Band Hero Review For DS

At first glance, I might not be the guy you'd expect to find reviewing Band Hero. I'm not Craig Harris, which means I didn't review the last three DS Guitar Hero games, and I'm not Erik Brudvig or Chris Roper, which means I'm not some amazing plastic guitar shredder. I'm Greg Miller; I review wrestling games and karaoke games.

However, I do have one trait that no one in this office can match: I love terrible pop music. You know, the kind of junk Ryan Seacrest hawks to the unwashed Midwest masses. If you're like me and have fond memories of the Presidents of the United States of America, don't hate Weezer's Red Album, can remember every word to Sum-41's "In Too Deep," and have nothing against Blink-182, Band Hero might be right up your alley.

Just don't expect to have your socks rocked.
At first glance, it's easy to think that Band Hero is an updated and expanded version of Guitar Hero On Tour; and in a way, it is. This cartridge can really only be played with a DS or DS Lite because you'll need to plug the Guitar Grip featuring the traditional green, red, yellow and blue fret buttons into the GBA slot if you have any intention of jamming out while mashing the colored buttons and strumming your touch screen with the included pick.

Thing is, Band Hero adds the band to the guitar format. This time, you can be the lead or bass/rhythm guitar, but you can also sing into your DS microphone for the first portable karaoke simulator as well as slide on a DS Lite skin that turns the DS into a drum kit for your thumbs.

Now, it's 2009, so I'm not going to sit here and explain the drums and vocals to you like you've never seen a music game before. For vocals, the words appear on the top screen along with some pitch/timing bars that you fill by singing in the correct way and matching with the on-screen ball. With the drums/guitars, colored notes fall down onscreen highways, and you hit the corresponding colored button or pad as the note crosses the line on the screen. Do these actions well, and you'll back points, get a score multiplayer, and probably hit Star Power to rack up the big points.

The four-button guitar playing is as solid as ever – yes, your hand may cramp up if you play hour-after-hour -- but as awesome as it is to have the band experience in your pocket, the singing and drumming could work a bit better. Don't get me wrong, it's awesome that I can finally sing on the go; I'm thrilled this is starting to be embraced. The trouble is that for your voice to be picked up as accurately as possible, you have to hold the DS pretty close to your face – at least in my experience. When I knew a song word for word, this wasn't an issue; however, when I would need to read the lyrics on the screen, I could feel myself going cross-eyed as I tried to read from two centimeters away. Other than that, singing was fine although it was nowhere near as responsive as a real microphone would be and lacked any kind of visual flair – it's just a little yellow bar going over some fat pitch/timing indicators.
In a similar vein, the drum design just doesn't do it for me. For starters, this is another peripheral you have to carry around to actually play this game and that kind of kills the whole "portable" vibe for me – especially because Rock Band Unplugged nailed the drum concept with four buttons that made sense. See, outside of having to carry the skin around, my main complaint with drumming in Band Hero is how the pad is laid out. Rather than assign the colors to left and up on the D-Pad as well as X and A so that the pads matched the onscreen layout, Vicarious Visions stacked the pads on top of each other. On the left side, it's green with red underneath it and on the right it's blue on top of yellow.


In my mind – which isn't the most coordinated or sane place – this makes everything a bit confusing. Now, I have notes falling on the screen and hitting a horizontal line and I have to code my brain that the screen's green-red-yellow-blue is green-red-blue-yellow on my pad. I guess the real problem is that we've been looking at the same layout and control scheme year after year and now Vicarious Visions is tossing a wrench in the works for one part while leaving the layout for the rest of the game. It's just a bit jarring and takes getting used to.
You can adjust to the drums and mic controls and have a good time, though. Please don't think that I'm making either of those issues to be a deal breaker; Band Hero is actually fun to play. The game has all the frets and Star Power you know for the Guitar Hero games, a bunch of good tunes, and two brand new instruments and tosses in a set of new mini-games and Fan Requests. Before I get to the cool mini-games, let's talk Fan Requests. These debuted in the Guitar Hero On Tour franchise and are little challenges for you to compete in a mode all by themselves; they're not part of your regular rock shows. These 50 challenges are cool, but the catch is that they are only available to you if you sync your DS with a Wii playing Band Hero.

That's a bit of a cop-out if you ask me. I mean, there are no Fan Requests unless you own both versions of the game, but the DS version displays the "Fan Request" section right off the main menu as if you can go play whenever you like.
What are part of your regular ol' DS game – and are pretty awesome – are the aforementioned mini-games. No matter the instrument you are playing, you're going to have an icon in the top corners of your touch screen. One if for Star Power that will double your multiplier when tapped, but the other is the mini-game icon that will give you Star Power juice. When this icon is lit up, you can tap it and you'll get randomly kicked to one of several touch-screen games. Crowd Surfing has you guide your rocker over a course of fans, Slap Hands challenges you to high five hands as they pop up from the crowd and avoid hitting the babies people all lift up, and Save the Roadie has you pulling your wingman out of a throng of fans. These games are simple and short, but they provide a nice break to the music format we all know so well. While you're playing the games, your song continues without you missing any notes and gives you a few blank notes when you come back so that you can settle back into the gameplay.

I found it a bit odd that I can't see what fret buttons I'm holding down when I return and try to get my bearings, but the mini-games are actually really cool and refreshing, so it's worth it.

I actually hadn't rocked out on my DS since the original Guitar Hero On Tour, and I fell happily back into my button-tapping, screen-scratching rhythm when I got my hands on Band Hero. The controls are solid, there's a bunch of great tunes to play through, and there are dozens of awards to unlock for playing with certain characters and achieving certain performance goals.

Trouble it, that's about all there is. The experience comes off a bit shallow.

Over one Rock Band Unplugged, there's a deep career where you create a band, give them instruments and outfits, and take them on a world tour. There are challenges to face off in, fans to add to your total, and so much more. In Band Hero, there's no real career to speak of. You can create characters and unlock objects to buy with the money you're making, but there's no sense of this being your band or that you're on tour. It's just you picking a bunch of songs, playing them, and doing it all over again.
Personally, I need more than that to keep playing. When I sit down with a music game, the last thing I care about is unlocking a shirt or whatever – I want to feel like I'm building up their reputation and making a name for them. That doesn't happen here. You're in a vacuum and just playing for fun; Band Hero on the DS comes off more like a toy than a full-fledged game. I want progression in and connection with the stuff I play, and I didn't get that here.

You do get multiplayer here, and it's pretty fun. You can square off in head-to-head matchups and form a band to go at it cooperatively. Sadly, you can't go through the career as a band, but you can play any combination of four instruments you like. You'll make money from your efforts and move ever closer to grabbing all the awards in the game.

One of the coolest things about the Guitar Hero On Tour franchise was that you could play a buddy with another version of DS Guitar Hero, and you'd both have access to all of the songs on both carts. Sadly, Band Hero doesn't support any interface with Guitar Hero On Tour because Activision says that its keeping the franchises separate. Trouble is, this game is clearly a port of the Guitar Hero DS games and even comes with a "Guitar Hero On Tour"-branded Guitar Grip. If you want it to say "Band Hero" – the game bundle you just bought – you'll have to pry the plastic Guitar Grip open and insert the Band Hero decal. The whole presentation seems a bit lazy to me.

Closing Comments

Again, don’t get me wrong; Band Hero’s fun. The trouble is that it’s just a noisemaker that you pick up and jam out with before moving on to the next thing. You’re not going to get super involved with your band and you’re going to be lugging around a bunch of add-ons if you want to get the full experience. Band Hero is fun and has a bunch of good tunes if you like junk food music like I do, but this is the same experience you’ve been getting out of the Guitar Hero On Tour franchise.

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