In fairness, that’s a harsh judgement, but, if this is not their target audience, it’s a struggle to explain the need for the likes of Maroon 5 in this game. The soundtrack contains a slight 26 songs, and with the aforementioned band hardly known for their monster riffs, it has to be asked: is this the best they could do?

Maroon 5 et al. can’t be noted as the main issue, however. After all, Elite Beat Agents had a soundtrack with more cheese than Wallace and Gromit’s Grand Day Out and didn’t suffer any for it. In general, the game does opt for a slightly higher level of song. The problem is that, but for a few exceptions, they’re dull, feel like they’re never going to end, and beg not to be played more than once. All filler, easy on the killer.

Included with every copy of the game is a four-button grip which fits into slot two of a DS Lite (a bit too loosely), or a regular DS after a bit of screwdriver-based fiddling. In practice, it’s not comfortable for any long period of time, or even a short one. The wrist pain can be avoided with a more elaborate sitting position, but the hand cramps remain throughout. Never has the “take frequent breaks” screen been so well advised. At no point does holding the DS make you feel like a rock star, no matter how ridiculous your posturing. In the event, it’s unclear why the grip is necessary at all. The face buttons would have performed far better and been a lot more comfortable, while feeling no less like a real guitar. Novelty over function? On a Nintendo console?

The hardware does at least mean that the game doesn’t have to deviate much from the Guitar Hero gameplay, which is proven to work well. The buttons work as frets, and the strumming is performed on the touch screen, as coloured notes scroll down the other. Star power and multipliers return, too. The only major change to the gameplay is due to the limitations of the hardware.

The loss of the fifth fret button means the game is far too easy, for the most part. Any player competent at medium level in Guitar Hero will breeze through Hard and most of Expert. The problem with Expert comes later on. So many notes are thrown at the player to compensate for the lack of skill needed to operate a fifth fret that it is hand pain that causes most failures. What's more, the lack of tactile feedback on the strumming action makes strumming at speed more difficult than it needs to be. A good workman should never blame his tools, but it's difficult not to feel that if a guitar controller was being used, the note charts wouldn’t cause any problem whatsoever.

Never mind all that - at least it’s portable, right? Isn’t that the point? Guitar Hero on the go! Well... Sort of. Here’s an experiment everyone can try. Find a crowded public place, whack some music on the mp3 player, and then yell “star power!” An interesting reaction? Star power can also be activated by softly blowing (probably not advisable on a packed bus, sat behind a skinhead with a neck like a tree-trunk,) or tapping the star power gauge on screen. This third option is obviously the most public transport-friendly, but far from user-friendly. The guitar can’t be strummed at the same time as activating star power, so getting that double-combo bonus means losing the combo way too often.

The multi-player shenanigans introduced in Guitar Hero III makes a less than welcome comeback here, complete with all the unnecessary annoyances (here called ‘items’) that made the console game such a chore to play. The thinking behind it appears to be “how can we take the music out of a music game?”

Notes scroll as usual, but, instead of star power, playing a series of jagged notes wins an item. Some of these work well, and add a new challenge during play - for example, having the screens flipped or being sent into "hyperspeed" mode, leaves control with the player, and with skill they can carry on playing. Unfortunately, there's also a set of items that just plain irritate. All skill is removed in working around them, and they're there solely to force the player to miss notes. "Sign my..." is bad, but even worse is the fire. Hit with pyrotechnics? Just blow out the flames and continue! In reality the flames are more often blown out by the audible sigh that signals the player being hit with another stupid power-up when they’d rather just play the game.

The fact that song 26 can only be unlocked by playing through every song in duel mode means that most people will never hear it; alas, poor Freezepop. Bizarrely, if you do manage to unlock it, you'll find that 'I Am Not Your Gameboy' doesn't even have it's own high score table, instead being merged with that of the previous song. It's a little like they didn't expect anybody would bother going that far.

It’s clear that judging Guitar Hero: On Tour as a new entry into the Guitar Hero series is unfair. It could never replicate the feeling of playing a guitar with the restrictions placed on it by the hardware. Even just as a rhythm game, though, it doesn’t fare well. The poor soundtrack and average gameplay is bested by games such as Elite Beat Agents and Rhythm Tengoku Gold, both of which feel like they were designed for the DS, rather than shoehorned into it for a quick buck.

As it is, Guitar Hero: On Tour is the most unnecessary entry into a series of games since the Tony Hawk series started shipping with stories. While it looks like Guitar Hero, it doesn’t feel like Guitar Hero and is simply not that fun to play. For people with DSs, there are at least ten better rhythm games on the system, and for Guitar Hero fans, this is nothing but pointless.