It’s probable that a lot of you reading this particular review, once held dreams of being a famous rock star. The booze, the drugs, the women, you all fantasised about emulating your own particularly favourite artist. But with the majority of us lacking the musical talent required (or at least the good looks to get into one of the many untalented pop artists), the best we can hope for, us rockers especially, is bouts on the old air guitar.

But those lovely people at Harmonix, they’ve decided that there’s a need in the west for us to be given the opportunity to fulfil our fantasies, with the introduction of their latest title, Guitar Hero.

The main selling point of Guitar Hero is the hefty guitar based controller that the game ships with. Though not quite as large as a ‘real guitar’, this sizey, and weighty controller certainly feels the part. The five individual fret buttons (along the neck of the guitar, where your fingers would be on the strings on a ‘real guitar’) all feel solid, and each are colour coded. Instead of strings to pluck however, a small clicky flipper is found on the main body of the guitar, simulating you strumming out a tune. Unfortunately the whammy bar feels a little cheap, and numerous times you’ll feel you’re pushing it close to breaking point. But considering the cost isn’t too much higher than a game that doesn’t ship with such a unique controller, the guitar itself is tremendous value, and a fantastic show piece.

The game itself plays out in a similar manner to two of Harmonix previous output, Amplitude and Frequency. On screen, icons will come towards you, encouraging to press the right fret button, and ‘strum’ at the right time. Pull it off, and the note will be played and you’ll achieve an extra few points to add to your score. Miss a note however, and not only will the song itself terrible, but your score multiplayer will go back to zero.

As you play numerous notes perfectly in a row, the score multiplayer will become greater and greater. Hit a large number of consecutive notes and you’ll see your score rapidly increasing, bringing you an alarmingly high feeling of accomplishment. In fact, this is perhaps Guitar Hero’s real main pleasure point. Getting the notes player correctly, and on time, not only gives you a huge score to show off, but a feeling that ‘you’ managed to play a song. You managed to strum out a terrific sounding guitar solo and wowed the crowds.