7.17 PM Friday, 29 March 2024
  • City Fajr Shuruq Duhr Asr Magrib Isha
  • Dubai 04:56 06:10 12:26 15:53 18:37 19:52
29 March 2024

Everyone's a rock star

If you ever fancied rocking a stadium now's your chance. (SUPPLIED)

Published
By Lou Kesten

Rock may be hard to find on the Top 40, but it's alive and well in your living room.

Thanks to the intense competition between Guitar Hero and Rock Band, anyone who's ever dreamed of being Slash or Pete Townshend can strap on a fake guitar and pretend to be playing Madison Square Garden.

But fans of other genres may well feel left out. Country music is invisible in video games, despite plenty of guitarists in Nashville. No one's been able to translate the beats and rhymes of hip-hop into a game, and jazz is probably too complex to recreate on an Xbox.


—Guitar Hero: Aerosmith (Activision, for PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, from Dh250): If you like Aerosmith, you'll like this game. It's Guitar Hero, so mostly you're trying to duplicate Joe Perry's greasy riffs. The rest of the band is onstage in cartoon form, and the avatar of Steven Perry will give you nightmares.

You follow Aerosmith's storied career, from high school act to induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. You get 25 tunes from Boston's finest, from early classics like Mama Kin to later hits like Livin' on the Edge. There are also 12 tracks from acts like Ted Nugent and Cheap Trick, and three samples of Perry's solo work.

Most of the songs are fun to play, but it seems a little chintzy to charge full price for 41 songs – especially because some major Aerosmith hits, such as Last Child and Janie's Got a Gun, are absent.

—Singstar (Sony, for PS3, from Dh199, microphones extra): SingStar, too, offers just 30 songs – although Sony offers hundreds more for download at $1.49 (Dh5.40) each. The range on the disc is a little broader, with some hip-hop (Ne-Yo, Outkast) and dance music (Britney Spears, Scissor Sisters) but rock bands like U2 and Weezer carry most of the load.

The gameplay is simple enough for any karaoke lover. Plug the two microphones into your PS3, then try to keep up with the singers performing on screen: the songs are accompanied by their original videos. You're judged on pitch and timing, so you don't even have to enunciate the lyrics clearly. Played solo, SingStar is kind of pathetic, but it shines as a party game.

—Looney Tunes Cartoon Conductor (Eidos, Nintendo DS, from Dh109): With a mere 12 songs and a handful of "remixes," this game doesn't have much staying power. But you can only put so much on a DS cartridge, so the price is just about right.

Play is similar to Nintendo's 2006 Elite Beat Agents in that, essentially, you tap onscreen icons in rhythm to the music. What sets Cartoon Conductor apart is that it's based on the classical compositions many of us first heard in Warner Bros cartoons. For example, Rossini's Barber of Seville becomes Rabbit of Seville. A painless introduction to the classics, and a refreshing change from the pop soundtracks of every other rhythm game.