Guitar Hero World Tour

Guitar Hero is a household name when it comes to music gaming.  Red Octane and Harmonix created a masterpiece the revolutionized how we interact in gaming with Guitar Hero, and redefined how this genre could grow with Guitar Hero II which eventually made a jump to next gen.  This was a positive trend until Activision acquired the franchise and it pretty much all went to shit from there.  Im going to warn you now that if your a Guitar Hero fan boy you wont like what your about to read.

Story: Your a musician who makes it in a band, and you play gigs, and yea… doesn’t get much more standard than that.

Presentation: This game looks awful in EVERY s of the word, and I do mean EVERY.  The Animated shorts are Horribly done and are unnecessary as the game doesn’t really have a plot other than make it big.  The Song Charts still use a very Cartoony Bubble for each note, that simply are a pain in the ass to follow after playing a good Music Game (Rock Band 2)  It reminds me of a badly done flash game, Ive seen better stuff out of FretsOnFire (PC Opensource GH/RB game).  What makes these bubbles even worse off is that the animation of the bubbles being hit when you strum, or hit with drum pad are not apparent enough to make it clear you hit the note without consistently checking your note streak score.  I play this game on expert, if I want to do well that is important to know.  Character models all look like crackhead coked out meth dealers who’d give you a special favor for some wares.  The game screams of trying too hard at every corner.  The way note charts for band mode is exactly like Rock Band 2 except with an added extra dose of S-U-C-K.

Character creation lets you create various versions of your neighborhood delinquent in all sorts of ugly face models, body shapes, and other really bad design choices.  The only positive part of the creation process was the ability to build a model guitar with for the most part body shapes and styles your familiar with.  You of course have to unlock further types and styles and colors etc. with the ingame money you make from the set lists, but chances are you’ll create your dream axe with the default options and never see the creation screen again.  The sound is decent, even if the games soundtrack is subpar at best.  A few notable tracks are in the game that are not available with the competition, but nothing worth laying 200+ dollars on for the full kit after tax.

GamePlay: It is by and large Guitar Hero, while ripping off the rest of Rock Band 2.  So in the end its Guitar Hero licks, with a dash or band.  The Guitar controller that comes in the package is by far the worst model to date.  The Neck is so wide it often causes me pain to play the game for more than 30 minutes at a time due to the amount of stretching involved on Expert.  The GH 3 guitar, albeit a Gibson model, was vastly superior and would have been a much better addition to the package, if at most reverting to the neck from the Les Paul model.  The drum kit is decent, and the cymbals were a good idea to add, but still feel very cheap.

I didn’t BUY the peripherals however, Ive played on them.  I thankfully had my Rock Band 2 controllers which are vastly superior in design.  Playing fast riffs on the RB2 guitar is a much smoother transition than the log shaped neck of the GHWT controller.  The sliding tapping sequences are also optional, which I prefer to strum anyway.  When your trying to simulate at that level, its time you buy a REAL guitar.  The guitar difficulty is a bit ramped up in GHWT vs RB2 for the most part, as there are some extremely odd chart plotting choices that never feel right.  On top of that your never made aware that you are playing a solo which RB2 makes visually aware immediately.  This becomes an issue if your playing a song your not familiar with.  Knowing when a solo is coming up helps prepare you for what could be an onslaught of notes and runs.

Special: The DLC that’s been made available since launch has been a huge waste of money and time.  GH: WT owners have so far been jipepd when it comes to furthering their Music ingame library.  Guitar Hero’s saving grace, Metallica, has focused its DLC toward their own GH based game, making GHWT even less appealing for future music purchases.

Conclusion: I paid 5 fucking dollars for this game, and even now feel a bit ripped off by it.  Its a deceptive package that suckers the common consumer who does not know better when purchasing these types of games due to the Brand Name.  I could and would not recommend this game to anybody.  I could possibly see a reason to purchase the Metallica specific GH game considering you buy the disc only due to the horrible peripherals it comes with, but not the standard World Tour box.  And even than, Rock Band 2 is a better game anyway.  If you want to buy a Band Game, go buy Rock Band 2 and avoid this sorry copy cat from a franchise that has gone the way of shit.

Guitar Hero: World Tour is a ** out of 5