Games are recommended on a four-point scale like those "strongly agree/disagree" questions you get on surveys. This scale goes "Strongly", "If you like this kinda game", "Watch it online", and "Avoid at all costs" from best to worst. It's one part how likely I am to replay the game and one part how likely I am to recommend it to fans of that game's genre. I'm not in the business of objectivity, just what's fun to me. No reason to play a game if you're not having fun, yeah?

[#] Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s (Activision, 2007)

I've described Guitar Hero: Rocks the 80s before as the best Guitar Hero II custom disc ever made. I can definitely see why people felt short-changed about this at the time. This was Harmonix's contractual obligation game, and after GH2 took off, their heart was in it for Rock Band instead, which expanded plastic guitars into the whole band. 80s was produced by about the same B-team that worked on GH2 DLC for the Xbox 360 version, with a lot of the same (admittedly mostly unnoticeable) chart glitches and broken lighting events that plague that batch of songs as well (and a few similarly obscure engine bugs fixed, in fairness). Yet, even still—it's GH2 with a new batch of songs, and that's more than good enough for me.

As the name implies, all thirty of these songs come from the 80s—sorta. There's two 80s 70s covers (White Lion's cover of "Radar Love" and Krokus' of "Ballroom Blitz"), and the requisite Homestar Runner joke track. You can imagine the hair is huge and heads are banging, with songs from Quiet Riot, Accept, Twisted Sister, Anthrax, and Winger, though you do get plenty of power ballads from Scandal, Eddie Money, and A Flock of Seagulls and thankfully some more oddball tracks as well (.38 Special! "Hold on Loosely"!) There's also an increase in master tracks this time, though most are still covers. I really would've liked to see more college rock in the mix, maybe some early R.E.M. or Pixies or The Replacements, but that's my 90s bias talking. It's a fine setlist.

I mean, what more is there to say? The characters have all been given leopard print and neon hair extension makeovers, the venues are recolored, and aside from a few obscure bugs, 80s effectively plays the same as II. That's a really good thing, to be clear—still the best-feeling rhythm game engine I've ever played, still same great practice mode, same great co-op play, and again aside from some chart oddities (ask any Guitar Hero diehard about "Ballroom Blitz"'s bridge and they'll cough up a lung in front of you), it still plays great. At the time, I can imagine wanting more, but these days, taken as it is, 80s is still a ton of fun to breeze through.