We analyze the musical proposal of Unplugged Air Guitar Hero on PlayStation VR2. A title that perfectly simulates the rhythmic bases to live a pure rockstar experience.
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PlayStation VR2 It is beginning its journey with very diverse proposals so that any type of player can enter this new dimension of Sony’s virtual reality, something that we were already able to tell you about in our PSVR2 analysis. Although everything indicates that large productions such as Horizon: Call of the Mountain will be one of the great bulwarks of the new device, technology is also being adapting to other video games that have arrived in recent years and they deserve a place in Sony’s library of available titles from Hull. Unplugged Air Guitar is one of them..
And it is that the tendency to adapt the formula of games with musical instruments to virtual reality It is becoming more and more common, something that we could already see with Drums Rock and that now also translates with the landing of Unplugged Air Guitar on PSVR2. Over the last few days I have had the opportunity to delve into your proposal to carry out its analysis and I have met a game faithful to what it promises, but that falls somewhat short regarding the number of hours that offer other titles with similar characteristics.
+ Pros
Great response in the strumming of the guitar and the pressure of the notes. Very showy on a graphic level. The perfect setting for an indie rock band. It has authentic songs with official licenses.
– Contras
There are moments when the camera does not adapt well. There are few issues compared to other games. Haptic backwards compatibility does not give the feeling of playing a guitar.
Unplugged Air Guitar: price, release date, platforms and where to buy
Unplugged Air GuitarPlatformPSVR2 and PCRelease DateFebruary 22, 2023DeveloperVertigo Games/td>GenreMusicalLanguageTexts in Spanish
Unplugged Air Guitar is a musical proposal dedicated to virtual reality for PSVR2 and PC. The Vertigo Games studio makes a perfect adaptation of classic titles like Guitar Hero to bring back the magic of rock through musical instruments, in this case virtual. With its arrival on PSVR2 on February 22, 2023, it adds to all available devices of this technology to offer a complete and very successful experience. It has texts in Spanish and voices in English.
Learn to be a rock star from scratch
Being a rock star is not easy and that’s why Unplugged Air Guitar wants to introduce you to its universe by the hand, so that you know all the basic principles that a guitarist of a musical modality as vibrant as the one that concerns us on this occasion must comply with. Of course, the gameplay is based on hitting the right notes at the moment they appear on the timeline and strum the guitar in unison, so rhythm is especially important, something we learned a decade ago with Guitar Hero or Rock Band.
Getting into the proposal through virtual reality is an even more immersive experience, because you are facing the public in a small club where you are taking your first steps, so you have to face their cheers or boos depending on your performance on the guitar. Maybe Unplugged Air Guitar sins of introducing too many tutorials in relation to its little contentsince a twenty songs It seems insufficient to generate that playable loop that is so popular in this type of game. There are several DLCs, but obviously you have to go through the box to unlock all those songs and have an experience more in line with what is expected.
Russell John Parrish is your private virtual reality guitar teacher
You have a luxury teacher to learn the basics.
You want to be a rock star. You are about to fulfill your dream and you go on stage, but you don’t even know how to hold the guitar correctly. Well don’t worry, because In Unplugged Air Guitar you have the help of a professional: Russel John Parrish, guitarist of the Steel Panther group.. It will be your guide throughout this adventure, indicating what you must do to hold the guitar well and place it in the way that is most comfortable for you to play all the notes that will follow one another.
This is a very important fact, because what Unplugged Air Guitar wants is to be a mechanical process in which you have to pay attention only to the notes that are happening on the timeline and you don’t have to constantly worry about the positioning of the guitar. However, this is where I have encountered the most difficulties, either due to personal clumsiness or poor position adjustment. As the song progressed, the guitar was tilting, preventing me from having an optimal view of the sequence of notes. In addition, a common pattern has also been reproduced for me on PSVR2 with certain camera jumps that zoom in on the image and that can be fatal in these cases.
You can get a huge collection of guitars at Unplugged Air Guitar.
It seems that, on certain occasions, the device is unable to recognize the environment well and causes these small camera jumps for better positioning. In other games it is passable, but in a musical title in which you must be aware of each of the notes at all times so as not to miss a single one, it can be significant to corrupt the expected experience.
Short On Content And Tour: You Aren’t Going On Tour With Unplugged Air Guitar
The sequence of notes varies depending on the difficulty chosen.
Another aspect in which Unplugged Air Guitar is not quite convincing is its lack of content, something that seems sacrilege for a video game that claims to be a musical benchmark in virtual reality. There are many things that the Vertigo title does well, and that is that it is really fun, addictive and its difficulty levels will make you train your wrist for its devilish sequences of notes. However, its lack of a larger compendium of musical themes causes all these virtues to be diluted once you have completed them all and you have to repeat to be able to unlock some of the cosmetic objects that are achieved with good scores.
And even here it doesn’t stand out too much, since those benefits from increasing the number of fans who support you in your career for being a rock star are small and practically insignificant. Simply you will be able to modify the appearance of the guitar or the pick with which you play and little elseso the incentive to continue playing to explore all the options that the title can offer is not particularly attractive either.
There is a great degree of detail in the guitar.
There is something that does manage to add a unique note to Unplugged Air Guitar and that is that the rest of the titles of this genre are usually based on rewarding the good work of the player with a multiplier of points, while here different power ups are introduced to cause certain effects for a certain time. These enhancers appear on the screen and you have to hit them with the guitar neck, as has been done all your life, producing effects such as double the score or the number of fans supporting you. In addition, at the end of the theme you can cheer them up by making the characteristic rock symbol and receive gifts that every rocker dreams of: bras, panties and briefs. A marvel.
Very visual on a technical level, although without too much effort
Unplugged Air Guitar opts for minimalist and dark environments.
We are ending this analysis with the technical part, although there is not much to scratch in this regard. Unplugged Air Guitar bets on minimalism, since you are a beginner at this public playing thing and does not try too hard to create a very detailed environment. The appearance of the guitar and the notes you must play are much more important than the environment itself, which is nourished by that characteristic aspect of a dark joint where the most indie bands on the music scene play. Once you advance, you do place yourself in much larger scenariossince everything depends on your number of fans, but do not expect something as detailed as a football stadium or anything like that, since it is committed to the purest minimalism.
However, betting on the fluidity of the game, which is the most important thing, it should be noted that there is never a time when the response of the fingers to notes or strumming of the guitar is compromised, since everything is transferred to a thousand wonders so that it does not hinder your performance, so that any error will be the consequence of your actions. Something that has left me colder is the ability of the PSVR2 controllers to produce a realistic effect through the haptic feedbacksince this could be one of the simplest cases, using a vibrato that perfectly simulates the strumming of the guitar and that I have not noticed too much. It is still a pending account of the current generation, although it is true that in virtual reality it seems better adapted than in the console itself.
Final evaluation of Unplugged Air Guitar
Unplugged Air Guitar is a good music game, probably the one that comes closest to the sublime experience that Guitar Hero and Rock Band gave us in their day. Living this experience in VR is the closest I’m going to get to becoming a rock star, so Vertigo’s work is great to be able to translate this universe into such complex technology. With all the virtues of PSVR2, it is a title that adapts well to short games and enjoying a meeting with friends.although its small number of themes and the small technical problems they have can mean that this fun has a shorter journey than expected.
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