Guitar Hero: World Tour

About a month ago, shortly I got my tax refund, my roommate and I were walking through our local Target and we spontaneously decided to buy the latest edition of Guitar Hero. We were waiting and waiting and waiting to get it through Activision since she works for one of their studios and we could get a discount, but unfortunately we had grown tired of waiting and decided to splurge. So that day we walked home with a complete band kit of Guitar Hero: World Tour. Well I guess the tax refund I got did make me consume more than usual this one time.

First off the instruments. I’m unsure about the touch sensitive bar on the guitar. It confuses me in a lot of ways, I actually would have actually preferred it if they made it so that you could use the bar instead of the colored buttons. However, this only the case in a small section of any particular song which takes out its meaning to me. Instead, you can use it to strum, which yes means you can strum faster but if that’s what they wanted to do I would have rather they just taken out the normal strummer and replaced it with a touch sensitive one instead.

The drums are great, I love the layout, they are slightly quieter than the Rock Band 1 pads and thus slightly more neighbor sensitive. The microphone is just a microphone, I wish they would have included at least one button for navigation and I also wish it was wireless or hooked up to the drums instead of going to the back fo the Wii.

[amazonify]B001ABP8BO:right[/amazonify]The songs I am mixed on. Again, like in Guitar Hero III, the songs are mostly older songs that I just don’t want to hear. Guitar Hero maintains its hold on classic rock, which still feels sad. Guitar Hero could very easily be what MTV and the Radio was before it, a platform for new music and new bands to make people buy the albums. Unfortunately, it isn’t anywhere near that. There are a few new songs which I have found to be quite good and fun to play. And some of the newer classics are nice as well. I was very happy to see System of a Down on this version and there were also several other very good songs. I’m not sure which version has more good songs in it, I reckon they are about the same.

The real value of this particular version is that finally Wii has access to downloadable content. So far, like the music on the actual disc, the music has been fairly blah. However, it has its high points. There is a wealth of Nirvana songs, as well as a good number of Smashing Pumpkins and there are fresh new songs from Oasis and Rise Against. With my first purchase I bought “No Rain” from Blind Melon which was a really great song from the 90s. I wish these songs could be inserted into the career menus though somehow because as it stands I have to sift through the entire list in the quick play menu just to play it.

They’ve also included a song studio in the game to allow players to make their own music, as well as a download section so that you can go download other player’s songs. I think this is really cool, although most of the songs out there tend to be 8-bit video game songs like Super Mario Bros. and Mega Man. This is cute from time to time but I wish there were more quality tracks available. I have yet to try to really make my own track, I’ve wanted to get through the actual game first before I start going there, but I have a few songs that I’d like to try to replicate with this really cool tool.

The game itself seems much easier than GH3. I remember hearing developers talking about how they had unintentionally made 3 far more difficult than it needed to be, I still played the game happily on medium, unable to really get to hard just thinking it was me. However, now I feel medium difficulty isn’t too hard in World Tour. I’ve even started going to hard on a few songs and have been able to keep up with it. So I definitely think this version is much easier than the previous, and I don’t think it is because I am that phenomenally better since that point.

Overall, Guitar Hero: World Tour is an improvement over Guitar Hero III. But I think this is mostly for the obvious reasons. The inclusion of a full band ensemble and customizable tracks as well as downloadable music makes WT much much better than the previous incarnations. I don’t think the music is any better which is a shame, I do wish they would get their heads out of their collective arses, however considering they recently released a Metallica pack, I doubt that is ever going to happen. I give this version an 8.5 out of 10.