Frets on Fire
The lights, the pyrotechnics, the screaming fans, who doesn’t want to be a rock star? Frets on Fire is a game from the Finnish developer Unreal Voodoo that lets the PC user to become just that - giving him the chance to play the role of the guitarist or bass player from his favorite bands. While games like this have just recently been appearing on consoles, and been a long time staple of the Japanese arcade, the PC has been deprived of such experience.
Frets on Fire is a rhythm, music game where the user has to match the timing of each note by pressing the correct key and “strumming” the spacebar (or key of your binding choice). This game however is unique in its approach to the controls. You actually hold the keyboard inverted, with your fingers over the function keys, as if it were a miniature guitar. The game also supports guitar controllers and joysticks. However, using the keyboard is one of the great charms to this title. This is not true with all keyboards, though. The best keyboards for this game are the old PC standards - you know, the ones your mom has been using since she got her IBM PC in 1996. They’re the very basic, boxy ones, such as demonstrated by their mascot seen above. However you can hook up any form of guitar controller and use it just fine if you prefer to not use that dusty old thing you had as a child. It’s all up to your imagination.
The game comes with three songs preloaded with many more available for download on both their forums an around the internet respectively. This allows almost infinite replayabilty and the chance for you to play your favorite songs into the wee hours of the morning. However the difficulty curve of this game is sweltering. Since songs are made by other users the difficulty is not always on the level with what you found in the first two packaged songs, thus a song on easy might play like a song on hard. Even the jump from easy to medium on the prepackaged songs is a healthy dose of changefrom what you mastered previously. The song creation is fairly simple, with a clean interface and straight forward instructions. The Internet community is also full of tutorials and help forums for anyone who might get a bit lost while on their quest for the ultimate song.
The games art style is very simple yet feels adequate for this game. There is similarities to the guitar hero series but then again, why fix what is not broken. The background art is a little plain and there are only two different sets however the game play is so quick you don’t have time to really look at it as it is.
This game has no online multiplayer, however it has a “world stats” which is an online scoreboard of rankings from people around the world. This adds a hint of competition that really sparks your resolve to get those ten extra points.
In general this game is no Guitar Hero, but its customization and song possibilities strive over what the others bring to the table, and for a game that won the Assembly Demo Party 2006 game development competition, I wouldn’t expect any less. Overall this game is great fun and allows for some rocking times with friends. The latest release, while fixing a group of bugs, brought on some performance issues. These can range from small memory leaks to crashes. I however did not experience this in my week of playing. You can download this great title at SourceForge, and get songs for the game here and here.
Frets on Fire runs on all operating systems; from Windows 95 through Vista, to Mac, to even Linux so you can get your rock on with your penguin T-shirts.
