Guitar Hero: World Tour (Xbox 360)

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Guitar Hero: World Tour (Xbox 360)

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Guitar Heroes, rejoice; your next fix is here. Sure, it may look a lot like Rock Band, or, some say, even Rock Band 2. That's probably because Guitar Hero is taking the full band gameplay route now, in case you haven't heard. But who hasn't heard? So many, many times...

Reviewer
Forrest
Mitch
Categories
Games

Reviewed by Forrest Boyd

Guitar Hero: World Tour (Xbox 360)

Well, it's about time Neversoft answered to the success of Harmonix's Rock Band. Let's see how it stands up, shall we?

One of the most notable things right as you start the Career mode is the character creation. Though clothes and some details cost money earned from playing songs, you have a lot of freedom in making a character. It is Neversoft, after all... if you've played any recent Tony Hawk games and noticed the amount of customization available to creating characters, you'll know what to expect here. You can also create your own guitars through unlockable skins and shapes, all the way down to the tuning dials.

On to real gameplay... if you've ever played any of the other games, you'd know what to expect here. Think Guitar Hero 3. Now, with the guitar, add extended sustain notes (playing notes while holding a sustained note), and the slider gems, played with the neck slider touch-pad "frets". The former is pretty cool, and is pretty easy to get used to. Slider gems, which are shown as transparent notes, are all played without strumming. You can simply fret them, or play them using the slider on the neck of the GH:WT guitar. Whichever one you decide to do, these usually go pretty fast... so if you're going to use the slider, you'll need to adjust to them and back fast. Also of note: you can use the neck slider pads to strum normal notes without actually strumming; a press on the corresponding color's pad works like a strum for that note, similar to what happens when you play Guitar Hero with a normal controller.

Now, for the bass-guitar differences. The only real difference is open notes, shown as purple lines, much like the pedal for drums. To play these, you simply strum without holding down any fret buttons. This seems hard when you see them fly downwards in songs like B.Y.O.B. and Everlong, but after you get used to it, it's no harder than normal play at that speed. There's nothing much to note on the bass, but they've done quite a bit to make the bass a little more than "guitar for noobs", and actually pretty fun to play in its own right.

I don't have the GH:WT Drumset, but I do know how it works from the demos. It's a solid mix of three pads, two cymbals, and a bass pedal. The pads and cymbals are very similar to real practice pads for percussionists, so that is worth noting for people who are actually in the field. If you've gotten used to multiple elevated controllers such as DrumMania, the controller will take little getting used to. However, if the only real drumset controller you've ever used before is Rock Band's, it might take a while to get used to going from pads to cymbals without breaking chains. The chart dumbs down in correspondance to Rock Band's 'set, going from the intended 5 pads to 4. Expert is very easy with this going. Even with the actual GH:WT 'set, it isn't nearly as hard as Rock Band's Expert. However, to help out the dedicated players, you can now activate Star Power at any time by hitting both cymbals at the same time. I've done it on the RB 'set, but to be honest, I don't remember how. If someone else does, please comment. Otherwise, I'll update when I find out.

The Vocals are... weird. First things first, the scoring method is different than Rock Band's, as score reflects words just as much as phrases, for both individual points and for multipliers. Hard to explain, but it's not that big of a deal so I won't bother with it. Like the drums, there is a way to invoke Star Power without waiting for specific phrases. You do this by tapping the microphone. You can also fake it by making a sharp "dah", or other sound.

When playing as a Band, there are some notable differences between gameplay in this game and in Rock Band. Possibly the most predominant, Star Power. The Star Power meter is shared. Each time you hit a Star Power phrase, you're awarded one half of a capsule. Star Power will be ready to invoke once one capsule is filled, and that'll work only for the person who fired it up. It lasts for exactly one capsule's worth, regardless of how much you actually have stored. That way, it conserves some for the rest of the Band members. The other most notable thing is the Rock Meter, also shared between everyone. If one fails out, everyone does. Star Power's Rock Meter boosts only effect the person that invokes it, so remember to keep both in mind, if anyone in the Band may have difficulty with the song and difficulty setting.

The set list is pretty strong, on par with Rock Band 2's. There is quite a bit of variety, spanning songs like Hotel California, Beat It, Crazy Train, and B.Y.O.B., as well as having three Tool songs and two of Jimi's. They're all master recordings, obviously. Many famous musicians come out on stage to perform their respective songs, as well. For Ozzy's songs, he'll come out and be the vocalist, as will Hayley Williams of Paramore for their song Misery Business. Sting, Ted Nugent, Zakk Wylde, and Billy Corgan join the two aforementioned as musicians that have undergone the motion capture process and appear as characters in-game for their songs, along with drummer Travis Barker. Jimi is also a playable character, though obviously not with the motion capture process credited.

The solo career isn't quite as linear as it has been prior to Rock Band 2, as it has introduced smaller individual gigs and setlists. However, unlike with Rock Band 2, you won't have played a bunch of songs well over 20 times by the time you're done with it all. Pretty nice blend, keeping it more realistic with gigs while not going overboard with "Random Setlists" and "Make Your Own Setlist" in every single venue you unlock.

With the Song Creation, I haven't gotten into it that much, but it seems to be a lot more advanced than they made it out to be. You can customize basically everything, but if you're looking for a simple, minute-long song, you're looking at a pretty steep learning curve, as well as a lot of time just inputting the notes, according the scales and tuning as you see fit, and putting all the effects in... and that's only the guitar part. I can't say too much about it, but I can safely say that if you're willing to put a lot of time into something, you can make a pretty good cover of anything, given it fits the time limit of course. If I recall correctly, that's 3-4 minutes.

I should also probably note Guitar Battles. In the Guitar career, there are battles against Zakk Wylde and Ted Nugent. These battles aren't played like GH3's, but they're closer to regular Pro Face-Off matches.

All in all, I'd say this is a pretty good counterpart to Rock Band 2. If you have the instruments for either, make sure you have both games in your library. The Band gameplay isn't as social, in a way, but it's still definitely one of the best multiplayer games out there. However, single-player gameplay is expanded on through the differences they've made through all the instruments, and is definitely funner to play by yourself than Rock Band's single-player modes.

Guitar Hero: World Tour

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Reviewed by Mitch Saltzman

Guitar Hero: World Tour (Xbox 360)

While I might not be as impressed with World Tour as Forrest is, I do have to admit that it’s still a very solid game and a worthy rival to Rock Band. That being said, there are several issues with the game that I think people should know about before they end up throwing down the large admittance price for the whole package.

Let’s start with the good first though. As I previously stated in my preview of the game and as Forrest mentioned above, the addition of the open note as the sixth input for the bass guitar is a fantastic addition that really makes a difference in the challenge, and therefore the satisfaction, of playing the bass. The character customization also trumps everything that has previously been included in a rhythm game, giving you total customizability with your character’s facial structure, body type, wardrobe, rock style, and everything else that typically comes standard with a character creation tool.

Not only that, but in addition to your own created characters, you also have all of the previous Guitar Hero characters from every game along with several special guest celebrities like Ozzy Osbourne, Zack Wylde, Travis Barker, Sting, Hayley Williams, Billy Corgan, Ted Nugent, and the one and only Jimi Hendrix. The wide selection of characters, the much improved animations, the inventive set pieces, and the silky smooth framerate make the actual performance of the characters a delight to behold.

Other than that, it’s still Guitar Hero: Rock Band Edition. The core gameplay that has been used throughout the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games is still here and it’s still as fun as ever. However, there are several little things that World Tour added to the formula that don’t quite go well with the rest of the ingredients.

The first problem lies with the actual interface when you start playing a song. It’s confusing and very unintuitive. Let’s say that you’re playing with a full band and you’re stuck with the far right note track (or highway as they call it). You’ve built up an x4 multiplier and want to see how much star power you have. Because you don’t have your own star power meter, you have to avert your eyes from your highway, look all the way to the opposite end of the screen, and look at the tiny rock meter in the top left that indicates your shared star power. I don’t know about you, but my peripheral vision doesn’t stretch that far when I’m concentrating on playing a song. Then there are other issues with star power. With vocals, according to the training screen that pops up when you first start playing, you’re supposed to activate star power by clapping or making a sharp sound over the mic. I’ve tried clapping, I’ve tried shouting, I’ve tried snapping, and I’ve tried banging the mic, nothing seemed to activate it. However, while I was simply singing the song the way I normally would, star power would suddenly activate, which made me steal the star power away from one of my friends who actually might need it. Perhaps this is because I was using a Rock Band mic and not the official Guitar Hero one, but regardless, it shouldn’t happen and they should’ve come up with a more reliable system.

Of course, we can’t forget drums now can we? As I mentioned in my preview, star power for the drums is activated by hitting the two cymbals at the same time. The problem is that this is extremely hard to do while keeping with the rhythm of a song. Yeah it’s great that you can choose to activate your star power whenever you want to maximize your points as opposed to Rock Band where you must activate it at specific parts, but that doesn’t mean anything if you break your combo while trying to activate it.

Finally, I have to disagree with Forrest when he says that playing Guitar Hero solo is more fun than playing Rock Band solo. Guitar Hero: World Tour’s main and only real single player mode is pretty much the same thing as Rock Band 2’s Tour Challenge mode, which is Rock Band’s secondary single player mode. Rock Band 2’s single player modes will keep you busy for an extremely long time if you plan on completely finishing World Tour mode, all of the Tour Challenges, and compete regularly with the Battle of the Bands challenges. With Guitar Hero: World Tour, once you complete the main game with all of the instruments, there’s nothing left for you but quick play, online play, or the music creator.

Unfortunately I can’t really comment on the music creator because I personally have no talent for music creation and would have no idea what I was doing. But from what I’ve seen and heard it seems like a decent little addition, even though the sound quality of the music you create is pretty crappy.

Overall, Guitar Hero: World Tour is a great game that is bogged down by a couple of poor design choices that probably were implemented just so that the game didn’t feel completely identical to Rock Band. The set list is great with several tracks that I’ve been dying to play ever since the first Guitar Hero (Crazy Train, Hotel California, Purple Haze, Are You Gonna Go My Way, etc.), the core gameplay is still as fun as ever, and the new instruments are fantastic (that is, assuming that they’re not defective).

Guitar Hero: World Tour

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