Guitar Geek
Music games like Guitar Hero are insanely popular. There are many similar games on the PC that don’t require the guitar controller but instead rely on the keyboard. Guitar Geek is one of them, and one of the best I have played so far.
The game follows the classical approach. Notes drop down the fretboard and you have to press the right buttons at the right time. It is played with four buttons. You can choose between ASDF, HJKL or 1234. I prefer HJKL for one simple reason: Belgium is one of the few countries that use the azerty keyboard layout instead of qwerty. I have no idea why this is, but it can cause serious headaches at times, especially with games that have the keyboard input hard coded in them and don’t allow you to customize it.
The game is quite short but very addictive. It contains six songs and has four difficulty levels: easy, normal, hard and geek. On easy, you never have to play more than one note at a time, on geek you often meet three note chords and fast solos. The songs are all instrumental rock songs and sound quite good. Some of them include Kirk Hammet-style guitar solos. The gameplay is only about hitting notes. You don’t have to strum or sustain notes. Even though it’s a bit short, it’s a very cool game. The animated guitar player during the game is hilarious.
