Replacing Guitar Hero’s fun with pain

The whole fun of the Guitar Hero series of games is being able to hold an almost life-size guitar while playing. That’s the main reason you’d never want to play using a standard controller, even though you could. Where’s the enjoyment in that?

The drawback has always been that the performances have to take place in front of a TV, making the game not very mobile. The new, fully portable Guitar Hero on Tour rectifies that problem but creates some others in the process.

While the producers get an A for their effort to make the game playable on a Nintendo DS with its add-on fret adapter, the tinny sound and painful control setup make this one rock more like Chicago than Nirvana. Guitar Hero fiends desperately needing an on-the-go rock fix will like it, but everyone else will find it a pale imitation of the previous versions.

First the controls. A dongle is attached to the DS’s lower slot (the one usually reserved for Game Boy Advance cartridges) with the same four colored buttons that have to be pressed to play the “notes.”

Gamers hold the DS sideways and strum the touch-screen side of the unit with a pick-like stylus. While this is probably the best way to achieve portability, it might also be the most painful.

Even with careful adjustment of the hand strap, it’s nearly impossible to get comfortable. Fingers slip around during intense game play and soon get sore. Rocking out shouldn’t hurt.

And then there is the sound. Due to the limitations of the DS, the music sounds like it is coming out of a cheap radio. Even with headphones, “Jessie’s Girl” is a whole lot less desirable.

Grade: C+ (crackling knuckles abound!)

Details: Nintendo DS platform; $49.99; rated Everyone 10+ (lyrics).

Extreme needs to tone it down

Even today, 30 years after its initial release, there is something wonderful about the simplistic beauty of the little low-res aliens that populate Space Invaders. Cute yet menacing, their invasion it was your job to stop still remains a classic.

While it’s nice to see it get a new release to create a new generation of fans with Space Invaders Extreme, the complicated, distracting backgrounds behind the simple battle hinder the game’s fun. Perhaps they made it too extreme.

Take Level 3 from the Nintendo DS version, for instance. In it, a bright white jellyfish slowly swims in a sea of green. Below it, a long, unreadable stream of letters fly by. On top of them are a long list of words that light up to indicate when certain bonuses have been met.

And that’s just the background; never mind the wave after wave of differently colored aliens who, after being shot, send a dash of yellow light to the scoreboard on the side of the screen.

Luckily, there are options to tone down most of the extremeness (the background can be dimmed and the motion can be turned off), but still, the overkill of imagery makes what should be simple pleasure into something maddening.

Still, the different weapon power-ups and the addition of varied formations and boss battles at the end of each level make it worth playing.

Grade: B- (fewer bells and whistles would be better).

Details: Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable platforms; $19.99; rated Everyone.