The fine folks at TAC (“The Ant Commandos”) were good enough to send along one of their “Shredder” Guitar Hero controllers for us to review. As this guitar has been on the market for several months already we’ll give it a new rundown and see if we can confirm or deny what others have said about the guitar to date. Perhaps more importantly, we have both the current revision of the Shredder guitar and the introductory version from several months ago. What are the differences? You might be surprised!
Style:
The Shredder guitar hero controller is, in style, quite a
bit more attractive than the SG style guitar that Red Octane provides with the Guitar Hero game. It comes in a glossy black with nice chrome accents on the Strum Bar and Start/Select buttons, and the fret board is an attractive silver color that complements the main body of the guitar very well.
The box on our review unit states that there is a “sticker sheet included”, but ours didn’t have them. Of course, it could just be the fact of ours being a review copy, so no points lost there.
One item that might bring concern to some players is that
the Fret Buttons appear to be backwards, at least as compared to the SG reference guitar, but whether this is significant or not will be born out inthe performance reviews.
Score: 5
Performance:
Of course, even the best looking guitar (or for that matter,
any controller) is only as useful as it’s ability to perform the functions it was intended for, so let’s get right to the meat of it. We have two of these units on hand, including the review copy we were recently sent and one I purchased several months ago at a Fry’s Electronics. Both guitars look
identical, though the packaging is quite different. Neither version actually came with the sticker sheet, though to be fair, the original version’s packaging doesn’t claim to.
What’s interesting, though, is that the build quality between the older unit and the newer unit are like night and day.
The older unit’s Fret Buttons stick, pop and crackle and can sometimes screw you up when playing the faster paced songs, especially on the harder difficulty modes. The newer unit’s Fret Buttons are smooth and operate quietly and easily. The older unit’s strum bar clicks loudly and sounds like it’s barely installed in the casing at all. The newer unit’s strum bar clicks
softly and moves easily and without fear that it might fall off.
The older unit’s start and select buttons are a little hard to press because they scrape along the chassis of the guitar and stick a little. The newer unit’s start and select buttons press and release without
issue.
The older unit’s Whammy Bar, like the Red Octane SG controller’s, exhibits a tendency to slip and rotate downward when you let go of it. The newer unit’s Whammy Bar is stiffer and stays in the position that
you left it in. On the older unit, tilting the guitar upward to activate Star Power is, at best, an iffy proposition. More often than not you’ll need to shake the hell out of the unit to activate star power. For those who hate
tilting it up, that’s not too bad, but if you’ve become comfortable with the SG’s method you could be in for some trouble. The newer unit does not have this problem. The tilt-up isn’t quite as sensitive as it is on the SG, but it works well and doesn’t require the user to drop themselves into epileptic fit like the older version.
Both units do suffer from some common design flaws, however. To start with, the Whammy Bar is just too damn long. More than once I’ve either hit the strum bar with the Whammy Bar and knocked myself out of a nicely scoring note or have managed somehow to crush my thumb between the Whammy and Strum bars, neither of which are conducive to a good gameplay experience.
Additionally, the elevated Select button, while a well intentioned idea, simply isn’t placed such that I can easily hit it with my palm without moving my thumb a little further away from the Strum Bar than is comfortable or wise, particularly in fast paced songs. What this means is that I’m forced to either shake the guitar like a madman (on the old unit) or tilt it up fairly far (on the new unit) to get my Star Power action going. While not a fatal flaw (after all, the original forces you to tilt up and doesn’t bother to either
elevate the Select button or place it in an easy to reach position) it does detract somewhat from the experience.
Like the SG, the Shredder guitar (both old and new) has a cord that’s approximately six feet long, a measurement which is, in my opinion, woefully too short. For this kind of game you should have at least a nine foot cord, and preferably twelve, especially for users with a large TV (I game on a 61” Samsung DLP). Luckily a $10 extension cable will eliminate this deficiency, but still, that’s an extra cost on top of an already pricy game/extra controller combo. If you’ve bought Guitar Hero and you’ve bought the Shredder,
you’re already down $110+ not counting tax, and the need for an extension cable just isn’t cool.
Score: 3
Conclusion:
It’s good to see that TAC’s clearly improved their manufacturing process in the time since the Shredder was introduced, but it’s worth noting that as recently as yesterday my local Fry’s still has a stack of the older units sitting in store (an assumption based on the fact that the new packaging and the old packaging are world’s apart and not really confusable with one another).
For those in the market for a Shredder but who’ve read the many negative reviews based on the old version, this can present a problem: which is the old, which is the new? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered, and
there are box shots below. My recommendation is to avoid the older units at all costs and get the newer one if you really like the Shredder style.
In the end, the Shredder is a decent product in its current form, and I’ve aggregated my impressions of the older and newer units to reflect that this is a product which has clearly evolved since its introduction, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are still the older units out there in the wild which could lead to some very dissatisfied consumers. If you can find the newest model you shouldn’t be afraid to pull the trigger (and you can find it now for $29.99, whereas the older model was introduced at $49.99) but do be aware that there are at least these two variations on the product, and if you find yourself stuck with a dud, don’t
hesitate to return it for a refund and go somewhere else to find the newer revision.
Overall Score: 3
This is the older package. Avoid it at all costs!
This is the newer package. If you want a Shredder, get this one!
