2008 Woodie Awards
Rock-n-roll collides with video games in Guitar Hero
Tiffany Gibson
Issue date: 1/14/08 Section: News
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It is evident that Guitar Hero is ground breaking and addictive to fans considering the third installment, Guitar Hero: Legends Of Rock, has been referred to as the largest launch product ever by Activision. The game grossed $115 million in its first week.
"I think it's about as addictive as marijuana, like to the point where the kids have the urge to play it every day, but it's not physically addictive, like alcohol," said Carter Hays, sophomore and business education major.
Originally, Guitar Hero creator Ron Kay was inspired by Konami's video game Guitar Freaks, which allowed the participant to interact in the game with a controller in the form of a guitar.
When playing the game, there are five buttons on the fret board, which are color coded in green, red, yellow, blue and orange.
As notes come toward the bottom of the screen, the buttons must be pressed down according to the color portrayed on the television screen in order for the note to be played. In addition to holding down the fret buttons, a strum bar must also be hit every time a note is required.
After spending countless hours practicing, gamers soon seem to progress and can choose their status within four options such as Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert.
"When I played, it seemed to be more revolved around the timing of the drums. I think it's good to learn to count through songs, but because of the unbalance of making music and playing a game, I have lost half a dozen students," said Chris Roberts, Cookeville local artist/guitar teacher and producer.
In agreement with Roberts, some people question the realism of Guitar Hero in relation to playing an actual guitar.
"I think people will be disappointed after buying a guitar because the game makes it seem like playing is easier then it actually is," said Troy Keith, Employee of Concert Productions.
Even though Keith believes it may be giving participants fictional beliefs about playing, he does support the music featured in the games.
All of the Guitar Hero games try to fuse together classic rock legends such as Poison, Black Sabbath, Guns N Roses and ZZ Top with more recent songs from AFI and the Killers.
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
Daniel Bridges
posted 1/18/08 @ 11:40 PM CST
I can't believe I read this entire article. There are some things worth saying, but it seems kind of pointless: This is an article about Guitar Hero. . (Continued…)
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