At a young age, Little Michael had very few aspirations, but he had one very big and important one. He wanted to be really cool, he didn't care how. He wanted to be cool so he could attract the attention of the opposite sex. Little Jeremiah however, lacked drive, vision and ability. So instead of doing something cool, he practiced not practicing his guitar for as long as possible. Then when he turned 8, he used his art degree (real) and his callous, well practiced hands to play the guitar.

The female of his dreams ultimately ended up reciprocating, then rejecting, then reciprocating with our hero Little Walter once again. This says a lot.

Advantages of the game: It has achieved maximal prowess in videogame storytelling and gameplay integrals. I often look back at my own life, think about all the times I did nothing and got everything I want, and then I think about how pathetic Little Earl is with his shitty art degree and fake hallucinated guitar. This game brings me a most great and earnest pleasure.

Disadvantages of the game: The dog speaks. I do not think it is funny or cute or adds anything to the game. Sorry.

What a goofy little game.

There's a fun japanese quirkiness to this game, from the cutscenes and the characters to the gameplay and visuals.

This plays very uniquely to any other rhythm game I've played, and it is pretty fun to get the hang of, but it feels reminiscent of the first Guitar Hero game. Incredible concept, but the gameplay needs fixing. It's too punishing and can feel a little awkward in terms of timing and visual feedback. Not to mention that it's simplicity leads to some difficulty of executing certain patterns, since the game only utilizes one button for it's "attack" phase. When they want to do mutiple fast button presses, it can be hard to time it correctly.

So yes, the gameplay can be a turn off if you can't put up with it's quirks. However, if you can overcome them, you have a great little game. The songs are a treat to listen to and they are all accompanied by really creative battles with weirdos.

It's a very short game, but there is an extra difficulty mode. I did not bother with this as the game was hard enough for me to begin with, but I had fun with my time with it. I'll probably revisit this sometime in the future.

(i like the psp version more)OHHHHHHH GO AHEAD MAKE LOVE TO MEEEEEE
AND THE MASK IT FREES US FREEEEEEE
WITH YOUR RINGLET METRONOMMMMMMMMME
AND I KNOWWWWW WITHOUT THE SLIGHTEST DOUBTTTTTTT
THE CYBORG AND ANDROIDDDDDDDDD
WILL MAKE THE PERFECT MATCHHHHHH
OH BABY, BABY

I coincidentally happened to play this a few days after playing Sin & Punishment for the first time. These are the same fucking game. Yeah okay, one's a rail shooter and the other is a rhythm game, but let's look past the superficiality of "they look and play completely different". Released within a year of each other, amateurish 90s anime dub included, they're heartfelt, passionate spins on their genres in the most ridiculous ways possible. They're each like 1-2 hours long with a nice arcade tightness, and yet that 2 hours is jam-packed with setting after setting and fight after fight. Uncontainable fever dreams. Oh, and you'll be grooving hard to both.

Seriously, the soundtrack here is incredible. It's all just one band? And yet they genre-hop like nobody's business. Does Eurobeat even normally have guitars? The answer to that question of course being: Fuck you, this is a Gitaroo, they're not even remotely the same thing. The band here, COIL, (no, not the one that did "The Ape of Naples") completely understands that, and it's easy to believe that they've become one with the Gitaroo and are the coil pickups facilitating the fucking lightning beams shooting out of the thing. One of the songs here is literally just... Just. The Radiohead song. That song fucking owns.

Gitaroo Man's ONE flaw is that it has too much confidence in the Dualshock 2. That controller fucking sucks and tilting the stick even just a couple millimetres will ruin any inputs here. After like an hour of struggling on the final boss, I booted up PCSX2 (which has recently had some of its input lag fixed? cool) and beat it first try, no issues, on an actually good controller. I read online a bit and saw people having more success plugging in a Dualshock 1 too. Maybe they should've shipped a plastic Gitaroo.

I gave Sin & Punishment a 4.5 too but honestly it's tentative and shorthand for "I think it's fucking amazing but I don't know exactly how it'll hold up for me on replays". Just know that these are the best kind of game. I wish I had a dog that could turn into a boombox.

Edit: Also Master Mode is ridiculous LMAO it's fun though
Edit 2: Upon further reflection yeah this is one of the best games I've ever played. Also I may have unfairly trashed the Dualshock 2 a good amount, it may have just been my setup or me having to get used to using it for this game specifically

A childhood game, as well as a hurdle I had the personal need to overcome for years. I could never beat it, understandably so. Finally I conquered the number 1 game on my list of personal vendettas, and was surprised by how much it holds up. Great art style, fun characters, and an absolute 10/10 soundtrack. Only complaints I have would be the length, as well as the lack of a large deep story. Its a very short game, you could probably beat it in about an hour if you mastered it. This doesn't allow a very intricate story to be told, but it's stuck with me my whole life regardless. It is overall inspiring and uplifting, but it requires a damn steady hand and cool head to get through, the difficulty curves here are steep as hell.