Guitar Hero World Tour Review
A Review - By Gaetano Prestia
The Guitar Hero franchise reinvigorated the music game genre in the Western world. The genre was once dictated by the Beatmania and Guitar Freak releases from Japanese developers that had little appeal towards a Western audience. When RedOctane and Harmonix joined forces to develop Guitar Hero, they created a beast that would soon become a phenomenon across the world (except in Japan, where “cutesy” Japanese pop beat titles still infect store shelves).
Since Neversoft took the reigns, the GH franchise has seen an increase in difficulty across the board, as well as a far more consistent and rock-centric tracklist. GHIII was the start of this trend, with GH die-hards complimenting its increased difficulty. However, it was also criticised for its slight inaccessibility towards newcomers. Aerosmith brought things down a bit, but the truth is that no one really cared about that title. If no one cares about Aerosmith in real-life, what was Activision thinking when they thought gamers would care about a spin-off music game based off their careers?
With the latest edition to the franchise, Guitar Hero World Tour goes in the direction of Rock Band to provide the ultimate band experience. With an enormous tracklist - all of which are master tracks - some new controllers and decreased difficulty, is Guitar Hero World Tour worth the price of admission?
WT maintains many of the same features of previous GH titles while also including some new ones. The career mode takes advantage of the band direction of the title, giving you the option to play through the mode solo with your preferred instrument or joining up with some mates and forming your own band. The encouraging aspect of this is that you can join up with mates online and go through career mode that way.
Neversoft have gone in a new and far more realistic approach with the tracklist in career mode, getting rid of the bland and obsolete method of simply naming each song in a list. This time round, you’ll have different “gigs” to perform at, each of which have a number of songs to perform. Whenever you choose a gig, you play all of the songs on the track list in consecutive order without returning to the menus. The venues vary in location and as you progress into the game, some gigs come with a required payment figure that you’ll have to play before you perform. This is kind of like how real-life performers have to rent a venue for a gig, so this adds a bit of a realistic charm to the career mode. Some gigs are more expensive than others and if you don’t do so well at a particular one and only earn the minimum amount of cash, you may have to replay it in order to pay for the next venue.
The “gig” direction gives the game a far less linear feel about it, as completing one gig generally unlocks two or more other gigs, giving you the option to play in any order you like.
The career mode will take you a few hours to get through and the Guitar Hero diehards will find plenty of challenge in the later gigs. It’s a massive tracklist and with the certainty of future downloadable track packs, WT offers plenty of value in career mode.
Playing as a band in career mode is a different story though. Overall, it’s a confusing and illogical set-up. The career mode layout is fine for solo gameplay, but when you’re playing with mates in a band, it just feels as like the game should offer a little more than extra tracks. We’re not saying that it should copy Rock Band, but at least reward the band as a whole and give it something extra on the side, just like a band in real-life. Things like record deals, TV appearances and even groupies. Also, anything you unlock in solo career won’t be carried over into band career. Furthermore, all of the band info is attached to the character and bandleader. So, if you and your mates have created four different characters, whoever is the bandleader will have whatever band they have in solo career carried over. There is no option to create a new band name and make it unique to the experience. It’s a silly development decision. If you’re going to connect any aspect of the solo career to the band career, make it the unlocked gigs and tracks.
One of the major issues of the band career mode is that if one of the members is failing, you really have no warning about it unless you look over at their note track or at the performance meter. Anyone familiar with GH will know how difficult this is during harder songs. To add further salt to the wound, if one player fails, everyone does. You could be outperforming everyone, hitting every note and rocking it out on a 150 consecutive note roll, but you’ll fail because the guy to your right doesn’t know how to play. It’s definitely frustrating. Perhaps Neversoft were going with the idea that if one band member in real life was performing poorly, it makes everyone look bad. But in this instance, simply blacking them out until the end of the song or giving other players the chance to save them would have been a better direction for the title.
Still, despite these problems, GHWT is still a hell of a lot of fun to play. The guitar and bass gameplay is still as enjoyable and challenging as it has been in previous GH titles and with the addition of the drum kit and microphone for lyrics, WT offers a really fun experience.
If you’ve at all followed the development of WT, you’ll know that it has a very impressive tracklist. It felt as if Activision were announcing a new famous rock artist every week, from Jimi Hendrix to Blink 182 to Van Halen and Tool. Even better is the fact that every single song in the game is a master recording, not a cover. While the covers in previous GT titles got the job done, nothing can compare to the real thing. GHWT has an insanely good tracklist
When it comes to downloadable content, the game has a store built right in, so once the content starts getting released, you’ll be able to download tracks in game. It will be interesting to see how that store works when it is filled with content and whether it causes any issues. It’s difficult to rate the effectiveness of that feature now, as only Metallica’s Death Magnetic is available.
GHWT incorporates a few new gameplay features. If you’re playing bass you’ll notice a bar that goes right across the note track that is similar to the bar that drummers will see when they have to hit the kick drum. It kind of acts as a sixth note, as the bass player has to simply press down on the fret button without holding any note keys down.
One of the more unique and impressive additions to the gameplay is the incorporation of the touch-sensitive note bar on the WT guitar. In some songs you’ll notice that a purple string connects notes in quick succession. You can either play these notes as normal using the note keys, or slide your finger across the touch bar to make hitting the notes a little easier. It’s not a realistic feature, but it makes hitting notes in quick succession far easier. Instead of moving your finger and pressing down on the note keys really quickly, you only have to quickly slide your fingers across. It’s easier and actually quite cool. You can also tape the corresponding notes on the touch bar to do a wah-wah on sustained notes, although the whammy bar is better positioned for that. Don’t worry thought if you don’t a WT guitar to play with, as older guitars work just fine with the game. You just won’t be able to take advantage of those connected notes, as the older guitar controllers don’t have the touch-sensitive bar.
The design of the WT feels a lot more realistic than the Rock Band kit, with the cymbals raised slightly higher, given it a more genuine feel. The foot petal is the only poor development choice, as it’s a separate piece of hardware that has to be connected to the kit instead of it being one with it. You’ll often find that it slides along the floor as you hit, especially during tracks with lots of drum notes. Overall, WT offers plenty of great tracks to play along with the drums, as well as plenty of hard-hitting solos.
The singing part of WT hits a high note, with an enjoyable and perfectly developed system that is enjoyable as well as challenging. Each song's high and low pitched words are generated onto the screen through a string the dips up and down depending on the note. The words are broken up just like in any good karaoke game and overall, the microphone and singing part of WT is a great addition.
One of the more surprising additions in WT is the introduction of a music creation feature. Aspiring musicians can record their own music with their own drums, guitar, bass and keyboard to perform music, upload it and sell it over an iTunes-esque music store called GH Tunes.
You can preview other people’s music by downloading a small sample to your hard drive and then either trash it if you don’t like it or download the full version for a small price. Once you buy a song, it will be included in the games tracklist just like any other song.
You have to give it Neversoft for including such an ambitious and encouraging feature. However, it’s not without its problems. It’s broken up into two parts: Recording Studio and GHMix. Up to four people can record a song in Recording Studio. But some of the studio’s set-up just doesn’t make sense. In order to record, you have to press right and then left on the d-pad. The only thing is that those two buttons are play and stop respectively. Unless you watch the tutorial, you won’t know what the hell is going on and how to record. It took about 20 minutes to figure out how to record because we went to the tutorial to find out. It’s an illogical controlling-scheme decision.
One of the problems with recording in WT - and it’s major - is the fact that the game lags significantly when you’re recording. It’s frustrating and unacceptable. It decreases the value of the feature and sometimes makes it impossible to record effectively
Most of the editing and such will take place in GHMix and overall, it is a useful editing tool, but it’s pretty basic. It doesn’t come close to other computer-based editing programs, but that’s to be expected. It’s about what you’d expect overall.
Guitar Hero World Tour has a number of impressive presentation features. You can choose from a range of recognisable rock stars from previous GH outings or create your own. The customisation options aren’t that deep but this series isn’t known for its character creation. The game still maintains the same look and feel of the other titles in the series and that character you create is always going to have that cartoony, wacky look about them. The animation direction of the series is very unique and fits in well with the tone of the games and now with the ability to create your own character, you can go all out and create a wild looking rock star with a reasonable amount of altering options.
You can edit the name and logo of your band in career mode - even if you’re playing on your own - and while the game doesn’t have any band name voice-overs, the ability to change your logo and load created ones is cool. There’s the possibility of future downloadable content with user-created logos and such, so here’s hoping Activision takes advantage of that opportunity.
The game can randomise your band name, but you won’t want to do that considering how stupid some of the names are. “Blue Midgets” and “U Idiot” are hardly rock ‘n roll material.
You can also customize the look of your instruments with parts unlocked in career mode. The guitars have far more options than the drums but that’s a given and you can even create your own decal using an impressively deep decal creation system.
The Final Verdict
Guitar Hero World Tour is a really fun game to play. It expands on Guitar Hero III with a deeper and better tracklist, all of which are master tracks. The inclusion of the drum kit and microphone add plenty of value to a series that was already known for its lastability. The drum kit isn’t perfect but it’s a hell of a lot of fun to play with. The lyric system is fantastic and overall rounds out a band experience that is on-par with Rock Band. The recording studio has its problems with lag, but it’s a feature that Neversoft should definitely expand on it future iterations. The presentation maintains the wackiness and cartoony feel from previous GH titles. Overall, with plenty of downloadable content to come, an awesome tracklist and great instrument controllers and gameplay, Guitar Hero World Tour is a show you just have to experience from the front row.
Gameplay
8.7/10
It’s fun, challenging and exciting. The tracklist is superb and the drum kit and microphone add further enjoyment to an already fun series.
Graphics
7.0/10
They get the job done. The presentation isn’t going to blow your mind, but it fits in well with the tone of the series.
Sound
9.5/10
An amazing and deep tracklist with the possibility of plenty of downloadable content, as well as user-created content.
Value
9.0/10
You’ll beat career mode and all of the tracks in a few hours, but the opportunity to quickplay with friends using a variety of instrument controllers, as well as online solo and band play and future downloadable content make WT worth the price of admission.
Overall
8.8/10