Loud: My Road to Fame is the latest game by the developer/publisher Hyperstrange. This particular game is one with a focus on a more positive story about following your dreams and pursuing your craft while also being a nearly wholly mechanical game. The story is told at the beginning and end of chapters; the rest of the time, you’re just jamming it out with your guitar.

Loud: My Road to Fame is a rhythm game in line with some of the older, purer rhythm games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. In recent years, there has been a lot more in the way of hybrid rhythm games. There have been numerous things like rhythm roguelite games, like Crypt of the Necrodancer, or rhythm FPS games like BPM: Bullets Per Minute or Metal: Hellsinger. These games have come to dominate what we think of as rhythm games over the last few years, but what happened to the old-fashioned ones where you’re just strumming along to the beat?

There have been games that incorporated some level of rhythm into the game somewhere, like the band practice segments in Night in the Wood. However, those segments technically saw you playing bass rather than guitar, and Loud: My Road to Fame is all about the guitar. It’s actually all about the guitar to some detriment to other possible additions. But the streamlined dedication to nothing but the guitar is also commendable even if it does leave something to be desired at times.

Loud: My Road to Fame is a game where you play the guitar. That’s all you do, and one of the biggest issues facing rhythm games in the modern era has been that we no longer have the kind of peripheral hardware that we used to have. Guitar Hero came with its own special controller in the shape of a guitar. This game, like all of the others since then, does not have a special controller. That would be quite a commitment, but it actually succeeds in doing a rhythm game far better than the few games that have truly focused on it lately.

In Loud: My Road to Fame, you need a controller. You could use a mouse and keyboard, but it’s uncomfortable. So, a controller comes highly recommended. The basic control layout is that you use the three directional buttons that face away from the controller control on the left-hand side and the three face buttons that face away from the controller on the right. So, this means that you need to use up, down, and left on one side of the controller and, depending on whether your controller is a PlayStation or Xbox controller, you’ll use triangle/Y, circle/B, and X/A on the right. The screen, during gameplay, is split down the middle with three rows on either side. You need to hit each note as it comes your way.

The use of two sides of the controller is a much better, and more comfortable, layout than you often find because many rhythm games insist on using things like shoulder buttons and bumpers. It doesn’t feel as good, and it can become confusing that way, although that doesn’t mean that Loud: My Road to Fame doesn’t ever get confusing.

Like most rhythm games, this guitar-oriented rhythm game can take some getting used to, but there are three different difficulty settings to help you with that, and it’s recommended that you go for the lowest difficulty if you’re not as accustomed to games like this. You also cannot play the game at the highest difficulty until you’ve finished each song on the medium difficulty anyway. This is pretty standard for these kinds of games though.

For all intents and purposes, Loud: My Road to Fame is otherwise very much like a Guitar Hero-type game. You need to hit the notes as they come, and the closer to perfect timing that you hit each note, the higher your points will be. You do this so you can build up a streak as you go, and as you build up a streak, you also build up a points multiplier. So, the more on-beat you are, the higher your points. This is all very standard stuff for a game like this.

Furthermore, there are different types of notes. There are standard notes that you tap as they come your way, but there are also other notes. There are long notes that require you to hold the button down, and there are jamming notes that require you to mash that particular button until the note is done. So, Loud: My Road to Fame is ultimately fairly standard in this sense. It doesn’t do anything particularly new.

In addition, once you finish each song, you get a letter score, and only with an S rank on each song on the medium difficulty can you unlock the hardest difficulty for that particular song. Now, Loud: My Road to Fame is at its most entertaining on that highest setting. The notes come at you hard and fast, but it’s a great way to play. Anyone who has played Guitar Hero will know this feeling. Once you’re used to the expert difficulty setting, you can no longer handle playing on easy. It’s just boring.

However, the harder difficulty settings can also be tough to get used to at times. Games like Guitar Hero had an actual guitar controller that you could master, and the game was built around that controller, which meant that it could be perfectly tailored to the game. The same is not true here. It’s harder to focus on two sides of a screen than one vertical track down the middle. This means that your eyes always have to move from left to right to get all of the notes.

Loud: My Road to Fame certainly did figure out an inventive solution to the problem of how to control a rhythm game without a special controller, but it’s not perfect. It’s the best that could be done under the circumstances, and it’s great to be able to get that Guitar Hero itch scratched. For old fans of those games, there really hasn’t been anything else released in nearly a decade that manages to do what those games did so well, but this game makes does an admirable job.

However, we haven’t spoken about the music yet. This is where one of the issues mentioned near the top of the review surfaces. You see, music is subjective, and what one person likes, another will not necessarily like. If like lyrics in your music, you may be disappointed because there’s only one song in the story mode that has any vocals. It’s by far the best song in the game because it has that extra punch. The rest of the music is quite hard rock/punk in composition, and it’s pretty great, but it’s basically all guitar. Also, don’t expect anything approaching metal if that’s what you want, but the game is well done, and it should keep you entertained for a while.

Here's where we get to another small issue though. Loud: My Road to Fame is clearly an indie game with a whole lot of heart, and for that, it’s worthy of all the love in the world. However, you can finish the story mode in 90 minutes. The story mode is pretty good and is very positive and optimistic as it follows Astrid on her journey to become a rock star. It’s fun and it’s sweet, and it’s especially adorable that at the beginning of the game, your character doesn’t even have a guitar. She’s just jamming out in front of her bedroom mirror with a broom in her hands.

The rest of the narrative concerns her experiences as a musician, and it does touch on a few real-world issues like pressures on a person’s weight when they’re in the public spotlight and the general creepy harassment that women can get from men. However, Loud: My Road to Fame is ultimately a game about positivity because each of these issues is generally resolved in some sense. The story wants to be uplifting, not heavy. So, don’t expect any intense examinations of the music industry’s socio-cultural issues; rather, expect someone just following their dreams and, largely, succeeding.

Loud: My Road to Fame is a fun game with a good general control scheme that’s a little on the short side, and it would have been nice to have a few more customization options. Otherwise, it’s a great time for anyone who needs that Guitar Hero itch scratched.
 

Justin van Huyssteen (@LC_Lupus)
Senior Editor, NoobFeed