CRKD Guitar 1
Image: Ollie Reynolds / Nintendo Life

Depending on who you ask, the rhythm game genre — specifically games which utilise instrumental peripherals — is either dead, or, well… nearly dead.

If you happen to fall into the latter camp and are sick to death of playing Fortnite Festival with either a bog-standard pad or CRKD’s rather middling NEO S pad, the very same company has unleashed a pair of proper guitar controllers that you might want to check out. And y’know what? They're awesome.

Born via a collaboration between CRKD and Gibson, the guitars come in two flavours: the Tribal Encore Edition and the Blueberry Burst Pro Edition. Priced at £109.99 / $114.99 and £119.99 / $124.99 respectively, both variants are also available as an officially licensed Xbox product – add an extra tenner onto each price for that one if you're in Microsoft's ecosystem.

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The obvious difference between the two is the colour design, and the Blueberry Burst Pro Edition looks really lovely. It’s modelled directly off Gibson’s Les Paul with the Blueberry Burst finish, though CRKD has opted not to include a white scratch plate here. Some folks like scratch plates, some don’t – I happen to dislike them vehemently, so I appreciate its absence. And let’s face it, you really don’t need one for a guitar controller.

In the box, you get the guitar itself along with a black strap, a USB-A to USB-C cable, and a wireless dongle hidden within a small compartment disguised as a pickup above the strum bar. The guitar itself comes with the neck detached from the body, so you simply need to line it up and slide it into place until it clicks. You can just as easily remove it by holding a button on the back of the neck and pulling it away from the body.

I specifically mention this because CRKD has made it so you can customise your guitar necks. If you want to use the Tribal Encore Edition but prefer the neck from the Blueberry Burst Pro Edition, you can swap them around provided you own an additional neck at £39.99 a pop (there’s also a ‘solo’ neck with five extra fret buttons further down the neck available for pre-order). But what’s the difference? They look the same, right?

Yes, they look the same, but the Blueberry Burst Pro Edition is priced slightly higher thanks to two key improvements: the mechanical fret buttons in the neck and the Hall Effect strum bar on the body. The fret buttons feel slightly clickier than the standard buttons on the Tribal Encore Edition, while the latter feel slightly more authentic to the guitar controllers you might have used back in the Wii60 days. In terms of actual performance, though, they both function almost identically in practice.

Meanwhile, the strum bar offers zero mechanical feedback on the Blueberry Burst Pro Edition. Instead, CRKD offers up haptic feedback via a small, subtle vibration when the bar is moved in either direction. You can customise this via the CRKD app too, so if you want the vibration to be a bit more intense and noticeable, you can crank it up. The strum bar on the Tribal Encore Edition includes the classic mechanical ‘click’ that you might remember from older guitar controllers.

The default setting on the Blueberry Burst Pro Edition didn't feel nearly satisfying enough for me, but after increasing to its maximum, it felt pretty good. It might be nostalgia talking, but I preferred the mechanical 'click' of the Tribal Encore Edition a bit more. It just gave more noticeable feedback during gameplay, and I think CRKD might need to add even more vibration settings to its app if it wants to bring the Blueberry model up to par.

Sticking with the neck for a moment, both include RGB lighting within the fret position markers. Again, you can customise this within the app, so if you’d rather the lights just stay solid, that’s absolutely fine, but I have to admit, I was quite taken with the multi-coloured ‘wave’ effect. It looks cool!

Looking closer at the body, you’ve got what’s called a ‘navigation hub’ on the upper end, which essentially replicates a pickup selector on a real guitar. Here, though, the nub moves around like an analogue stick, and it’s used for basic menu navigation and for moving your character around in Fortnite Festival.

Surrounding the nub are your basic controller inputs, and honestly, it took me quite a while to get used to the positioning. I got there eventually, but the very nature of having every major input aligned in a circle is bizarre. It’s not a knock against the guitar, mind you; this is probably the best solution that CRKD could have reasonably come up with, but it’s just something to keep in mind.

Replicating the volume and tone controls is another analogue stick — which is essentially the right stick for manipulating the camera angle in-game — and the ‘mode dial’. The latter is particularly interesting and is used to select a pre-determined control setup. It’s best to just list these out before explaining any further, so here we go:

  1. PC
  2. Festival - Pro
  3. Festival - Easy, Medium, Hard
  4. Festival - Expert
  5. Programmable
  6. Programmable
  7. Programmable
  8. Programmable
  9. KEYJAM Mode

Okay, so what the heck is going on? Well, for Switch and Switch 2 owners, you’re going to want to stick with modes 2, 3, and 4, since Fortnite Festival is really the only game available on Nintendo’s console for these guitars.

Mode 2 for ‘Festival - Pro’ unleashes the full potential of the guitar, requiring you to use the strum bar in addition to the fret buttons. This is likely the mode you’re going to want to stick with the majority of the time. Modes 3 and 4 change up the setup ever-so-slightly, removing the use of the strum bar, while adding in that fifth fret for expert mode. Again, though, stick to Mode 2 if you want to get the most out of the guitar.

A quick note before we proceed further: Fortnite Festival is a bloody nightmare. It took me ages to realise that ‘Pro Guitar Mode’ isn’t actually included as a default option in-game. It turns out that it’s hidden within the options menu. You need to head into the Festival settings, tab over to the Gear menu, and select ‘Always Display Pro Parts’. Now you can use Mode 2 on the guitar as intended. Ridiculous.

Back to the mode dial. You can use Mode 1 if you’re playing on PC (and by the way, the guitars also support community jaunts like YARG and Clone Hero), while Mode 9 lets you go back to the PS3 and play all those classic Guitar Hero and Rock Band titles. No Wii support, though, unfortunately. Otherwise, those empty ‘programmable’ modes are essentially CRKD’s way of future-proofing the guitars, allowing for more custom setups should any new major titles launch.

There are just a few more inputs to check out. Next to the strum bar, you’ll also find a rather large ‘CTRL’ button. This is used for activating the ‘Overdrive’ power-up in Fortnite Festival, and it’s positioned nicely so all you need to do is press your palm against it while strumming. Holding it down for around eight seconds or so also syncs the guitar with the CRKD app for customisation. If you're not into pressing a button to activate 'Overdrive', then you'll be pleased to know that gyro functionality is also included, so you can tilt the guitar up for activation.

Down on the bottom, where the strap attaches to the body, you’ve also got a platform slider, which is essential for hooking the controller up to either PC, Android, Switch, or PS3. On the other side, you’ve got the Capture button, Start, and Select. Like the navigation hub, it’s quite tricky learning which button is which here, particularly if you want to quickly capture a moment in-game.

So the guitar’s pretty feature-packed and, thankfully, a joy to play, whether you’re rocking out with the Hall Effect strum bar on the Blueberry Burst Pro, or the standard mechanical bar on the Tribal Encore, and actually connecting it to the Switch and/or Switch 2 is painless. You can either sync it up wirelessly via Bluetooth, plug in the wireless adapter, or simply use the USB cable for wired play.

Naturally, the latter two options are designed to reduce latency, but in my experience, even the standard Bluetooth connection felt pretty spot on. To give Fortnite Festival credit, it does include a calibration option in-game, so you can test this out with each connection method.

One last thing to note is that all of the buttons on the guitar are essentially just mimicking the standard inputs from a controller; even the strum bar is basically 'L' one way and 'R' the other. What this means, then, is that you can use the guitar for almost any Switch or Switch 2 game – whether you should is another story, mind you. I actually won a Street Fighter 6 match with the guitar, and while it was a horrible experience, it does actually work. So if you fancy giving Dark Souls a go with the CRKD guitar, then go for it.

CRKD Guitar 10
Image: Ollie Reynolds / Nintendo Life

Conclusion

Both CRKD guitars are utterly stunning. These are truly fantastic, feature-rich controllers that work incredibly well with the Switch 1 and 2. Some of the buttons are a little awkwardly positioned — particularly the navigation hub — but this is a minor concern. The features that truly matter, like the strum bar, fret buttons, and general feel of the guitar, are absolutely spot on, and you'll be rocking out like it's 2007 all over again.

Ultimately, though, is it really worth spending more than £100 on a guitar just for Fortnite Festival? Well, that's a question you'll have to ask yourself. If the answer is 'yes', then you can be safe in the knowledge that this is unquestionably the best way to play. And if you've also got a PS3 and a bunch of Guitar Hero or Rock Band titles gathering dust, or you simply want to check out the likes of Clone Hero on PC, then this is a no-brainer.

The samples used in this review was supplied by CRKD.

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