Neither game matches the excellent choice of songs from the original Guitar Hero. This is admittedly shamefully stingy, but since I hated two-thirds of the songs in Guitar Hero II and liked the majority of those in Encore, I easily prefer the latter. The main criticism of Encore is that it has less than half the songs that Guitar Hero II does even though it costs just as much. Twisted Sister’s “I Wanna Rock” isn’t something I would put on my MP3 player, but in the context of the game it is really a lot of fun to bang out its crunchy chords and wailing solos. I am not a metalhead by any means, but as heavy metal goes there are some pretty decent songs in the game. This is tricky, but it amplifies the feeling that you are really playing guitar.Īs with Guitar Hero II, Encore’s song selection is weighted toward heavy metal, with the likes of Quiet Riot and Scorpions, although there are a fair number of pop tunes that include “We Got the Beat” by the Go-Go’s and The Vapors’ “Turning Japanese” and even a token punk song from the Dead Kennedys.įans of so-called “mope rock” bands like Depeche Mode or the Cure will be depressed to learn that these bands have nothing to do with music in the ’80s, since none are included. The game is much more challenging when you start using the fifth button, which forces you to slide your fingers up and down the fret board. In easy and medium difficulty modes, only the first four fret buttons are used. And just as with a real guitar, you can hit notes by hammering your finger down or pulling it off a fret. Play it incorrectly and you’ll get an unpleasant squawk.ĭuring the long sustained notes you can increase your score by wiggling the whammy bar to add vibrato to your sound. Hold down the specified button and press the strum bar at the right time to hear your guitar sing out. The game displays a virtual fret board on screen indicating which buttons to press. Once again, the player uses a plastic guitar-shaped controller with five fret buttons, a strum bar and a whammy bar. The third game in developer Harmonix’s Guitar Hero series, Encore is essentially Guitar Hero II, the previous sequel, with different songs and a few visual references to the 1980s, like studded leather bracelets and anarchy symbols. While Lilet gets to relive the same five days, the rhythm game Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s lets the player relive an entire decade. In spite of these inconveniences, GrimGrimoire’s colorful design, engaging gameplay and intriguing story make it consistently entertaining. There are a few basic shortcuts, but if you want to go to a base to create more creatures, reclaim wayward soldiers or find workers that are twiddling their thumbs, your only option is to scroll around the map and look for them. Since the player is sending large numbers of creatures all over the school, you would think GrimGrimoire would offer some way to easily find and select your troops, but here the game falls short. Battles are won most swiftly if you choose just the right combination of troops to take out your enemies. Once you have control of monstrous dragons it is tempting to let them do all the heavy work, but it is surprising how effective an army of fairies and unicorns can be. Whenever Lilet heads out into the school’s hallways she finds them overrun by hostile creatures whose bases she must wipe out, sending out scouting parties to clear the dark hallways. But judging from its ratings, “Daybreak” is unknown to most people, so it might be easiest to think of GrimGrimoire as “Harry Potter Meets Groundhog Day.” While the game has been described as similar to the movie “Groundhog Day,” it actually is much closer in spirit to the short-lived TV series “Daybreak,” which also involved a time-reliving protagonist unraveling a mystery. Restarting the week also allows Lilet to learn more about the mysteries of the magic school - which is inhabited by a murderous ghost and the entrapped soul of an evil Arch Mage - and to figure out the chain of events that leads to the school’s destruction. She lives those five days many times as she tries to prevent the disaster.Įach time Lilet starts a new week she retains all the knowledge she has acquired, so while at first she can call up only a handful of creatures like elves and fairies, eventually she is surprising her teachers by spending her “first day” in school summoning unicorns, demons and phantoms as well as large high-powered creatures like dragons. Lilet discovers her teachers dead and she is about to join them when, miraculously and mysteriously, she finds herself back at Day 1. The sorcery teacher is literally a devil, while the alchemy teacher has been turned into a lion by some curse, although he is too concerned with his research to bother searching for a cure.Īfter five days of lessons, something goes horribly wrong. Lilet learns magic from the school’s eccentric professors.
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