A Guitar Hero controller designed for the rock Gods themselves.

Guitar Hero is all about rocking out. It's about letting yourself become a wild, raucous rock star in your living room. It's about forgetting everything else except shredding. Why, then, should you limit yourself to a five-button piece of plastic that's tethered to your PS2? The Ant Commandos have come to the rescue by offering the Double Range Freedom V Wireless Controller, a stylish guitar accessory that combines wireless play, stylish design, and more buttons to create an even better Guitar Hero experience.

Included inside the box is the guitar, a strap, a wireless receiver, a set of stickers – the standard Guitar Hero gear – and a screwdriver. The screwdriver is to open up the battery cover. I'm not sure why they needed to screw in the battery cover, as it does add an annoying extra step to changing the batteries. To give the Ant Commandos some credit, however, the screwed-in battery cover is very secure and will not rattle around like cheaper battery covers often do.



The first thing you notice about the Double Range Freedom V Wireless Controller is the “double range”. No, this doesn't refer to a larger range for its wireless connection, although the controller sports a more than adequate range (I wasn't able to test it on a football field, but I was able to play with no trouble from all the way across my room, a distance about three times as long as a standard controller's cord). Rather, the “Double Range” refers to the ten frets on the fretboard. Besides the normal five frets, there are five smaller frets located at the end of the fretboard closest to the “string”.

At first, these extra frets initially left me skeptical. It seemed to me that the “Xtended Fret Button Array” was included for little reason other than as marketing hype and a way to make you feel cooler while playing. However, once I started using them, I discovered their usefulness. These fret buttons are much tighter and responsive than the normal frets, making it much easier to pound your way through blazing fast solo parts without tiring yourself out. It would have been nice if the buttons were larger, or if it were easier to know where your fingers are (unlike the normal frets, there is no bump on the third fret), but once I got past the initial adjustment I found that the extra frets really did improve my game.