Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock

If any of our future musical geniuses – the next Lennon, McCartney, or James from Busted – learn their trade practising on Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, I'll happily eat the laptop on which I'm typing.

Such a bet has nothing to do with my own personal penchant for snacking on computer equipment, of course. It's motivated by the fact that, now scores of games in, it's questionable just where the Guitar Hero series on mobile is going.

In Warriors of Rock, the music has quite literally been silenced.

Unlike its predecessor Guitar Hero 5, which enabled users to download MP3s of each track before playing them, there's no such option here, with the songs on board – including tracks from the likes of Slash, Foreigner, and Aerosmith – all played out in MIDI form.

Though MIDI has its fans, a reasonable person will tell you that it doesn't remotely compare to the real thing. By taking a step back and barring MP3s, Warriors of Rock strips away everything but the simple rhythm-action mechanic.

There's also the question of whether the game has much of a sense of rhythm itself, many of the notes streaming their way to the bottom of the screen seemingly bearing very little relation to the MIDI files they're supposedly tied to.

Button bout

Regardless, it's your job to tap the number keys – '4', '5' and '6' – as they correspond with said notes working their way down to the fretboard.

In addition, strip notes have to be held rather than simply tapped, and successfully matching with whole groups of notes builds your star power, which increases the value of the points you take home when unleashed with the '8' key.

It's building the biggest points tally that is, as ever, your sole goal, with tracks able to be taken on in three difficulties, and in solo 'practice' play or as part of a long-term quest.

Each of the songs is also assigned to a set character, meaning the bonuses on offer for each one are a touch different.

Tracks played as Pandora, for instance, offer three times the multiplier when star power is activated, although given such tracks have to be unlocked as you go any differentiation has to be earned, rather than being available from the get go.

Pretty much all of these features, however, are staples of rhythm-action games, and the overriding feeling that runs through Warriors of Rock is that Guitar Hero might be a franchise reaching its limits.

Perhaps the game's one saving grace is the fact that it still manages to feel like more of the same, all while actually bringing far less to the table.