little guitar pick stylus is lovely. I also like that there's no orange button. Hurrah!

Music choices -- all 25 of them -- pretty good. There are a few songs I was unimpressed with (which I shall refrain from mentioning, because as soon as I do people are going to crawl up my butt demanding to know why I don't like them), but the rest were good picks. I was going to lament the fact that there are no extra songs on Quickplay, but I shan't as the little game chip isn't terribly large and they've crammed it full of what they can.

Boss battles. None. There's Battle mode, which is entertaining (especially since you now have to use the touch screen to attend to fixing broken guitar strings, autographing fish, etc.), but they're all the same songs. At least with a boss battle or two you could get something especially badass. Again, I won't complain really and truly because of the game size.

I haven't been able to do multiplayer, but it appears you can do Quickplay Co-Op, unlike Legends of Rock. Thank. God.

My only true complaint, however, is not with the gameplay itself, and may well be my own damn fault. And that is that the button extension keeps trying to worm its way out of the GBA slot. I spent a bit of each song trying to line it back up so it didn't escape, and even so I'd occasionally get a message informing me that I was 'rocking too hard' and had to switch the power off, plug the whatsit back in, and start over. On the song, anyway. I can't think of any way to fix this ... and, as I said, it is likely my own fault, and I'm sure people will be thrilled to tell me what it is I'm doing wrong that's causing this.

Overall, thumbs up. I still want to play more of the 'real thing,' but this and some headsets will do the trick for waiting rooms, cons, etc.

If you have been, nao!