So, you’re hungry for more plastic guitars? It is sometimes hard to gauge how massive the Guitar Hero and Rock Band series were in the early 2010’s. Everyone had plastic guitars and drumkits strewn about as we rocked out to Black Sabbath, Tenacious D, Dragonforce and a ton of other artists. I can be very blunt about this: Stage Tour is the spiritual successor to Guitar Hero. And yes, even twenty odd years later, it still rocks.

Colored notes come scrolling down the screen as you hit them in time with your instrument or gamepad. Fundamentally everything is still as you remember it, but the real innovation can be found in its customization and quality of life improvements. Examples include difficulty settings that can be adapted to include certain frets, modifiers that disable the need to strum the guitar or disable the kicks on the drum. But there are also a ton of customizable guitars that have been licensed by brands like Gibson and Kramer. The developers were not shy in saying that they have a multi-year plan for Stage Tour with obvious DLC and new songs being released over time. They did breathe a bit of a sigh of relief that a lot of the groundwork for licensing these had already been done in the past, so they didn’t need to explain to Universal Records what the game is like.

Obviously what’s key here are the instruments. For Stage Tour they’ve been developed by peripheral brand CRKD, who you may know best from their Switch controller accessory the Nitro Deck. To be honest, they have gone all out with their lineup here. Thanks to that aforementioned deal with Gibson, they are releasing a series designed after classic Gibson-style guitars including the classic Les Paul and the Explorer. I was incredibly pleased that I was able to bring my friend who plays drums. Her experience was incredibly solid, with the drumset feeling just like her electric set at home. While neither of us dared to grab the mic, the pieces are all there for a truly rocking party. Even better, the folks from Stage Tour told me they are working on an adapter that can be connected to existing electrical drum kits to connect them to the PC version of the game–something that really excited my friend as it meant she didn’t have to set up two drums in her place to play and train.

While I did like holding a decent plastic guitar for the first time in twenty years, I also wanted to test the gamepad support. Frankly I was surprised how quickly I got the hang of it. The left D-pad and top D-pad control the left notes (green + red) and the Y and A buttons control the right lanes (blue and orange). You can add the yellow button too if you want, requiring more dexterity on your end. It took some adjusting, but by the second song I think I may have even played a little better, and you do not need to press another button to perform a strum.

Obviously the price is a big factor here. While Stage Tour will receive a special bundle for a guitar + game, priced around 130 USD (With a standalone guitar costing already 120), that is a hefty investment for those who haven’t bought a rhythm guitar in the last two decades. In all fairness, the weight and feel of those instruments absolutely felt premium, but I am still unsure how willing people are to spend that much money on a game that seems to be primed for future DLC and additional purchases. That having been said, the gameplay still rocks. There is something so satisfying about playing along with actual music, especially if you can afford to have your friends join in on the action. If space and money are no object and you’re looking to jam like it's 2008, then Stage Tour is shaping up to be a no-brainer. I just hope we won’t have another plastic instrument graveyard five years down the line.