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Activision’s Guitar Hero series is that rare specimen that aces what I like to call the waking reality test: When a game effortlessly intrudes on your everyday life—in this case, when you’re walking through a grocery store, hear a Nirvana tune on the Muzak system and immediately begin flipping imaginary fret buttons—you know it’s got some serious kick.
 Don’t stop believin’! Pick up your axe and shred in Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s |
With Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s, the series also now has some serious synth, ridiculously teased hairdos and a bright neon sheen. Dee Snyder and Belinda Carlisle must be so pleased.
Even veteran slash-and-thrashers who didn’t live through the heyday of Poison, Ratt and Extreme are gonna feel right at home in the Me Decade, because just about everything from Guitar Hero 2 has made the trip in this ’80s flavored way-back machine.
Familiar character models now sport headbands, green hair and knee-highs (or, eventually, death-metal makeup and wings) and the stage locales will be instantly familiar to anyone who’s picked up an axe controller before.
Plenty in Guitar Hero nation are treating the game’s set list like an unwelcome Milli Vanilli reunion, knocking its scattershot approach—tracks by Twisted Sister and Scorpions camped alongside .38 Special, Asia and the Vapors. Thing is, the ’80s weren’t just about glam rock and hair metal, and while I’ll bite that including joke-band Limozeen as an encore track is grody to the double-max, it’s offset by unexpected gems like Oingo Boingo’s "Only a Lad" and the Dead Kennedys’ "Police Truck." Yeah, I could wish for The Cars, Duran Duran and The Replacements as much as the next ’80s refugee, but let’s not forget that the set lists for the first two Guitar Hero games had a sizable set of detractors as well.
If the Rocks the 80s set list feels like a quickie MTV travelogue, the game’s price point is Iran Contra-level egregious. Activision must have been ripping pages from the Gordon Gekko handbook when they slapped a $50 price tag on a 30-song package. Essentially, they’ve violated the cardinal rule of expansions: The expansion must cost less than the original game.
For PS2 rockers, Rocks the 80s will probably play like one last (albeit pricey) way to proudly pledge their allegiance to Air Guitar Nation before taking the next-gen plunge—assuming they haven’t done so already. Now that developer Harmonix has jumped ship to create Rock Band, a Stevie Ray Vaughn rival to Activision and Neversoft’s upcoming Guitar Hero 3, forking a Ulysses S. Grant over to make like Bret Michaels may prove a hard—but ultimately worthwhile—sell.
