Guitar Hero: World Tour

Guitar Hero: World Tour

There’s no denying that Rock Band changed everyone’s expectations of what a music game could and should do. Upping the interactive musical options from guitar to include bass, drums and vocals as well, Harmonix moved the boundaries of the rhythm action genre, a shift that Guitar Hero has had to match in order to keep up. The result is game that is, on paper, very similar to the Rock Band series, even sharing many of the same bands and songs for players to play along to, but which finds some uniqueness by way of a few new features of its own.

World Tour is striving to be a comprehensive music package, offering players the chance to sing, play drums, bass or guitar either alone, in a band with a few friends around the television or even online head-to-head or as a virtual supergroup. As anyone who has played Rock Band before can attest, it’s a heady and irresistible proposition and the thrill of classic titles such as Eye of the Tiger, Everlong and Livin’ on a Prayer will convince even your non-game playing friends to strap on a plastic guitar and rock out along with the rest of you.

But aside from a new selection of music World Tour’s main innovation comes in hardware form: the drum kit has five pads and a kick pedal instead four, and the two cymbals are raised above the rest of the kit. This is an important distinction that makes playing the drums in the game all the more satisfying and realistic.

Additionally the music studio adds a whole new feature set to the game. Here, if you put the time in and work through the comprehensive tutorials, you’ll be able to create and record your own music. Of course, music creation on a console is always going to be difficult and, compared to even low end PC and Mac software, its overly complex, especially when you must use a plastic guitar to input some of it. As you can’t add vocals or lyrics to your creations the feature is further dulled but nevertheless, listening to the many hundreds of tracks users have already created ad uploaded to the game’s servers, it’s clear that time, effort and skill will pay off.

Elsewhere the changes are minimal. The career mode now has you playing through sets of songs, rather than single songs, and you have more control over what you play when, as well as your looks, clothing and even the instruments your character plays. The result is a far more comprehensive and well-executed package than the previous Guitar Hero game and with 80 songs and an online shop from which to buy more from, there’s a lot of game here for your money. Nevertheless, if you already own Rock Band there are only a few reasons why you’d want to invest in this World Tour too.

4 out of 5