Clone Hero: I Played It Badly, But With Feeling

In the last few months, I’ve been dabbling in retro handhelds and stumbled across Clone Hero. It started with revisiting Guitar Hero on my AYN Thor and reliving my youth.

Then, on an off chance, I came across an unrelated video of someone reviewing the Steam Deck who namedropped their CRKD guitar for Clone Hero. What do you mean? Have you cracked your guitar to play a hacked game?

For clarity, this article is an opinion thingy, not a tutorial or recommendation as such. If you’re not interested in a noob’s take on Clone Hero, just give this one a miss. It’s very blog-like!

I forgot about the game for a week, as I often do, then jotted down a note to look it up. So, hopping over to Clone Hero, I skimmed the key bits, then downloaded a 1GB worth of files to my phone. My phone didn’t like this and said it had been blocked. As my phone stores all my personal stuff like cookie recipes, bookmarked articles to read and nud- noodles, I bailed.

Phone Rejection and Thor Redemption

The Thor can take it. I’ll install it on that. Again, it wanted access to my files, so thinking this was the first step to letting a cuckoo into my house, swotted up on the ‘safety aspects’. Convinced my DNA wouldn’t be uploaded to the cloud, I was up and running, albeit with very dodgy controls.

Clone Hero should be played with a guitar controller, or drums if that’s your bag. I was playing on my AYN Thor – a clamshell not designed to play anything by Dragonforce. After stubbornly avoiding all manuals and FAQs, I worked it out and found my first song – a stoner rock song which was excellent.

I played it in its entirety but felt that it wasn’t as immersive as I’d expected. My scores were in: 0. I missed every note. The first caveat of not reading the instructions: you need to strum as if playing a Rock Band/Guitar Hero guitar. Fortunately, this can be fixed with modifiers in the menu.

Modifiers, Stabilisers, and Other Magic Words

I’d mistakenly thought this would be novelty stuff, or hardcore settings for the pros who play these games (not me), but some are helpful. Like stabilisers. Reconfiguring this made a big difference, but I couldn’t tap along to them as I didn’t know the artists (though some were really good).

Reconfiguring the controls helped—but finding songs to play that I knew was another thing to work out.

Thankfully, it’s quite easy, as there are some sites where you can get songs for Clone Hero by bands you like. I don’t know if this is a real grey area on copyright and legalities. I think you can play the ‘educational purposes’ line to some degree. You aren’t using ‘backup’ copies, nor profiting from it… blah blah blah.

Unlike most online commenters, I have zero law qualifications. So I have no idea.

Nevertheless, I gave a few songs a go by some of my favourite artists – Alice in Chains and Nirvana came to mind as I wanted power chords, not Yngwie Malmsteen. I am not a guitarist; I’m a listener/air shredder. As the Clone Hero community is predominantly guitar pros – whether that’s real or plastic- for a casual rhythm player like me, I was gutted that a lot of the songs were mostly expert modes and only guitar, not bass.

They seemed to overcomplicate some of the songs to be doing more with your fingers for the sake of it. When you’re playing on a Thor and not particularly good at these games, but like playing them, it was off-putting. However, there was a flipside.

The Dog Thinks I Rock

Jumping back in, I was now in the band and performing my tour to the dog, hitting a modest 85%. On Easy. That’s honesty for you, but I was loving it.

Being an older gamer now, I could say the after effects were age, but since I was in my early 20s, I’ve always noticed the ceiling moving whenever I came out of a Guitar Hero game. You know, like those hypnotic things? As a result, while I don’t get sick or disoriented, I can only play in small doses.

But I couldn’t leave it there. Now I had the itch. The controller, while a casual player, is dreadful. A keyboard could do, but that’s not the same, so I wondered whether my Guitar Hero or Rock Band guitars would work from my PS3.

Mods Vs Rockers and Expensive Toys

Apparently, yes, with a few mods – which are primarily from the US (I’m in the UK if you hadn’t guessed, matey)- and through channels like Etsy, they’re bloody expensive. Likewise, the ‘best’ guitar is a specific Xbox 360, and the scalpers know this. I am not paying £99 ($129?) for a plastic toy.

Looking through all the mods and YouTubers telling me you need this, don’t buy that, and I conclude that I should get out my PS3 guitars and try them first. I have the dongles; it won’t cost any more than Clone Hero. It’s free.

PS3 versions have known latency. Will I genuinely notice? Highly unlikely. But because the internet says so, I thought—sod it, I’ll buy a guitar.

Which is the cheapest that doesn’t break? Apparently DOYO break, and CRKD are too expensive. The Riffmaster looks good (well, I don’t like the shape – I want a Jaguar or one of those Randy Rhodes Jacksons), but a previous YouTuber said they don’t work so well with Clone Hero.

The round-up thus far is this:

• CRKD – too expensive
• DOYO – unreliable
• Riffmaster – doesn’t play well with Clone Hero
• Used Xbox Explorers – overpriced
• Existing PS3 guitars (Rock Band and Guitar Hero) – need pricey mods

This was getting frustrating, and I do have an actual full-time life. Allegedly. Which is when I did a U-turn.

Thar Be Other Options, YARG

Doing one more sanity check on the Riffmaster, and there’s something I didn’t notice. There’s some faffing with Clone Hero with adapters and whatnot (the costs will take me way over the price of a CRKD guitar), but out of the box, it works with YARG, a.k.a. Yet Another Rhythm Game.

When I’d initially looked up Clone Hero, YARG was also associated with. As everyone talks about the former as having a good community, I didn’t think to look at it; however, in one of the videos I watched, the presenter said he’d preferred YARG, and the screenshots looked more on par with Guitar Hero.

At this point, I’m about to step into that zone. If I can get it up and running using the same songs, and it is a bit more flexible with hardware for a casual player, then it seems like a no-brainer. The only downside I see at the moment is there’s no dedicated Android version.

Three Platforms, One Question Mark

As I’d mentioned, and why this is filed under handhelds, I was playing this on the AYN Thor. No doubt I can stream it through Artemis, but that latency might be an issue. At least it’s another open source title for Windows, Mac and Linux. I’m going to try it on all three platforms, then waffle with another blog post, then perhaps, just perhaps, I’ll make a useful post on set-up and whatnot.

Time to stretch those digits and see whether Zakk Wylde wants a proxy on his next tour. Or maybe I’ll just stick to air shredding. Your call, Internet.