Guitar Hero

[Paleface]

Nijo: do the tutorials. They don't take long at all, and hammer-ons/pull-offs are so much easier to grok once you've seen them.

Pull-offs work the other way, eg: you have orange-blue, orange is a black ring, blue is a white ring. Hold orange AND blue, strum, let go of orange but keeping blue held and it'll sound.

The key to hammer-ons/pull-offs is that your timing has to be spot on; you'll probably try to do them too fast to begin with. You'll often think you've hit a note right but you haven't.

At the higher songs on expert/hard, they're fairly necessary for anything approaching a decent score. Crossroads, Texas Flood, Killer Queen - they're major features.

You don't have to do them - you can strum every note and you'll score OK, but fire up Crossroads on Hard and you'll see why you can't strum it all

[phillai]

OMG!!! I popped into teh big Game store in Leeds yesterday and saw this insane sick guy playing Guitar Heroes on very hard with his back to the TV screen and he did a full combo on Helmet's Unsung track purely from memory!!!
Which leads me to think, how does these tracks compare to playing a real guitar?
Surely this guy can't be this good straight away?

[MartyG]

I got this game today and it really does rock. I play guitar and this game really does feel like you are strumming along, but it doesn't have the complexity of picking strings, given you only have the one strum control.

That said,on the hard modes it really is pretty tricky, and is going to take you a while to master.

This above all, this game is a lot of fun, and I hope we get a Via or Satriani edition sometime please

[supersmithy]

OMG!!! I popped into teh big Game store in Leeds yesterday and saw this insane sick guy playing Guitar Heroes on very hard with his back to the TV screen and he did a full combo on Helmet's Unsung track purely from memory!!!
Which leads me to think, how does these tracks compare to playing a real guitar?
Surely this guy can't be this good straight away?

I can own Helmet on all the modes, its the easiest of all the songs (after the initial 10 anyway) if your right hand is up to the speed. I also play guitar, and its really not that alike. Guitar is a lot more work, since you are using 4 fingers at a time over 22-24 frets, instead of a maximum of 2 fingers and 5 "frets" in GH. I guess having played real guitar helps with finger and strumming dexterity, but not much else.

I can also play most of Megadeth - Symphony of destruction without looking (tried without my TV on - sound thru stereo and made it up to the solo). Once you've played a song with a pretty basic and repeating rhythm a few times, you can play it without looking. If he was playing texas floods without looking, then yeah, he's some kind of monster (or has way too much time on his hands)

So basically, he was a show off

(although i've done it too in my local game, 2 player hard, helmet, people saying "wow thats so fast" - yeah ) ?_?

[Nijo]

Symphony of Destruction is easy though.

I'm still having a mare on Conchise expert. Everything else up to there is a simple, but I haven't got my brain around that 5-4-5-4-3-2-1 repeating section. I know that once I get it I'll progress right through to the last section. I can do Godzilla expert fs.

[PeteJ]

Same here, just Conchise left for that section on Expert. Godzilla is fairly easy even on Expert imo...though I can only 3-star it!

[MartyG]

Guitar is a lot more work, since you are using 4 fingers at a time over 22-24 frets, instead of a maximum of 2 fingers and 5 "frets" in GH. I guess having played real guitar helps with finger and strumming dexterity, but not much else.

Absolutely - a real guitar is a lot more work, you can spend years learning and not perfecting ( as I have, and I'll never be Steve Vai ), it's clearly a different technique to playing a real guitar. What Guitar Heros does, and does very well, is emulate the air guitar factor, as the sequences on notes does a good job on the neck buttons of where you'd move your hand, at least on a chord basis if not note basis. It does get very difficult on the hardest settings and requires a lot of dexterity, especially on the solo stuff, it's great fun if you can nail this.

[Nijo]

Same here, just Conchise left for that section on Expert. Godzilla is fairly easy even on Expert imo...though I can only 3-star it!

Ah, managed to complete Conchise yesterday evening.
That was by strumming every note, not trying to be clever with advanced techniques. Save up the star power for the second hard bit (at about 50%) and that should get you through.

And then I 4-star owned the first two songs in the next section.
Conchise is very hard for where it's at.

[funkydan]

It's 'Cochise', not Conchise!

[Myth]

Is it me or are half of these song harder to play on guitar hero than on a real guitar, I never had this sort of difficulty learning Cochise on a real guitar.

[funkydan]

Is it me or are half of these song harder to play on guitar hero than on a real guitar, I never had this sort of difficulty learning Cochise on a real guitar.

I know exactly what you mean, and for me - it's all down to that pesky fifth fret button. I completed the medium setting pretty easily but the 'hard' setting is proving really tough. I think a great deal of patience and practice is required, making it even more satisfying when completing a song on that level of difficulty. Just try to avoid smashing the SG into the TV when it gets too frustrating

[Nijo]

It's 'Cochise', not Conchise!

Right sorry.
What does it mean anyway?

[MartyG]

Doesn't mean anything - Cochise was an American Indian chief, though I don't know if the song has any influence from that.

[funkydan]

According to Tom Morello (Audioslave guitarist), the song was inspired by the Indian Chief.

[supersmithy]

The internet says:

"It's about the last Native American Indian Chief, name; Cochise, to die a free Indian outside of reservations. He spent the final years of his life banding together other Native Americans to defy against the the settlers. They sacked towns and burnded buildings. He was caught and killed."

I've never been a big one for lyrics, as long as the music is good and the singing isnt dire, i'm happy.