Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80's for PlayStation 2 Reviews & Ratings by IGN

Think you can ever get enough of Guitar Hero? We don't, so long as RedOctane and company keep kicking out killer track lists. Unfortunately, that's not exactly the case with Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the '80s.''''The game and expansion pack of sorts that was long-rumored well before it was ever officially announced is a collection of guitar-centric hits from the 1980s. The latter part of that sentence may sound something like an oxymoron as much of the decade was driven by synthesizers, electronic drum sets and the like, but there apparently were just enough songs to put together a full track list.''''And that may be part of the problem. While the previous two titles had multiple decades' worth of music to select from, Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the '80s was stuck dead in the center of the music fad that everyone hates to love. Had it been based in the '90s or '70s, everything would have been fine. But in the '80s, guitar solos, interesting passages and the like were hard to find, at least in the mainstream hits that games like this need to be based on.''''Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the '80s Video Review''As a result, more than half of the songs found here are flat-out boring to play, and once you've gotten through them, you'll very likely never go back. This is in stark contrast to what we saw in Guitar Hero I and II, where nearly every track was a winner. Though most of the tracks here are good songs when listened to over the radio, they simply aren't fun to actually play.''''There are a number of very good and very fun tracks to be found, like Iron Maiden's "Wrathchild", Anthrax's "Caught in a Mosh", Extreme's "Play With Me" and a handful of others, but they're comparatively few and far between. For the first five of six sets of songs, you may find one in there that's fun while the rest will be rather boring. The last set is great, but it feels like too little too late.''''Another disappointing aspect is that there are only 30 tracks to be found. There are no bonus tracks to purchase in the store, which puts the total track count well behind what we've seen in previous releases. With the title launching at a full $49.99 price point, we simply expected to see more.''''In addition to the relatively low track count, the quality of the covers is quite simply not as good as what we've come to expect from the franchise. Most of the music is fine, though some of the mixing doesn't have the guitar or other instrumentation as loud as we'd like, but the vocals are a problem for a number of the tracks. Most vocalists in the '80s sang very high, so their vocal tones are harder to reproduce. As a result, songs like "Holy Diver" don't sound anything like the original and instead sound like they're played by local bar bands. That's not to say that all of them are poor, as a number are quite good, but the percentage of great vs. not-so-great is a good deal worse than we've seen in the past.''''''The game really does just feel like an expansion pack for a number of reasons aside from its shortened track list. For one, there really isn't any "new" content aside from the tracks. All of the characters and venues were simply taken from Guitar Hero II and given '80s makeovers. They all look good and appropriate, but it certainly doesn't help make it feel any fresher. Likewise, there are no new gameplay tweaks whatsoever. The game is still just as fun as ever on a core mechanics level, but everything works exactly the same. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but once again, it doesn't help the title shake its expansion pack feel.

©2007, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved