One of my biggest complaints about Guitar Hero and Rock Band games has always been the cheesy peripherals. If you’re a fan of these games and have ever in your life held an actual guitar, you know exactly where I am coming from. It’s almost humiliating for a real guitarist to hold a dinky little plastic guitar which neither looks nor feels like an actual guitar. It’s also unnaturally small and light, which is perfect for a second grader, but feels like just a toy in the hands of an adult. You may get a simulated feel of a being a rock star in front of your television with your friends… but you have to do a lot of pretending.
Earlier this year I wrote about the Ashley Rock Axe, a guitar controller that fixed this problem. Now Logitech has stepped up to bat with a controller which dominates this and all others. Read on for the skinny.
The Logitech Wireless Guitar Controller is a very solid controller, in the literal and figurative sense of the word. The controller’s body is solid, with a real wood neck. The frets and tuning pegs are really metal, and the fingerboard is rosewood (like you’d find on an actual guitar). This guitar feels like a guitar in your hands. I put this controller into the hands of a professional guitarist, and he loved the feel of it.
Not only is this a PS3 capable device, but you can also use this hardware with a PS2 as well! This controller has a built in 2.4 GHz wireless USB transmitter and receiver, and it has one of the smallest and classiest dongles I’ve seen to date, which makes your PS3 look much classier when you rock out! You reportedly get hundreds of hours of battery life for just a couple AA batteries, which is incredibly welcome. You also get a range of up to 30 feet, which makes the wireless range wider than what you’ll probably need in most cases.
To add to it’s versatility, in addition to being able to play Guitar Hero games, as the branding suggests, you can also play Rock Band titles as well! This controller features the Neck Slider Bar and Star Power buttons for full compatibility for newer game features available in Guitar Hero World Tour.
Lets talk buttons for a moment. If you remember the Ashley Rock Axe, the only complaint I had was the buttons. They were a little too sensitive and required me to modify them to feel right. They were also fairly ugly looking. NOT true at all with this guitar. The buttons are high quality, and look great! In fact, this whole controller looks great! With the black on black pick guard and body, this guitar feels more rock and roll than any other guitar controller I’ve yet seen. The red LED lights that indicate the controller number are also cool, when you first start this baby up, it reminds me of KIT’s grill from Knight Rider (a reference which makes me sound older than I am.)
This guitar sounds great too. Or… doesn’t sound much at all, which is sort of the point. There isn’t an obnoxious amount of sound coming from button pressing or strumming on this guitar. This is a well built piece of hardware, and very well designed. Another thing I appreciate is the straps on this guitar. Instead of just setting this controller up as a classic guitar, there is a second strap hook on the base for a left handed player. While I’m not left handed, this detail did jump out to me as just one example of the thought that went into this controller.