10. Guitar Hero – PS2

DDR may have brought Rhythm games into the general consciousness, but it wasn’t until Guitar Hero that the genre was fully embraced by the Western masses. And with good reason – from the control scheme, to the presentation, to the killer soundtrack, Guitar Hero arrived in the fall of 2005 and blew just about everybody away. Critics, dedicated gamers, and casual fans alike fully embraced what would become a sensation.

The game is fundamentally like the majority of rhythm games – play is handled through a large peripheral controller, and the objective revolves around pressing a combination of buttons in time with a song playing in the background. The game begins very simply, allowing for players to become accustomed to the control and idea of the game, and gradually goes to a place of tremendous difficulty. This variable challenge is a key component of a good rhythm game, balancing accessability to newcomers while also providing a true challenge to die-hard fans, and Guitar Hero pulls this off perfectly. 30 songs, 4 levels of difficulty, with a control scheme that is easy to learn, difficult to master, and mimics the idea of playing a guitar as best as a video game could hope to do.

And that’s what I think really makes the game work – it doesn’t pretend to have anything to do with actual guitar playing. It’s a celebration of rock music, of rock culture, of the rock fan. Guitar Hero has a wonderful sense of cheeky humor, from the over the top stage setups to the constant jabs at drummers, the game knows that being a seriously good video game doesn’t mean you have to take yourself seriously. The game gives anyone who’s ever tapped their foot along to a song a way to further engage with the music they already enjoy.

Guitar Hero had a 2006 sequel, appropriately titled Guitar Hero II. The game featured a longer soundtrack and a more sophisticated two-player mode, but was ultimately a disappointment (for me at least) because the list of songs couldn’t hold a candle to the stellar song list from the first game. Let me put it this way, can you envision any video game that prominently features Crossroads, Killer Queen, and More than a feeling being bad? That, my friend, is why Guitar Hero ROCKS.