If we’re honest, we’ve always harboured a deep-seated desire to rock out on a sweaty stage in front of thousands of even sweatier fans, all chanting along to our awesome tunes. However, due to several impairments – most notably the lack of any real musical talent and small, ladylike hands – our dreams have remained unfulfilled, forever haunting us as we watch talentless idiots storm the charts with insipid pop, making enough money to buy solid gold houses and rocket cars. Bitter? Us? Never.

So it’s extremely fortunate that Harmonix – best known for its PS2 masterworks Frequency and Amplitude – has created the ultimate game for those whose humdrum existences can’t possibly satisfy their need for power chords and raucous guitar solos. Please would you welcome to the stage, Guitar Hero.

First and foremost, Guitar Hero is a game based on playing a musical instrument – it is not a guitar simulator, because that would be dull. Don’t worry if your musical talent is as rare as the waste of a rocking horse though, because – much like the contemporary pop charts – musical talent is not something you need in order to enjoy Guitar Hero. Conversely, if you’re a dab hand at plankspanking you’re not really at an advantage when it comes to picking up the controller. The playing field is perfectly level, which, seeing as it’s a game, is vitally important. While musical proficiency may not be a prerequisite, at least a minor amount of dexterity in the hand department is essential. If you become all fingers and thumbs at the mere thought of using more than two digits to play a game, then Guitar Hero might be slightly beyond your physical prowess. The novice levels shouldn’t be difficult to quickly complete, but as soon as you begin to progress through the ranks the difficulty begins to build, in much the same way as it did in Harmonix’s previous rhythm action titles, each track filling with more and more notes. By the time you tackle the monstrous Expert mode, you’d better have your hand dancing up and down that guitar or you’re going to come a cropper. However, even if you’re no expert, you’ll be happy to chip away, laughing as you cock up yet another solo or grub around in the lower ranks, grinding away for better and better scores. Everybody has to start somewhere.

The music in Guitar Hero takes in a total of 47 tracks – 30 in the main game and 17 bonus songs – which could all broadly fall into the rock ’n’ roll genre, ranging from heavy metal to pop. All the songs are cover versions, no doubt due to licensing costs, although the quality is universally superb. The majority of the songs sound near identical to the real thing, and only a few changes have been made, such as making softer tracks sound a bit rockier. This change doesn’t detract from the game in any way, in fact, it sort of adds to its ‘garage band’ feel as you watch your group progress from playing foul-smelling basements to huge festivals.

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