It's a pretty good day when a game as popular as Guitar Hero makes it on to the DS, much less makes it on and is a decent game that manages to capture some of the fun and excitement that is dominant on the original. I think we will all agree that playing with the guitar controller is more enjoyable than the DS, but that the DS does a good job of making the gameplay engaging. Either way, a scant four months after the first DS guitar hero, we get the "Decades" edition.

Ok, so the reason it says, "Decades" is because the game is more focused on the songs of the 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s, which makes no real sense, because pretty much every other Guitar Hero game can say that there is a song from all of those decades. But in all fairness, the game's setup has you playing four songs from each decade (with a fifth, bonus song) chronologically. Although there is some lameness in the fact that they call the modern selection of songs a decade since they are just really recent songs. It's predictable, but the need is there I suppose.

 
"The 70's may have had some great rock music, but the footwear stunk to high heaven."

So what about those songs then? Well, like virtually every music game featuring this sort of gameplay, you simply won't like every one of them. I told myself way back when I reviewed Guitar Hero 2, that if any game in this genre features 75% of the songs I like then I have to consider myself lucky. Granted, I like rock music to begin with, so the chances of me liking a good chunk of the songs is pretty much a given. Still, there are bands and songs I simply do not like.

Some of the songs featured in the game are as follows:

These are some of the songs I did like, I am not a fan of Alien Ant Farm's version of "Smooth Criminal" or Edgar Winter Group's "Free Ride" and a couple others but I would say that I liked about 22 or so of the game's 28 tracks. Sadly, there are more double's in this version as well. If you have some of the other Guitar Hero or Rock Band games, you will see that there are some songs that seem to be creeping into multiple game titles. I like the band Journey, but I don't need to play their song in three different games.

 
"She looks kinda dangerous, lemme borrow a guitar pick."

The gameplay is the same as before, which should be good since before the gameplay was pretty good. The same gaming engine was clearly used and these past few months the developers were pretty much just working on getting the tracks tuned in and ready. This is evident by the same characters hopping around the same backgrounds as seen in the previous version. The  characters and guitars and all that jazz looks the same, but its not like you notice since you focus so much on the guitar neck and the notes coming down the pipe. Fortunately the touch screen still is dialed in and the cool stylus pick feels like the real thing.

OK, now I should mention that the game takes a step in an entirely weird direction this time as the difficulty shows. In previous titles, including console versions, the further you got in the game, the more difficult the songs became. Not this time around, difficulty is all over the place with songs being medium, easy, hard, easy, easy, hard, medium (random, but you understand). So with this unevenness, I gotta kick Red Octane and Activision in the shins. Had I not been an awesome player I may have gone goofy wondering what was wrong with me.

What was really cool was that I was given a second copy of the game so I could really bang out the multiplayer bells and whistles. Well, I rocked and my son and nephew rocked back. They really should have thought about bundling two of these together with two add-on controllers. The multiplayer section really does a bang up job of breathing life into the game once it has been beaten. Players can swap play lists too and from earlier versions of the game and in games to come. So potentially you can get all sorts additional songs as the series continues on. Pretty slick. Not to mention its just plain fun rocking out together on songs,  

The game has some additional play modes to increase the length and life of the title. Things like lead guitar, bass/rhythm, guitar, guitar duel and three difficulty modes. There are even a couple of bonus surprises to be discovered for those willing to beat the game on hard.     

Gameplay: 8.4
Pretty straight forward; if you have played the other game, then you are a good to go. If you have gone in for wrist surgery since the other game, then you may want to take a pass.

Graphics: 7.0
Its pretty much a bunch of recycled visuals from the other one, but you really don't care, cause your trying for a perfect score and, oh, whoop, you just blew it, thanks for interrupting me!

Sound: 9.0
I have yet to hear a really stinker selection of songs from any of these games. They do need to stop repeating them though from one title to another.

Difficulty: Medium

Concept: 7.5
The idea is still sound. even though the game uses recycled graphics and pretty much the same gameplay, but rockin is still the order of the day.

Multiplayer: 9.0
The game gets a serious boost with innovative multiplayer downloads and guitar face-offs.

Overall: 8.2
If you have played the first one and enjoyed it, then you are golden; if you didn't then its time to put down the iPod loaded with country music and get crackin'.