Guitar Rock Tour 2, Gameloft’s follow-up to the successful Guitar Rock Tour, as been released in the app store. Boasting more stages, characters, and songs, this “tap tap”-style title brings the rock and then some.
Do you just wanna rock? Well, if you just can’t wait, jump into Quick Play mode and you’ll be shredding in mere moments. If you wanna be a rock star, launch Career mode. Here you can choose a character and sign your megastar contract. Choose whether to hit up Easy, Medium, or Hard mode and you’ll hit your first stage in New York. Do well there and it’s off to Miami, Detroit, Tokyo, Egypt, and beyond. Choose from the unlocked songs and grab your guitar or drum kit and get to it. The game screen shows a stage and band rocking out to a crowd. Using the guitar, a guitar neck sticks out from the stage with 4 strings terminating in colored discs. Similarly colored discs will slide the length of the strings toward the screen bottom. When the discs line up, tap them to play the note. Discs with tails are notes that must be held until the tail runs out. Accuracy is key. If you miss, the guitar will sound out of tune as you drop the notes. Run a hot lick and you’ll increase your multiplier and fill your pyro gauge, which can then be activated by flipping the switch or shaking your iDevice. It’s pure musical nirvana.
When using the drums, you’ll tap on either of two drums or two symbols, based on the color and positioning of the discs streaming toward you. You’ll have to think fast and move quickly to keep up.
There are tons of awards to be earned, from point-based achievements to cryptically-titled ones, such as Hard As Ice. Gameloft has even equipped you with local wi-fi multiplayer functionality, so that you can go head-to-head against your friends for bragging rights. With its OS 3.0 compatibility, you are also able to download new songs right from your iDevice, though it does come equipped with 18 tracks, most of which are fairly popular rock songs (Sweet Home Alabama, anyone?). There is even a decent tutorial for your instruments and for multiplayer mode. Integrated Twitter connectivity is also included so that you can tweet your successes.
Graphically, the game looks great. Of course, you don’t get to see much of the stage action as you become very focused on the streaming notes and your timing. The characters display a lot of the stereotypical rock star antics. If you get the chance, it’s pretty fun to watch. Sounds are great. The audio quality of the tracks is fine, as long as you hit the right notes. Controls are mostly tap-based, though the pyro can be activated by shaking. In all, the game is a lot of fun. The drumming took us a bit of time to get used to, but the guitar was pretty easy to pick up and play. The selection of songs is good, too, though we were unfamiliar with a couple of the tracks.
Replay value is high, as many of these songs never get old and there are enough achievements to keep you coming back for more. Also, hitting 100% accuracy on the songs can be quite tricky, especially on the more difficult modes. Guitar Rock Tour 2 is a great follow-up to the original, and it’s certainly on par with, if not better than, any of the other Tap-to-the-Tune games available on the iDevice. Guitar Rock Tour 2 cranks it to 11 with a solid 4-Dimple medley of greatness.
Guitar Rock Tour 2 gets our AppSmile 4-Dimple rating:
