Guitar Hero: On Tour Decades

On Tour Decades brings better songs and a slightly more comprehensive Guitar Hero experience to Guitar Hero on DS. There are still issues with the comfort and practicalities of its guitar fret peripheral, but the most rousing songs are still a lot of fun to play.

It's good fun, especially for Guitar Hero junkies, but while we enjoy hitting the fret buttons and rocking out, playing for just a few minutes cramps the hands, and the limited soundtrack cannot compare to Guitar Hero World Tour's.

Ultimately, what I remember most about this game is the wrist and neck pain.

The main sales argument of Decades is the ability to play against a friend with a copy of the game, or it's predecessor On Tour, anywhere via wireless networking. This game is a whole lot of fun playing with a friend, and it works for solo sessions as well, but unfortunately the grip around the keys will be straining for your hands during longer sessions of play. The presentation could also have been given a fresher coat of paint and a more rock like aesthetics. This is a good supplement to the more mature siblings on the stationary consoles.

Additionally, Decades doesn't build much upon the first On Tour game; the main attraction is the new batch of songs. [Jan 2009, p.91]

While Guitar Hero: On Tour Decades is a very solid follow-up port of the franchise to the DS and the technology to get it working is brilliant - why don't more developers make use of the GBA cartridge port for DS games? - I can really only recommend Decades to fans of the franchise, with the proviso that they have relatively small hands.

While the console versions remain the definitive Guitar Hero experiences, portable players that are absolutely ga-ga for the franchise should give Decades a shot.

Adds a great bunch of new songs to the On Tour experience. The game works as well as possible on a DS, but the mobile platform just cannot fake the feeling of playing a guitar. [Jan 2009]

I generally like what Vicarious Visions has done to bring the Guitar Hero experience to the portable market, but I’d prefer to see them focus on amending the functionality of the game rather than expanding the song list of a still flawed product.

Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades packs a very strong line-up of both modern and classic rock bands and artists, and the possibility of exchanging songs with every other Guitar Hero-fan is great addition. The Guitar Grip is still far from perfect though, and the poor sound quality when playing without earphones hasn’t improved one bit, explaining the lower score of Decades compared to its predecessor.

If you can get past the controller and don't mind sustaining permanent hand injuries, Decades is a fun, short rhythm game.

It's not a big improvement or change over the first title, and really feels like a track pack update more than anything, but if you've been growing tired with the 20 or so songs from the original, then this one will do the trick.

It's good to see a stronger track list in Decades, but this is still a game in which you can't play more than two songs in a row without causing yourself to feel a strong pain in your arm.

But it still doesn’t quite play like Guitar Hero. The touch detection is too spotty, the custom controller is too uncomfortable and that intoxicating illusion that you’re actually playing an instrument still isn’t there. But, if you need a portable way to get your rock on, this is remains the best way to go.

Aside from new music and the wireless feature, it's pretty much the same experience.

Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades improves minimally upon its predecessor, but not in the areas that matter most.

Nagging issues, such as strum recognition and the fact that the guitar grip has a tendency to become unplugged, haven't been addressed, meaning that not a single problem brought up from the original game has been fixed.

Guitar Hero On Tour was fun for a while but the novelty has worn off and Decades has made the DS versions’ shortcomings much more apparent.

Despite being an impressive achievement for the DS - just as the original game was earlier this year - we simply can't get on with the cramped control peripheral and tinny music.

We'd recommend the first On Tour as a better starting point and a slightly better game overall, which relegates this to a worthwhile expansion if you can find it cheap enough.

In almost every way Guitar Hero: On Tour Decades is exactly like the original. It still hurts your hand, has tinny audio and doesn't feel quite right.