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You’ve become a Guitar Hero before but in World Tour you can become the leader of the band. As you know by now, Guitar Hero World Tour borrows the full band gameplay from Rock Band. This means that in addition to rocking out as a guitarist or bassist, you can also rock out on drums and vocals. Guitar Hero World Tour is a mixture of fantastic songs, refined gameplay, and superb instruments.
Let’s start with the instruments. The wired mic is a standard USB mic -- nearly identical to the mic that comes with Rock Band. It works well but it would have been nice if Activision included a wireless mic. In a nice touch, you can activate star power at any time by tapping the mic or pressing a button on the controller.
World Tour includes a new guitar model that is quite possibly the best guitar peripheral on the market. The new guitar’s body is larger and has a curvier (but sturdy) strum bar. RedOctane added a touch pad to the neck of the guitar, which really spices things up. You can use the touch pad for special segments of the song (highlighted with purple trail lines) that allow you simply slide your hand across the touch pad. You can also tap it to hit notes and use it to alter the sounds of the notes, similar to the whammy bar. In practice, the new feature works very well and the larger size (and customizable faceplates) makes it look like a real guitar. There’s also a dedicated star power button. Of course, it’s still wireless and features an accelerometer for star power, too.
Similarly, World Tour’s drums are easily superior to Rock Band’s drum set. The three main pads are larger and quieter than Rock Band 1’s drums (although they are about as loud as Rock Band 2’s drums). Above the three pads are two raised cymbals, which you can turn a bit to facilitate your playing. The drums are extremely sturdy and because of the cymbals feel better (and more realistic) to play than Rock Band’s drums. The set is velocity sensitive and can tell how hard you’re hitting the drums. Certain notes in the game will give you more points if you hit them harder. It’s almost like an entirely new experience and brings back the novelty that first came with playing drums. One complaint we have with the new drum set is that the pedal isn’t attached to anything so it moves around quite a bit. There are rubber pads on the bottom which helps but doesn’t fully solve the problem. The set is wireless.
Fantastic instruments wouldn’t mean a whole lot if the game didn’t boast awesome songs. There are over 85 songs on the disc and something to like for everyone. The songs include everything from At The Drive-In’s "One Armed Scissor,” Billy Idol - "Rebel Yell,” Bon Jovi - "Livin' On A Prayer,” Foo Fighters’ "Everlong,” Jimi Hendrix’s "Purple Haze (Live)," Jimmy Eat World’s "The Middle,” Korn’s "Freak On A Leash,” Metallica’s "Trapped Under Ice,” Ozzy Osbourne’s "Crazy Train,” as well as number of songs from Tool. There’s also more mainstream songs like Beastie Boys’ "No Sleep Till Brooklyn," Blink-182’s "Dammit", Linkin Park’s "What I've Done,” Michael Jackson’s "Beat It,” Oasis’ "Some Might Say,” and Paramore’s "Misery Business. Not every song is a resounding hit for every instrument but on balance are all fun to play as a band. There are definitely songs with sick guitar, drums and vocal solos, too.
In terms of features, one of the biggest innovations in World Tour is the Guitar Hero Music Studio. The tool is surprisingly deep. The easiest way to begin using it is in the mode’s free mode. Here you can just start freestyling and the game will compose what you’re doing to notes on the fly. There are a ton of effects for guitar and drums, as well as a number of keyboard sounds. If you want to get more advanced, you can set the pitch range, note structure, etc that you want to play with. Once you’ve made the song, you can cut the song, move notes around, etc. Then you can name the song and choose album art and upload it to GH Tunes where others can download and rate your song. Similarly, you can download, rate and play songs from other players. There are a few caveats that come with the mode. The first is that you can’t lay down vocals, you have to obey a three-minute (or 1,200 note) limit and have to agree not to upload a cover of a copyrighted song. It’ll be interesting to see how often this mode is used but given the scores of dedicated Guitar Hero players out there we expect it to be used heavily.
With great instruments, songs, and an innovate mode, you’ll be glad to know that the game plays really well. In full band play, the vocals and pitch will be on the top of the screen, the drum note chat will be in the middle and the guitars on the side. It’s nearly identical to the Rock Band set-up although the note counter and star power meter retain their Guitar Hero III look. It’s great to see Neversoft add some wrinkles to the standard gameplay, as mention above with the velocity-dependent notes on drums and the touch pad segments for guitar. Interestingly, for guitars, there are times when you’ll have to strum without hitting any notes. Also interesting is that there’s an option for vocals where you can have the pitch show up in a streaming format, which is essentially a line throughout the entire song (instead of just showing the appropriate pitch with spaces in between singing).
The game still has the expected Quick Play mode, as well as separate Careers for Single, Band and Online. The career mode is fairly simple: just a series of gigs that will allow you to unlock new gigs, songs, and cash along the way. There’s a full online component, too, with both competitive and cooperative modes, as well as full-band play. This is still a Guitar Hero game though so you’ll recognize a lot of the characters from previous entries in the series. The game has an in-depth character creation system, which should give you a lot of flexibility in desigining a character. There’s also an instrument creator and skin customizer for instruments.
If there’s one criticism (and it’s fairly minor) is that when playing as a band, the game takes the band concept very seriously. Star power is shared across all of the instruments instead of coming individually. The game also lacks the ability to save one of your teammates by acting star power, although since it is shared they can in a way save themselves by activating it. Nonetheless, it would have been nice to have the option.
Ultimately, all of Guitar Hero World Tour’s components come together extremely well. The refined gameplay is backed up by terrific and sturdy instruments as well as a fantastic song list. The innovative gameplay additions, as well as the Music Studio, propel World Tour to superstardom. It’s easily the best music game available. -- Jose Liz, PGNx Media
---- Oct 26, 2008
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