The battle of bands has officially come full circle. With Rock Band 2 on the market for around a month, it’s time for Guitar Hero World Tour to step up to the plate. Does the latest Guitar Hero live up to the hype, or does it fall short?
Guitar Hero World Tour is a great game, there is no question about that. It offers all the great things you would expect from a music game, and a great number of things you wouldn’t -- such as a music creator. It does the most important thing well, and that is “be fun to play.” The note charts in Guitar Hero are spot on, offering a good level of challenge on expert without being overwhelming on the easier difficulties. They even added another difficulty level called beginner and it scales back a little farther from easy. So if you are just starting off with music games in general, you can get used to the feel of it easier than ever. In terms of just jumping and playing a song, and having that song just feel right, Guitar Hero World Tour is better than any other music game on the market. At the end of the day playability is the most important aspect of a music game, but it’s not the only aspect, as there a ton of other feature that gamers expect from a game like this, such as a great track list, a solid career mode, and great multiplayer. Some of these the game has, but on a few it falls short of the mark.
The first thing a lot people are going to care about is the track list, and while much of this is a matter of musical taste, the track list in the game is very diverse and offers something for everyone, no matter what your musical inclinations. (I was personally most excited to see Bullet for My Valentine make their way into the game.) Whether you like Willie Nelson or Tool, there is something in there for you, and with download content there are sure to be a lot of songs that will get you excited to play for some time to come. Much like Rock Band, World Tour features a DLC store, and we can only hope that they will keep the store updated with a near-Rock Band frequency. (As of writing, there have been three sets of DLC released: an REM pack, a classic rock pack, and the carried over Metallica album.)
While they have experience on the DLC front, you can tell that this is Neversoft’s first venture into a game designed to be played with a complete band because there are some issues. For example, when playing with your whole band whenever you get star power it goes into the star power bank. However, when one member of the band uses star power it offers no benefit to the other members of the band, so if you are on the verge of failing out and someone else uses your last bit of star power, you’re done for. Unlike Rock Band, one person failing isn’t a minor inconvenience which can be rectified by activating star power; if a single bandmate fails, it’s game over for the entire band. This is frustrating enough on its own, but it can also be a little tough to tell if a member of your band is failing because your note track doesn’t blink or anything to warn you of the impending doom. When you are playing as a band, it feels more like every man for himself rather then a group venture, and that’s just not right.
In spite of some of the problems in band mode they really did a great job with the customization aspect of the game. As you would expect your rocker can be customized with clothes, hair styles and facial features. They let you tinker with every last detail from the color of your eyes to the size of your chin. The one thing I did not expect was the level of customization included for your instruments. Instead of just going into a store and buying a new guitar or drum set, you can design them however you want, with all kinds of color schemes and graphics and truly make them your own.
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I am having a great time playing the drums, the cymbal pads really bring the game to life. Tapping on the guitar neck, eh not too much a fan of that myself. Great review!