Gitaroo Man for PlayStation 2 Reviews by Gamers

I'll admit to being a huge fan of the rhythm-action genre. If you're against the concept of pushing buttons and moving your joystick in tune with music, you'll probably dislike Gitaroo Man. If you're a fan of the genre, though, Gitaroo Man is the nirvana of the genre and an overlooked gem that you need to play. Right now.

The game focuses on U-1, arguably the whiniest protagonist ever, and his quest to fight evil with a magic alien guitar. The game's awesomely japanese storyline and simplistic but classy day-glo backdrops are the perfect fodder for a rhytm-action game and have you squaring off with giant reggae robots, mariachi skeletons, and a lovably caricatured black man in a bee coustume that plays a screaming trombone.

The game's music is perfect. Nearly every genre is covered and well-executed with only a few duds, and as a whole is something most fans would gladly purchase as a stand-alone album. The gameplay mixes things up while keeping true to it's rhytmic roots, and each level plays differently as well, going from rapid-fire button movements to long notes that last several seconds.

The only real flaw is the difficulty. It'll easily take a dozen tries to clear each stage, and randomized sections of the songs make it impossible to truly memorize each song. This gives length to what would otherwise be a short game, though, and the music is so great you won't mind hearing it 15 times in a row. Other than that, the ability to pause without having to restart the whole level would have been nice, the load times are a bit long, and you have to manually load your save file. But really, these are just details. If you love rhytm-action, play this game. If you don't like it, then you have no soul.