Fret Nice: Review

Fret Nice introduces a fresh concept, mainly something to do with that guitar peripheral that’s been gathering dust since you got bored of Guitar Hero/ Rock Band. It’s a nice idea, because it gives you something to do with that guitar controller that’s been in the corner since the relatives came round for a rock session at Christmas, but it just doesn’t work all that well. Playing with the guitar like the game intended is clunky and tilting the guitar to make your character jump is frustrating to start with. I found myself tilting multiple times just to get my character to jump once. Then the jumping has a delay from when you finally manage to tilt the guitar And playing riffs to dispose of the enemies within the game just turned into a mashing of buttons, you don’t actually sit there and play an accurate riff like the game tells you to, enemies are disposed of from a random riff usually anyway. The problem is compounded as the game doesn’t improve much when played on a controller, the jumping is less, but still clunky and the riffs are the same mashing of buttons. This all leads to a game that isn’t as smooth and fun as it could have been.

However, the game has a nice style and graphics with funky customisable characters and nice looking levels. Everything is really colourful and artistic, which at least presents the game well. The character customisation options are probably one of the best parts of the game. You can make your quirky little character look like a proper rock star with funky pants and creative guitars, which is a nice touch.

The game was quite fun to play for the first hour or so of play, but the level progression system is just frustrating. To progress to the further levels, you are required to obtain medals in previous levels for doing various things like beating a time or defeating a certain percentage of enemies. This is where the game gets repetitive. The levels just aren’t interesting enough to keep you going back to get different medals, especially while enduring the aforementioned clunky controls. I couldn’t finish the game because of this. It didn’t make me want to go back formedals, like for example, Trials HD did. It was enjoyable to start with, but then quickly got boring and I found myself putting the guitar controller back where it was before: gathering dust. This game presented a nice concept but just simply didn’t deliver, it quickly loses novelty, and you’ll soon be left wondering why you didn’t save your Microsoft Points for another piece of downloadable content.

Review by Daniel Brookes