Guitar Hero World Tour (Xbox 360)
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.
alt="Guitar Hero World Tour review for Xbox 360"/>Your fantasy characters meet licensed real-world rockers.
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.
alt="Guitar Hero World Tour review for Xbox 360"/>Purple rope passages imitate effects like a wah-wah pedal of slide guitar.
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.
alt="Guitar Hero World Tour review for Xbox 360"/>Welcome to the custom-built Tool arena.
Unfortunately, it wouldn't be a fake music game without some hardware complications right out of the gate. In the case of World Tour, the problem seems to be poorly tuned drum sets. In my case, the orange cymbal doesn't register a hit unless I whack the dickens out of it. This sort of problem is common enough that Activision has released a drum tuning program that lets you hook up World Tour's drum kits to a PC. Once you've done this, you can adjust their sensitivity settings. Unfortunately, this requires a special MIDI-to-USB cable. Activision is supposedly shipping them for free to customers who register on its support site. However, it's been a week since I filled out the online form, and there's still no sign of the cable. Fortunately for me, the orange pad doesn't figure heavily into Medium drumming. Other players may not be so lucky.
(You may be wondering whether you can use your World Tour instruments with Rock Band, or vice versa. The answer is: It depends.)
Socialist rock
There are some minor changes in the basic gameplay. The "purple rope" sections for the guitar are an example of changes that don't make much difference. But bass players get new "open strum" notes that require hitting the strum bar without pressing a fret button. It adds a nice bit of variation to the same old bass playing. The drums, in addition to the raised cymbals, have thicker notes that have to be hit extra hard to register.
alt="Guitar Hero World Tour review for Xbox 360"/>Bass players get new, open strumming bars.
But when it comes to the basic gameplay of working together as a band, World Tour all but flops. The Star Power system, which is a cornerstone of fake music games, is completely reworked and hobbled by a terrible interface. The display for Star Power is shoved onto a tiny meter in the upper left hand corner, where a series of miniscule bars displays each player's approval meter. Little light bulbs gradually fill up with Star Power notes.
Are we supposed to be able to see these while we're playing? It's a real hassle to have to keep your eye on this display, especially when there's so much wasted real estate on the main screen around each player's note chart. Furthermore, there's a terrible socialist Star Power system. All players' Star Power goes into a shared reserve, which anyone can access at any time. Hey, World Tour, quit spreading my Star Power to less worthy band members who can't earn their own Star Power!
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It's all in the fingers
The note charts themselves are great, specifically for some clever fingerwork built into the guitar playing. Whereas Rock Band seems to put an emphasis on getting more frenetic, World Tour adds little complex touches that you can work to master even when you've plateaued on a given difficulty level. It's a bit odd, however, that the window for hitting notes is so generous. I'll frequently get through a difficult section knowing there's no possible way I hit every note, but World Tour gives it to me, anyway. The drums seem to have the opposite problem, but we'll see if that's a matter of tuning.
alt="Guitar Hero World Tour review for Xbox 360"/>Not for the faint of heart.
Then there's the song list. You can show a song list to a dozen people and get a dozen different opinions, but there's no denying that World Tour is casting a wider net than Rock Band's initial release. There's more classic rock here, and even a few songs aimed specifically at a Hispanic audience. But the biggest problem is that 86 songs simply can't compare to the approximately 500-song catalogue currently available for Rock Band, particularly when a lot of the favorite songs overlap. And it's a shame that Activision wasn't able to carry over any songs from the original Guitar Hero games. A lot of these are familiar to fans of the genre, and if the licensing issues had been worked out, World Tour could have had a unique appeal over Rock Band.
Are you going to wear that?
The actual band graphics are underwhelming, particularly with the amount of customization available when you first create a band member. I can adjust the size, width, shape and positioning of my character's nose, but she'll always do the exact same animation after every song, which is pretty much the only time I'm looking at her. And although money is freely granted no matter how you play, the current catalogue of unlockable items isn't much of an incentive to earn money. It seems like the developers at Neversoft dropped the ball with the customization, which could have been a big selling point and a great way to move the game forward. Instead, they trickle out little dribs of minor customization at a time: a wristband here, a guitar body there. Frankly, I'm just waiting for my little ranking icon to update.
(Also, a special note to Activision: Hey, jerks, get these advertisers out of my rock fantasy! There is no place here for AT&T, Coke and Kentucky Fried Chicken. I can cut some slack to Zildjian drum sticks and Ernie Ball guitar strings, but these other guys are seriously harshing my buzz. Eff the heck off!)
Check out this song I wrote
alt="Guitar Hero World Tour review for Xbox 360"/>Write your own crappy songs and upload them to here.
Finally, there's the full-featured music studio that lets users play and record up to three minutes of music, which can then be played within the game. This all looks very comprehensive, but I think I speak for the average World Tour player when I say it's beyond my capabilities to use this in any meaningful way. The really promising thing about this feature is that more dedicated users can upload their work to GHTunes, an online repository of custom songs that the rest of us can browse and download. The problem is that Activision is vigilantly removing any licensed music, so GHTunes is a wasteland of songs no one wants to hear, much less play.
However, nothing changes the bottom line that the basic gameplay is nothing short of a thrilling videogaming revolution. Whether you've got Rock Band or Guitar Hero World Tour, there is no experience quite like a room full of friends playing a song they all like (going online to play with a band is a close second, and solo careers are a close third). Guitar Hero World Tour is basically an awesome game. But when it comes to making the choice between Rock Band or World Tour, there is no easy answer at this point.
This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.
