Guitar Hero Controller Report

{sidebar id=1}Activision has made many strides to make their Guitar Hero franchise more accessible with each iteration that has been released. There have been enough entries as well with the series now seeing multiple releases in a single calendar year. One of the best additions came during Guitar Hero World Tour: the addition of a beginner’s difficulty. This setting allows you to simply press any of the buttons and strum in time to one multi-colored bar.  This is obviously geared towards making the games more accessible to the masses and the casual audience who just want to be able to play through a few songs with their family and friends and not have to worry about trying to master the skills required to play at a higher level.

Despite these beginners’ settings, there is still one massive barrier to entry - the guitar controller.

There is a certain amount of precision and dexterity required to both strum and use the red, green, blue, and yellow buttons on the neck. Even one of these actions could prove difficult for someone with reduced mobility in their hands. The fiddly motions required to strum and to press the hardly sizeable colored buttons. This does certain prove a problem to making the game completely accessible despite Activision’s best efforts to make a more fun, laid back sociable gaming experience.

However this is where Enabling Devices come in with their Guitar Hero Controller, which retails at $249.99 and contains the following: Control Center, Les Paul Guitar, and Two Playstation 2 software packages: Guitar Hero World Tour (with beginner level) and Guitar Hero III Legends of Rock.

The package is currently only available on Playstation 2, once again proving itself to be a accessible technologies best friend with its versatility and ease at which devises can be made to work in unison with the console.

What does this all mean and what do you get for your money?

Well let's start with the basics; the package comes with one Les Paul Guitar, which can be used as standard so you are not losing any functionality and anyone who wished to simply pick up the guitar and rock out is perfectly able to. The two games included are not the most recent games but World Tour does come with a good selection of songs from a variety of different genres of music. Legends of Rock offers a more rock orientated set list but there is still plenty of fun to be had. It is worth noting that World Tour is the first in the series to also include support for singing if that’s something you care to try out. The microphones required can be picked up relatively inexpensively and requires no input other than your voice!

The Control Center is the real meat of the product and is a series of switches each corresponding to a different color on the guitar. Where the real magic happens is by pressing the button the Playstation knows that you’re both strumming and pressing the button. This opens up the game to pretty much anyone and there are examples to demonstrate this on the Enabled Devices video with a man called Ben who has cerebral palsy pressing the buttons using a mouth piece.

There is also a brief interview with him and he is clearly responding positively at the chance to be able to play a game otherwise inaccessible to him. This shows the very real results of getting such technologies working, whilst there’s some people who will no doubt feel rewarded for technically getting the device to work, the real reward for all the hard work is seeing it being put to use by people who are clearly enjoying an experience.