Guitar Hero is a popular music rhythm game in which the player uses a guitar-shaped controller to simulate playing an actual guitar. The game controller has five different colored buttons which are supposed to resemble frets on a guitar. From the closest button to the controller head going down towards the body, the fret colors are as follows: green, red, yellow, blue, and orange. There is also the strum bar that the player must push in order for their note hit to be counted. The player must push the colored button and strum at the same time when prompted to by what appears on the screen. Once the colored notes hit the bottom line on the screen, then the player knows it is time to hit that specific note. The entirety of the game relies on this core mechanic.
The specific colored notes that appear on the screen and the amount of them all depends on the level of difficulty for the specific song being played. Songs on the easy difficulty will only use the green, red, and yellow buttons at a slower pace. A medium difficulty will introduce the blue fret and go at a faster pace than the easy difficulty. Both the hard and expert difficulties introduce the orange fret; the only difference between the two is the amount of notes on the screen since expert will have the fastest pace in the game. The goal of this game is to hit as many notes as accurately as possible to then get a high score. In order to get even more points during a song it is necessary for the player to move the neck of the guitar or push the whammy bar. You don’t want to be booed off stage, since that is a possible outcome if you aren’t hitting enough notes on cue.
The meaningful choices you make in Guitar Hero are striking the notes accurately. It is also important for the player to choose a difficulty wisely since the difficulty will be a decision that affects their performance of any song in the game. Guitar Hero is a game where practice makes perfect, so in order to move on to a harder difficulty or more difficult song the player must start practicing from an easier difficulty until they reach their own personal goal. In order to unlock more songs you need to play songs on the game’s main setlist. Other than the usual playing of songs on the setlist, there are also performance modes in Guitar Hero where you play multiple random songs at the difficulty and venue of your choice. Despite these additional features, the main point of Guitar Hero is to strum and hit frets when you see notes appear on the screen.
