Gitaroo Man is a game that, at a surface level, is about a kid figuring out how to develop good self esteem. This is a good thing.
It just so happens that this also occurs through the process of his dog tossing him a magic guitar, turning him into GITAROO MAN. This leads him on a magical journey into outer space where he faces off against many foes, and through the power of music battling develops said self esteem. Its honestly pretty great.
The loop of Gitaroo Man is simple: find a foe, charge up your health meter, defend and attack your foe during a battle phase, and ride off into the sunset through each level's musical finale. Gitaroo man attacks and charges his bar through timed presses of the face buttons must be made while the analog stick is held in the correct direction. During battle phases when enemies attack you must guard by pressing each of the four face buttons in time to the beat of the music. Do this across a course of ten musical stages in order to clear the game.
It is very simple on paper. In execution it is excruciatingly finicky and difficult. Through charm, both musically and through localization, it manages to be an absolutely wonderful experience.
Gitaroo Man is a generally wonderful weird PS2 game. The precision placement of the analog, and the constant requirement to hold the analog stick in distinct directions makes it incredibly off putting to play at times - that Dualshock 2 stick just ain't made to be loved that way. The way later stages require you to jam your fingers over the face buttons to keep up pace with the game can lead to frequent hand cramping as well.
And yet, though I didn't particularly enjoy playing Gitaroo Man, which took about an hour or so, its charm and enthusiasm for its world structures makes it an infectiously fun experience. It's too silly. Too strange. You can't fight it, even your right hand desperately wants to.
To put it succinctly: I AM THE TRUE GITAROO MAN.
It just so happens that this also occurs through the process of his dog tossing him a magic guitar, turning him into GITAROO MAN. This leads him on a magical journey into outer space where he faces off against many foes, and through the power of music battling develops said self esteem. Its honestly pretty great.
The loop of Gitaroo Man is simple: find a foe, charge up your health meter, defend and attack your foe during a battle phase, and ride off into the sunset through each level's musical finale. Gitaroo man attacks and charges his bar through timed presses of the face buttons must be made while the analog stick is held in the correct direction. During battle phases when enemies attack you must guard by pressing each of the four face buttons in time to the beat of the music. Do this across a course of ten musical stages in order to clear the game.
It is very simple on paper. In execution it is excruciatingly finicky and difficult. Through charm, both musically and through localization, it manages to be an absolutely wonderful experience.
Gitaroo Man is a generally wonderful weird PS2 game. The precision placement of the analog, and the constant requirement to hold the analog stick in distinct directions makes it incredibly off putting to play at times - that Dualshock 2 stick just ain't made to be loved that way. The way later stages require you to jam your fingers over the face buttons to keep up pace with the game can lead to frequent hand cramping as well.
And yet, though I didn't particularly enjoy playing Gitaroo Man, which took about an hour or so, its charm and enthusiasm for its world structures makes it an infectiously fun experience. It's too silly. Too strange. You can't fight it, even your right hand desperately wants to.
To put it succinctly: I AM THE TRUE GITAROO MAN.
This game probably caused irreversible damage to my aesthetic sense and how I enjoy videogames in general so yeah it's awesome
Played it just for the sake of Legendary theme and it was freaking worth it
es del 2001 por ende es un juegazo
PaRappa crawled so Gitaroo Man could run
unfortunately will have to try to pick this up again at a later date, was already falling in love with its vibes and gameplay, all the characters are incredibly charming and expressive and the way it actually works is completely unlike any other rhythm game i've played. but much like parappa the rapper, this game cannot work on a modern display due to overbearing input lag, found myself missing on so many notes that should have been hits just because i wasn't playing on original hardware on a CRT, so hopefully i can find this for less than like $100
Despite my repeated assertions that I don't "get" music and that I have all the rhythm of a boulder, I again tried to play an early 2000s rhythm game. See, my good pal Larry Davis holds Gitaroo Man in pretty high regard (we met in a penal colony and have matching prison tattoos of Puma), but I've never given it much thought. That is until I picked up a PS2 and realized I could finally play this - and other games like Parappa the Rapper 2 - without emulation-induced input lag.
However, even with lag out of the equation, Gitaroo Man is an incredibly precise game that is built for more talented people than I. Following "trace lines" while tapping buttons to the beat of the song just doesn't come easy to me, and some of the late game tracks (the Sanbone Trio in particular) are challenging regardless of my own personal shortcomings. I spent a whole afternoon trying to clear that stage, and although I was too weak to clear the subsequent fight against Gregorio, I still consider this an accomplishment.
To cut myself a little slack here, I don't think all of this is on me. There are some large and very abrupt difficulty spikes that will trip up new players, even those who are more experienced with early-aughts rhythm games. I was also playing with a third-party controller that came with my PS2, and I can't pretend to know if the dead zone on the analog stick is any different from a first party pad, though the game is good about locking you onto a trace line roughly 20 degrees relative to where it appears. Still, anytime it twisted around I found myself struggling to keep the analog aligned. I feel like I need to play this game with one of those robots used for micro-surgery...
Which is why I called in a ringer. A Gitaroo Man surrogate. Larry Davis was kind enough to stream the game for me over Discord, allowing me to see everything past Gregorio III, and witness what it looks like to play Gitaroo Man competently. Did you know if you actually hit all the notes you can hear a full song? Crazy, I know!
Leaning back and watching someone else play did at least give me a better appreciation for what Gitaroo Man is going for tonally and narratively. The acoustic Legendary Theme U-1 plays for Kirah is much better when U-1 doesn't immediately start hitting every note out of time like he's never held a guitar in his entire life, and it was nice being able to drink in all the action happening behind the trace line. However, I do feel I missed out somewhat by not being able to experience the penultimate battle with Kirah, during which the Legendary Theme is reprised to a very effective degree. I am glad I at least got to see the rest of Gitaroo Man, though, and being able to see the final fight against Zowie was all the proof I ever needed that I am physically incapable of finishing the game. Lary is a wizard on the X's and O's and was able to do it on a freaking emulator. They say God gave him a gift, but I think he made a deal with the Devil...
Gitaroo Man is delightful. The music is great, it's aesthetics are beyond charming, its story has a lot of heart, and the gameplay is fun as hell despite some uneven difficulty pacing. If you aren't lame and actually know your way around a beat and did not previously suffer from tendonitis that you are still experiencing the longterm effects of, then I think you should give it a shot.
Shelved because I do see myself messing around with it some more in the future, but I also do not expect to ever beat it. That's fine. I can just play the tutorial over and over and pretend I'm a real Gitaroo Man. Got a B rank on that. Pretty impressive!
However, even with lag out of the equation, Gitaroo Man is an incredibly precise game that is built for more talented people than I. Following "trace lines" while tapping buttons to the beat of the song just doesn't come easy to me, and some of the late game tracks (the Sanbone Trio in particular) are challenging regardless of my own personal shortcomings. I spent a whole afternoon trying to clear that stage, and although I was too weak to clear the subsequent fight against Gregorio, I still consider this an accomplishment.
To cut myself a little slack here, I don't think all of this is on me. There are some large and very abrupt difficulty spikes that will trip up new players, even those who are more experienced with early-aughts rhythm games. I was also playing with a third-party controller that came with my PS2, and I can't pretend to know if the dead zone on the analog stick is any different from a first party pad, though the game is good about locking you onto a trace line roughly 20 degrees relative to where it appears. Still, anytime it twisted around I found myself struggling to keep the analog aligned. I feel like I need to play this game with one of those robots used for micro-surgery...
Which is why I called in a ringer. A Gitaroo Man surrogate. Larry Davis was kind enough to stream the game for me over Discord, allowing me to see everything past Gregorio III, and witness what it looks like to play Gitaroo Man competently. Did you know if you actually hit all the notes you can hear a full song? Crazy, I know!
Leaning back and watching someone else play did at least give me a better appreciation for what Gitaroo Man is going for tonally and narratively. The acoustic Legendary Theme U-1 plays for Kirah is much better when U-1 doesn't immediately start hitting every note out of time like he's never held a guitar in his entire life, and it was nice being able to drink in all the action happening behind the trace line. However, I do feel I missed out somewhat by not being able to experience the penultimate battle with Kirah, during which the Legendary Theme is reprised to a very effective degree. I am glad I at least got to see the rest of Gitaroo Man, though, and being able to see the final fight against Zowie was all the proof I ever needed that I am physically incapable of finishing the game. Lary is a wizard on the X's and O's and was able to do it on a freaking emulator. They say God gave him a gift, but I think he made a deal with the Devil...
Gitaroo Man is delightful. The music is great, it's aesthetics are beyond charming, its story has a lot of heart, and the gameplay is fun as hell despite some uneven difficulty pacing. If you aren't lame and actually know your way around a beat and did not previously suffer from tendonitis that you are still experiencing the longterm effects of, then I think you should give it a shot.
Shelved because I do see myself messing around with it some more in the future, but I also do not expect to ever beat it. That's fine. I can just play the tutorial over and over and pretend I'm a real Gitaroo Man. Got a B rank on that. Pretty impressive!
I don't get it.
Gitaroo Man is okay. Those are the strongest feelings I can muster towards it.
I'm left grasping at what people actually like so much about this for it to have the reputation that it does. I've heard a lot about the story, and the gameplay, and the music, and I'm wondering what it is here that connected with others and didn't with me. It's as if we've all played different games. What I've seen isn't worth much celebration, but that hasn't stopped the party from raging on without me involved. I'm lost. What is it about Gitaroo Man that I've missed?
The gameplay is finicky. Timing windows feel just a little out of sync no matter how much I fiddle with the delay. The Dualshock 2 analog stick was not designed for the precise movements that the game implies you're meant to be doing. Every whammy bar sequence where the line wobbles actually fails if you try to wobble along with it; you just keep holding the stick down through the middle of the the line, and the game automatically compensates and wiggles it for you. The Charge/Attack/Final sequences are an interesting touch, but all they are in effect is the ability to prematurely end a song if you play it well enough. It's still an engaging and difficult enough loop to justify playing through all ten stages, but it's not something that impressed me.
I feel as though any piece of Japanese media with a child character in it will immediately have a legion of fans who give it acclaim as "a story about growing up", even if that doesn't apply in the slightest. I don't mean to vaguepost about any reviewers here — Lord knows I probably am anyway, but I've very purposefully avoided reading anyone else's words on Backloggd about this — but everything I've seen elsewhere online is full of people who can't stop insisting that it's about maturity, or the joy of being a child, or whatever. I don't see it. A loser kid gets powers and goes on an adventure where he comes back a little cooler. You couldn't have a more basic Saturday morning framework if you tried, and this one is as simplistic and boring as a wall painted beige. Gitaroo Man gets unduly hailed as one of the most moving stories in video games solely for the reason that there are two good songs planted right at the end of it.
The soundtrack is...fine, mostly? The Legendary Theme fucking rocks, as does Resurrection, but there are some pulls on here that are just mediocre. Twisted Reality, Born to be Bone, and VOID are the especially goofy-sounding songs. Flyin' to Your Heart has the double dishonor of being the worst track here and being the longest by three entire minutes. If we're being honest, the last two songs in the game are good enough to justify the existence of the entire soundtrack, but they're pulling a lot of weight.
And that's it. There isn't anything left to talk about, and there isn't anything here that I've loved. I don't know. I get the distinct feeling of being stupid. Of missing out. But I really just don't see what everyone else sees in Gitaroo Man. I'm disappointed, but it's probably my own fault. Maybe I just had unrealistic expectations. Everyone else got a pleasant surprise, and I created an unattainable standard in the wake of its reception.
I wish I'd gotten the same experience as everyone who loved this.
Gitaroo Man is okay. Those are the strongest feelings I can muster towards it.
I'm left grasping at what people actually like so much about this for it to have the reputation that it does. I've heard a lot about the story, and the gameplay, and the music, and I'm wondering what it is here that connected with others and didn't with me. It's as if we've all played different games. What I've seen isn't worth much celebration, but that hasn't stopped the party from raging on without me involved. I'm lost. What is it about Gitaroo Man that I've missed?
The gameplay is finicky. Timing windows feel just a little out of sync no matter how much I fiddle with the delay. The Dualshock 2 analog stick was not designed for the precise movements that the game implies you're meant to be doing. Every whammy bar sequence where the line wobbles actually fails if you try to wobble along with it; you just keep holding the stick down through the middle of the the line, and the game automatically compensates and wiggles it for you. The Charge/Attack/Final sequences are an interesting touch, but all they are in effect is the ability to prematurely end a song if you play it well enough. It's still an engaging and difficult enough loop to justify playing through all ten stages, but it's not something that impressed me.
I feel as though any piece of Japanese media with a child character in it will immediately have a legion of fans who give it acclaim as "a story about growing up", even if that doesn't apply in the slightest. I don't mean to vaguepost about any reviewers here — Lord knows I probably am anyway, but I've very purposefully avoided reading anyone else's words on Backloggd about this — but everything I've seen elsewhere online is full of people who can't stop insisting that it's about maturity, or the joy of being a child, or whatever. I don't see it. A loser kid gets powers and goes on an adventure where he comes back a little cooler. You couldn't have a more basic Saturday morning framework if you tried, and this one is as simplistic and boring as a wall painted beige. Gitaroo Man gets unduly hailed as one of the most moving stories in video games solely for the reason that there are two good songs planted right at the end of it.
The soundtrack is...fine, mostly? The Legendary Theme fucking rocks, as does Resurrection, but there are some pulls on here that are just mediocre. Twisted Reality, Born to be Bone, and VOID are the especially goofy-sounding songs. Flyin' to Your Heart has the double dishonor of being the worst track here and being the longest by three entire minutes. If we're being honest, the last two songs in the game are good enough to justify the existence of the entire soundtrack, but they're pulling a lot of weight.
And that's it. There isn't anything left to talk about, and there isn't anything here that I've loved. I don't know. I get the distinct feeling of being stupid. Of missing out. But I really just don't see what everyone else sees in Gitaroo Man. I'm disappointed, but it's probably my own fault. Maybe I just had unrealistic expectations. Everyone else got a pleasant surprise, and I created an unattainable standard in the wake of its reception.
I wish I'd gotten the same experience as everyone who loved this.
This is indeed that certified good stuff. Wacky fun rhythm game shenanigans with good ass early 2000s japanese colorful game vibes all around. Only real problem is a huge difficulty spike near the end but as someone who is good at rhythm games and prefers them to be spicy hot I didn't mind, even beat the thing on hard. If you aren't as good at rhythm games then maybe stick to the default difficulty and work ur way up. This game has big "it's a miracle this even left japan to begin with" vibes and i live for that kinda stuff. Deffo a hard rec, bitchin ass game.
This game ROCKS! I mean, it has one of the best OST and aesthetics that I've seen on a PS2 game. Really love the character desings, specially Zowie (what can i say, im a white-haired boy lover).
But oh boi, it is a pain in the *** to emulate it due to it's imput lag.
But oh boi, it is a pain in the *** to emulate it due to it's imput lag.
a game i will never be good at but ooooooooo the music and the aesthetic ooooooooooo
Serotonina hecha videojuego
MASTA PIECE
the moment they reprise "The Legendary Theme" is the moment i remember this game rules
And... oh, I got to tell you, it was perfect. Perfect. Everything, down to the last minute details.
when he said "the real enemy is zowie" i put my controller down and clapped
bring back weird low budget ps2 games!
U1 and Zowie really had a nuh-uh and a yuh-huh off didn't they.
Mojo King Bee seems like the type of guy who would buy only shredded cheese at the grocery store and eat it in the checkout aisle
I honestly don't get the hype around this? It was a cute little rhythm game, but all the aspects I heard people hyping up just didn't do it for me. I definitely agree with the graphics being nice and (most) the soundtrack being good. But the story was pretty cheesy and generic, the most unique gameplay element is the line tracing, and the game itself wasn't difficult. This is ignoring master mode, which from my first attempt at level 1 definitely seems like it would be a challenge, and I might go back to give it another shot in the future.
Overall, a fun way to spend an hour or two, but nothing that blew me away.
Overall, a fun way to spend an hour or two, but nothing that blew me away.
When you are having trouble it's the most disheartening thing in the world. Then you hit a power solo and Develop a god complex. the directional input takes a lot of getting used to but I'll be dammed if it isn't rewarding.
weird little game. shockingly fun and pretty charming
Playable adult swim show with a silly little pooch
Analog sticks are not perfectly responsive, so the fact that the game doesn't always provide visual feedback as to what angle it's reading from you is a very, very big hindrance. With a GameShark code to fix that, this game would be perfect.
the music is genius and this game may change your life a little bit
Crazy ass game that immediately had me hooked from the sheer insanity they present. Stylistically everything about this game just oozes with personality. Everything from the over the top scenarios and occurrences to the extremely cheesy love sequences truly showcase just how unapologetically imaginative it is. Alongside this, from a gameplay perspective, you’re given a surprisingly solid challenge that isn’t made artificial due to input issues that many other rhythm games struggled from. Even playing this emulated I had pretty much no issues regarding input and any mistake that occurred was entirely my fault. Overall, this game is such an interesting title that is undoubtedly worth anyone’s time.
game whips
" it doesn't take much to turn "impossible" into "i am possible." (that`s your dream, calling.)
the heart has wings;
i have taken the leap;
it's your turn! "
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W__p0gCBSZI
the heart has wings;
i have taken the leap;
it's your turn! "
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W__p0gCBSZI
Quite possibly the greatest rhythm game of all time but my god its super difficult. But beside its difficulty its one of most charming games of all time with some of the best music in video games. With Gitaroo Man being a game about how we can do anything if we have a bit of confidence in ourself. I sincerely wished i played this as a kid.