Monday, 1 September 2008
Right, about . . . well must be 2 months ago now I sold my 360, all I have left now is 2 Guitar hero Guitars and a wired 360 control, but obviously nothing to play them on.
So I was browsing the internet as you do, when I came across Frets on Fire (I know most of you probably heard about it, but I live in a cave), a Freeware version of guitar hero, now just from looking at the icon it looked like it was taking off guitar hero and an iPod advert. Anyways I downloaded it and gave it a try.
Being that it's freeware, I thought it was going to be quite buggy, I was wrong, it runs smoothly and pretty much the same as guitar hero, with the exception that the orange button has been changed to purple, Presumably because the programmer was Hairist against Ginger people (thumbs up to him and an appology to any Ginger readers, but lets face it your weird). With the exception of me being a little confused about that I really really enjoyed playing it.
Here is a Video of it in action, some bloke doing Whisky in the Jar by Metallica.
The USB Xbox guitar can be installed and used rather than F1-F5 on your keyboard and pressing enter to strum (which is a lot harder than it looks), which is another up to it so you really could think your playing guitar hero =).
There is a song editor, which means now you can finally do your own songs on it, but I couldn't fathom how to use it so I have no idea what to say about it other than the fact it is there.
Now on to the negative and there is quite a few things.
While the Programme itself doesn't take up that much space after you have downloaded a load of songs you realise that it is all mounting up, though this is only a minor issue if you have a huge hard drive like myself, it may be more concerning for other people who are not as well off as me to afford a good computer.
Also I tried it on my dads computer, which though not terrible is quite dated now, i got some severe laggage on the notes making it dam near impossible to play, but on mine and indeed most of my other friends I have recommended it to they have had no lag problems.
Alright I love being able to play pretty much any song I want on Guitar hero, I been wanting to play some songs so badly since I first played Guitar hero 1, which I now can, But and this is a big but as it is freeware it means the songs are done by sad act people who do every single note individually, that's fine, but some of the notes are really out of time, in the wrong place, they look like hammer ons but they aren't and so on, this is not the case with all of them, some of them are spot on, I don't want to put you lot off downloading it from and downloading songs from . . . . wherever you can find them, so I applied the oldest of sayings, if at first the download sucks then try find another one instead.
While I'm on the subject of downloading songs, finding a good website to download them from is murder, unless you want to torrent every guitar hero song ever, which you can find so easily it's scary, but i suppose that is something you have to live with if you are cheap enough to skimp out of buying normal Guitar hero and download a free rip off.
Another rant is, the UI is not pretty it is very basic and my tiny brain was not able to settle into guitar hero playing mode for ages, I have read you can download Guitar hero 2 & 3 skins for it, but I will be buggered if I can find them.
One final rantage before I Wrap this thing up (now i really want a subway wrap =( dam you subway), I got so used to Guitar hero stomping on my face that millionth time I failed Cliffs of Dover in expert, but while playing frets on fire it wasn't until I realised quite how bad I was doing at "a gunshot to the head of Trepidation" by Trivium, that i suddenly realised there is no rock bar and that it is therefore impossible to fail a song, at first I thought, YEAH THIS IS GREAT, but on further reflection it kind of takes the fun out of playing the game, Guitar heroes constant spitting in your face when you failed was a reminder that you are only human, but with frets of fire you can suck as much as you want and still think your awesome.
Overall I was pleased with it baring in mind it is not done by a professional company, I would defiantly recommend it if for nothing else the fact it's free, so I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Labels: Freeware, Frets on fire, Guitar hero
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