What I like about the whole rhythm guitar/band game scene is the music. Every game I've played, and I've played a few, has made me buy songs on Amazon MP3. And it's fun to pick apart the guitar rhythms and play along with them.
At it's best, Guitar Hero helped me find new music and made me feel like a star while playing it. At it's worst, the character designs freaked me out, and the stiff animations only served to remind me that I was holding a tiny, plastic guitar-controller.
Overall, if I'm into the song, and it's hard, I don't notice the bad animations and characters, they just blend into the background. But Rock Band, not Guitar Hero, has the coolness of being a rock star nailed. But, in the end, it's fun to pretend to play along with these great songs, and as long as I can find a song I like then I'll play any rhythm music game.
The bottom line is that I really liked the game, but my situation in playing it is odd, and I give the game only 3 stars; here's why. My brother-in-law had Guitar Hero I & II years ago. He was very excited about it and showed it off to anyone who would listen. I tried it, and I wasn't compelled by it. It just wasn't fun enough to keep me interested. Plus the whole plastic-guitar thing made me feel dopey. Then, along came Rock Band. The usual band of three friends and I got together to break-in his new Rock Band kit. Playing Rock Band with three friends is a FREAKING BLAST!
Once I'd had a taste of the music rhythm game genre, I wanted more. That brought me to this game: Guitar Hero. Coming back to it, after developing a taste for Rock Band, made me more tolerant of the game's faults and allowed me to overlook the crappy songs and focus on the good ones. So, if Guitar Hero existed in a vacuum I probably would have never played it. But, it's fun now that I'm into that sort of game.
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