Guitar Hero on Tour: Modern hits has now hit the DS, and surprisingly this is the third title in the series to hit the system in a year. So what does this new title bring that the other two didn’t or is it just more of the same?

 

Unfortunately for all you DSi owners out there, this title does no actually work on your machine due to it’s lack of a GBA slot to plug the guitar peripheral into. Thankfully we actually still had our old Ds Lite kicking about so for the purpose of this review we were ok.

 

As with the previous games, Modern Hits has you play through the game using the guitar peripheral to hit the notes while simultaneously strumming using the pick stylus. As with other versions of this game you are able to use star power, duel and use your whammy bar to add some style to the proceedings. Being the DS version there is obviously quite a few differences to take advantage of the systems unique features, therefore to activate star power you can shout into the mic, you can also sign autographs using your stylus and restring your guitar during battles and also blow out fires caused by stray pyrotechnics.

 

 

Modern Hits brings more than 25 songs including songs from Lenny Kravitz, Avril Lavine and our personal favourite, Tenacious D. The songs are obviously of mixed difficulty and this can be tweaked more when you choose the level of your skill at the beginning of the game (Easy, Medium, Hard or Expert). When playing you can also choose to play as either the Lead Guitarist or the Bass and Rhythm Guitarist which obviously gives you a different style of play.

 

One of the cool features included in the cartridge is the ability to play multiplayer, here you can Duel, play Co-Op and also Face-Off, however the best feature here is the ability to Song Share, which allows you to share songs from the previous titles in the series meaning that you can have access to over 50 songs during play.

 

The single player experience is obviously the main bulk of the game and it is actually quite well structured. The main mode here is Career Mode, this allows you to play at various venues and gain fans. As you grow in popularity and more fans appear you will be given fan requests, these are basically challenges you must complete to become even more popular and unlock new venues. Fan requests include completing tasks such as hitting Multipliers or getting 100 note streaks, this is a interesting addition to the game and certainly adds something different to the way the series is normally played.

 

As you would expect from a Guitar Hero game the presentation is very polished, the screen can become quite cramped with all the different features, however it works really well and looks quite good. Unfortunately the songs don’t sound great through the DS speakers, however plug in your headphones and this is when the experience really draws you in thanks to the great quality of the songs.

 

Modern Hits is the third game in the Guitar Hero series for DS and while it doesn't really make many changes to the structure it is still a very fun game to play. More of the same is not always a bad thing, although it looks like next time the series will have to evolve because with the new DSi it seems that Nintendo’s handheld is outgrowing it.