FUQ (eff -yu - cue) - FAQ's with an EDGE

Tagged As: How To Play Iron Man On The Guitar

Question:
I was doing some shopping at Wal-Mart this morning and I had to take a little time to play Guitar Hero II for Sony Playstation. Has anyone played this? It's qute a lot of fun. They have 50 or so songs to play along to (I Love Rock and Roll, I Wanna Be Sedated, Iron Man, etc.) and you have a plastic guitar to play along with it and you get points for accuracy. On the neck there are 5 buttons, and your right hand does the strumming on a little toggle bar. Maybe it will inspire the younger generations to continue to rock.

Answer:
It's pretty sophisticated really. The name of the game is mostly hand-eye coordination and not musical ability. There are 5 buttons, each with a different color. The song begins and you see the fretboard at the bottom of the screen coming at you sideways as though it were a road, and there is a lane (for lack of a better term) for each of the 5 buttons. Take I Wanna Be Sedated for example. The first chord is on the button closest to the nut, so while the lyrics go Twenty, twenty, twenty four hours to go, you hold the button and strum quarter notes on the toggle switch. Then when the lyrics go I wanna be sedated, you go to the third button, hold it down and strum and hold the toggle switch, then back to the first button and quarter notes. You can see on the screen if you are supposed to keep strumming or to hold the chord. Some chords require that you hold down 2 buttons. I'd say it's very loosely related to the way a guitar theoretically works (i.e. the buttons further away from the nut are higher). You get points by accurately playing along with the song. There are different levels of difficulty. The guitar also has a whammy bar. According to the box that the game comes in, you can play lead, rhythm, or bass. I didn't get to try out the lead because my 2 year-old (who was sitting on my shoulders the whole time so she wouldn't run away) was ready to go look at Dora the Explorer toys. Anyhow, the game and guitar costs about $80, and I assume you need to have a Sony Playstation to play it on. If I had more time to waste I'd probably buy it!