Guitar Hero World Tour (Xbox 360)

Keep on rocking in the $189 world.
11/10/2008 8:10 PM | 2 Comments | Page 1 of 4

Let's cut to the chase: Is Guitar Hero World Tour as good as Rock Band? Because if the answer is "no," then your life is going to be a lot easier when it comes to rocking out in the living room. You'll just get a copy of Rock Band 2, or enjoy the copy you already have, and not worry about the competition. Unfortunately, the answer is "yes, but..."

It's called Rock Band, I think

While Activision CEO Bobby Kotick was delivering an intro to Guitar Hero World Tour at a Wall Street Journal tech conference last May, the host remarked, "It's called Rock Band, I think." The comment was either clumsy or cruel, but at least a little true. Guitar Hero invented the fake plastic instrument genre, but Rock Band turned it up to 11 with the addition of drums and singing. And now World Tour is Guitar Hero's attempt to catch up. Developers have been shuffled, the two largest publishers are squaring off, and enough real-world musicians are on board that we'll never again have to listen to cover bands. The genre is established.

So a lot of the World Tour feature list will be familiar. You get drums and vocals in addition to guitar and bass. Your custom band progresses through the campaign mode. You can participate in online play and leaderboards. There are about a hundred songs, from a wide variety of genres. Downloadable songs are rolling out. But what does World Tour bring to the stage that Rock Band doesn't give you?

The drums you want

First up are better instruments. The wireless guitar is solidly built and feels much heftier than previous fake guitars. It's got a nifty touchpad near the bottom of the neck, a strum bar that falls comfortably between mushy and clicky, and raised fret buttons that make it easier to position your fingers. The touchpad is a nice gimmick, but it's only marginally useful. Instead of Rock Band's guitar solos, you get "purple rope" passages where you can slide your fingers along the touchpad. These are hard to get used to, but there's no gameplay incentive, so they're too easily ignored.

What really sells the instruments is the drum set, which consists of a foot pedal, two cymbals and three drum pads. The raised cymbals add literal depth to the drumming, which is more difficult than having pads laid out in a row, since the note charts are laid out in a row. It takes a mental shift to translate a row of five notes into hitting a set of three pads and two cymbals. But these drums are ultimately more gratifying for how they feel like actual drumming instead of whacking on sensors. The plastic surfaces of the pads are softer, which makes hitting them feel less like smacking plywood. They're also relatively quiet, which will be a boon to your fellow band members, particularly if you're not good enough to mimic the actual drum beat by playing on Expert. The squishy foot pedal is a step down from the metal pedal that ships with Rock Band 2, though many players will prefer the shorter throw. I'll lay odds the pedal won't last three months.