The new Guitar Hero installment arrived today!

I fired up the new game, got a chuckle at the CGA color scheme, and jumped into career mode at medium difficulty. Knocked out enough songs on each tier to unlock the encore and next level, got 5 stars on almost every song I played, and finished out medium in just over two hours!

So is the game over? Not even close. Once I finish out the remaining songs on medium that I skipped (you only need 3 out of 4 tracks for each level except the last one), I’ll make sure they’re all 5-star and unlock some extra guitar (I already unlocked the coffin and PRO Face-Off Mode).

Then it’s down to business, hard in Career mode. I knocked out a few tracks on Hard, and the songs play a lot faster than they do in medium, so they changed the song tempo between medium and hard in this installment of the game. Very tricky indeed. Some of the riffs are really fast, so it’s going to take some time to complete hard mode I’m sure.

Overall, the game is a great addition of new songs that should keep me busy until:

  • Guitar Hero III

  • BioShock

  • Unreal Tournament 3

  • Team Fortress 2 (part of HL2: Orange Box)

  • Quake Wars

  • Gears of War for Windows

Why does it seem like the PC gaming market completely exploded this year compared to the non-stop barrage of Call of Duty, Battlefield, and other war simulations? E307 was insane for Windows games this year, and the XBOX Live to Windows Games tie in is going to be a sweet deal as well.

Game on!