Play!: Frets on Fire

Frets on Fire is a game that is similar to the Guitar Hero franchise, made by Unreal Voodoo for the PC. I’ve been playing this game for a while, and find it quite addictive. Okay, maybe not as great as Guitar Hero or Rock Band, but it’s for the PC (Windows, Linux, and Mac) and it’s free. What? Did I say free? Yes, the game is totally free. Head up to their project website and download it. (According to the wiki, version 1.2.451 is recommended since the latest version is buggy)

The game has a quite large fanbase for an open source game. Also, since it’s open source, it has plenty of mods and downloadable songs for you to shred with your keyboard. There’s also support for a guitar controller as well. Well, I’m not going to tell you every single detail about this game, give the game a try itself. To get an idea on the gameplay, watch the tutorial video.

I recommend downloading the songs from Geetar Freaks, as it hosts songs ripped from every Guitar Hero franchise and Rock Band songs as well. Plus they even have the downloadable contents ripped as well! There were also plenty of songs made by users for download as well. A good amount of them can be seen here.

The game also features a Guitar Hero song importer, which allows you to rip off the songs from a PS2 Guitar Hero disk, but it only works for Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero II, and Guitar Hero Encore (for the latest version). Importing those songs takes a long time though. Better just download them from Geetar Freaks.

An in-game song editor is provided along with the game, so if you like a song to be played in Frets on Fire, you can create one yourself. However, making the notes may require some skill, and some notes may not be able to be placed correctly. Thankfully, a better tool is available, EOF.

The game, although good, has a small issue of bugs and lagging in slow computers. The bugs will cause the game to stop, especially when you’re about to start a song. They happen occasionally, but all you have to do is just restart the game. A bit annoying, but not to the extent of hating the game.

I give this game a rating of 8/10

What’s cool

• It’s free
• Plethora of songs available for download
• Plenty of mods
• Portable
• Plays almost like Guitar Hero

What’s crap

• No multiplayer mode (some of the mods have it however)
• With bugs
• The GH song importer takes like forever