Have you ever found yourself so absorbed in the music that you can’t help but whip out your best ‘Air Guitar’ and give the performance of your life? I know I have and now with the power of the VR space, I can crank that dial up to eleven and shred with the best in the world.

Play air guitar and write rock history as you rock out to some of the biggest bands to ever grace the stage, including Ozzy Osbourne, The Offspring and Weezer, in Unplugged – Air Guitar, developed by Anotherway and published by Vertigo Games B.V. Produced by the lead guitarist of Guitar Hero, playing air guitar has never felt this real. It’s time to become a legend of rock with Steel Panther’s inimitable frontman, Satchel, as your mentor.

Unplugged is a music/rhythm game that will see you taking an epic journey celebrating 5 decades of rock. Unlocking venues, songs, and gear on your rise to glory. You’ll ‘kick out the jams’ to a very impressive track list of 45+ songs, all the while competing for rock supremacy in the online leaderboards. Excuse me for a moment as I’m just totally ‘wild screaming fan’ out at the fact that my mentor on this killer ride is the ever-amazing Steel Panther frontman, Satchel. Now that’s out of the way it’s time to pick up my virtual guitar and get a-rockin’.

Opening up with a pretty simple tutorial on how to hold, position, and play your guitar complete with some quirky nerd jokes, you’ll be ready for your first gig. Simply grabbing onto the whammy bar will allow you to drag the base of the guitar around till you find yourself in a comfortable strumming position. Grab a hold of the fretboard with your other hand and you’re pretty much good to go. Strumming is achieved very simply by grabbing the nearby floating pick up and down on the strings. Now that it’s time for you to rock out and go wild, the first set of songs set out to teach you more about the notes and chords you’ll play.

You have your basic strummed chords which are nice and easy to achieve simply by holding the trigger and grip button on your Sense controller. Non-strummed notes or pull-offs are done much in the same way except you don’t need to strum these. You will also learn the long notes or vibrato, do this by holding the chord in the right position strum and then moving your hand slightly up and down the fretboard.

Leading you into your finger-tapping face melting solo sections with a super easy button mashing within the fret range. Finally, you’ll be ready to wow your audience with your very Guitar Hero-like powerup, which is activated by knocking it with the headstock of your guitar.

Finishing each set album or gig will see you unlocking new venues, wowing crowds, and gaining fans. Each song has four levels of difficulty from easy through to expert not just increasing the challenge but also opening up more of a range on your fretboard. When playing on the harder difficulty you’ll also find the addition of extra note colours, which you will need to adjust the angle of your wrist in order to hit the notes.

Think you’ve got what it takes to shred the competition? Fight for ultimate bragging rights in the online leaderboards. Shred in style with a great variety of unlockable guitars and gear. Unplugged is most definitely one of those easy-to-pick-up and play-hard-to-master types of music games, with a little patience and practice you’ll be delivering your best ‘tribute’ in no time.

My first few times playing saw me quite heavily focused, looking mostly toward where my hands needed to be for that next passing note, with the occasional glance out to the crowd. Thankfully it wasn’t too long before I was confident enough to be able to take a look around the level and really feel like I was putting on the performance of a lifetime. Engaging in the post-song shenanigans and hyping the crowd after a great performance had me in fits of laughter, as loads of adoring fans’ underwear came flying in from the crowd toward my face. Being a man who likes to dabble musically and play a little guitar and bass, I’d often wondered what this would be like and now I know.

Visually, the game does a fantastic job of putting you centre stage, living out your wildest fantasies of being an actual rock god. Jamming out to this glorious soundtrack, shredding an awesome performance, and wowing the crowd is an absolute audio-sonic treat to the eardrums. Unplugged delivers an extremely well-mixed audio experience, with a very fine balance between music tracks to crowd cheers and at times boos and ambient noise. I really found this of great benefit when it came to the overall experience and thrill of playing in front of an audience.

Unplugged is a very solid entry to the PS VR2 that delivers a really cool experience that is easy to play and hard to master. Unplugged does a stellar job of making it look and feel very much like you’re playing the real thing. A must-have for all music/rhythm game fans that kick things up a notch and fill the void that Guitar Hero and Rockband have left behind. I look very forward to getting my hands on future DLC for this game and expanding on the already impressive tracklist.

Written by: Gary Nielsen