Seeing as the Nintendo DS is continuing to prove such a huge hit with casual gamers, it came as no surprise when publisher Activision delivered one of their biggest casual hits in a portable, touch-screen edition last year. After just a few months, developers Vicarious Visions have seen fit to release a follow up in the form of Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades.

If you’ve played the original Guitar Hero DS release then you’ll know exactly what to expect here. Plug the ‘Guitar Grip’ accessory into the Gameboy Advance slot, grab the guitar-pick-shaped stylus, and you’re flying headfirst down that fret board, rocking out and racking up the points for a huge Star Power solo. And then the cramp sets in and your wrist feels like it’s on fire.

Yes, just like its predecessor, Decades suffers from the DS hardware and its inability to comfortably replicate the guitar controllers of its home console counterparts. On top of the Guitar Grip often feeling like it’s pushing your pain threshold to the max, the accessory is also prone to slipping out of the GBA cartridge slot mid song, causing a string of duff notes, until you realise what’s happened and throw your console at the nearest solid surface. These problems by no means make the game permanently unplayable, but they do make it unplayable for long periods of time and require you to experiment with a variety of different playing positions to minimise the strain on your wrists and hands.

There are just shy of thirty tracks to master as a lead guitarist, bassist and rhythm guitarist across varying difficulty settings. The quality of the music is hardly going to blow you away, particularly when played through the DS’ own speakers, but plug in a pair of earphones and the compressed tunes are perfectly listenable.

New additions to help differentiate Decades from the previous iteration are few and far between. There’s a new roster of songs ranging from the 1970’s through to present day hits and they’re structured to be played one decade at a time (hence the game’s subtitle). Each decade has five songs in total and these are played at the relevantly themed venues in order to earn money and unlock new venues, songs and guitars.

Other than that, this is essentially the same game as last time around, which really is nothing less than expected and, in my opinion, is no bad thing. What Decades misses out on in terms of originality, it more than makes up for it by delivering a wonderfully entertaining and fiendishly addictive Guitar Hero experience which you can play on your daily commute.