For those of you not lucky enough to have experienced Guitar Hero on Playstation comes Frets On Fire for Mac. This fun guitar game lets you feel like the next Jimi Hendrix or Slash by pounding away on your keyboard to some cool rock tunes.
When you launch Frets on Fire, your keyboard is temporarily turned into a guitar and we suggest holding it like one if you want to actually keep up with the songs. The Function keys become the frets that you’ll be using to play out the guitar sections.
To get started with Frets on Fire turn to the hilarious little tutorial with Jurgen. Even though he persists in telling you that you suck and throwing hundreds of notes at you at once, he’ll also give you the chance to familiarize yourself with the controls. The trick is to time your movements with the notes. This can become pretty tough when you get to guitar sections loaded with notes and it’ll really put your coordination skills to the test.
The game has only 3 songs to start out with, but you can import new ones created by the Frets on Fire Community, which you can find online, or the actual songs from Guitar Hero 1 and 2. For up and coming Eddie Van Halens, the editor gives you the chance to compose your own tracks. We prefer modifying existing ones, because it gives you a pattern to work with instead of starting from scratch.
Frets on Fire is really entertaining because you don’t need to know how to play the guitar: you just bang away on your keyboard and come up with something. The hundreds of songs available from the internet will keep you rocking away for hours. Add to that a friendly interface and a hilarious tutorial and you get one of the most original free games out there. Rock on!
