Back to the glory days of rocking out 🎸🎶

I started playing Guitar Hero back in 2006 with the launch of Guitar Hero 2. I was stuck on medium difficulty to begin my rockstar gaming journey, but I eventually worked my way up to expert difficulty and became one of the better local Guitar Hero players at my school. I won’t say I was the best, but I was pretty damn good.

Over the years more Guitar Hero games were released, all of which I purchased and played. In 2009 the first competitor released, the original Rock Band game. I always preferred Guitar Hero over the two games, but I had hundreds if not thousands of hours of fun with both.

In 2015, Guitar Hero Live was released and they ruined Guitar Hero with that game. They changed the button layout and attempted to make the game more realistic to playing an actual guitar. For people like me who had spent nearly 10 years mastering the old way of playing the game, it reset my skills. I quit playing after hating Live on PS4. I wasn’t the only one who gave up on the game then. It was the only game besides Rock Band 4 to be released in the PS4/Xbox One era. This means I didn’t have a guitar to play Rock Band 4.

Finding a guitar these days is much more difficult than it needs to be. All of the older guitars are either in bad condition, missing a dongle, or overpriced due to scarcity. The only new guitar being produced right now is the PDP Riffmaster. It has become difficult to secure one of those thanks to scalpers. Thankfully, I was recently able to purchase one at market price without having to pay inflated third-party prices. That, however, still was not cheap. The PDP Riffmaster is $130 + tax. I ended up spending around $140 on this guitar and $10 on Rock Band 4. Clone Hero was 100% free though.

PDP Riffmaster: https://pdp.com/collections/riffmaster-wireless-guitar-controller

Clone Hero Download: https://clonehero.net/

This guitar is extremely well made and compatible with my PS5. It also works nearly flawlessly with my Mac. The Xbox version works well with Xbox but only works with PC and not Mac. Luckily in a PlayStation and Mac user, so it worked out perfectly for me to purchase the PlayStation version.

Rock Band 4 is the only option for PS5 in terms of rhythm games compatible with the PDP Riffmaster. It does work with Fortnite Festival, but I really don’t have the desire to play that. Sadly, there are no Guitar Hero games on PS4/PS5 that work with the Riffmaster.

I had accepted that Rock Band was going to be my only option, that is until I started doing some research. I discovered a community-created game called Clone Hero. This game allows you to basically emulate every Guitar Hero game ever created. Plus you can download a nearly unlimited list of custom songs from community members. It’s pretty amazing, especially since it costs $0. I’m not sure how I didn’t know about this game existing, but it’s honestly one of the best things ever. Most of the old guitars work with it too, so it’s easily accessible to most.

I downloaded over 1,000 songs to my Clone Hero library. This included every Guitar Hero game set list along with all DLC. Plus I downloaded some of my favorite music that I listened to back in my metal phase.

Between Rock Band 4 and Clone Hero, I’m finally able to come back to the rhythm game heaven that I used to be in as a child. Although my fingers and forearms are still having to adjust to the speed and dexterity required for expert difficulty, I’m quickly regaining my former skills. There are some songs on expert that I simply can’t play yet, but I can finish any song on hard and am getting better the more I play. I had forgotten just how good of a forearm workout these games were. I’ll be back in shape for these games soon.

My only complaint about the PDP Riffmaster is that the tilt to activate Star Power feature does not work with Clone Hero. It works perfectly with Rock Band 4, but Clone Hero needs an update to fix that issue. I’m not sure if that’s going to happen, but I hope that it does. Otherwise, the compatibility is there.

I’m going to be using the Riffmaster a lot in the near future. I highly recommend this guitar. If it’s too pricey for you, look for a used Guitar Hero or Rock Band guitar. Clone Hero is a must-play. It even has offline co-op and online play. There is so much fun waiting to be had.

I’ll leave you with some photos of me wielding the PDP Riffmaster. Be aware, it is an absolute fingerprint magnet. Otherwise, just look how sexy this thing is. The guitar I mean.

^{Follow my curation trail}