Guitar Hero World Tour: The Best, The Worst, and Everything in Between
by Derek Wilson on October 31, 2008 7:10 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Interface and Game Modes
Okay, so now that we know a little more about the instruments, the unique gameplay features of GHWT, and the songs, it's time to take a look at how it all comes together.
First, the gameplay interface. It leaves a lot to be desired really. It's harder to tell when you are about to fail as the little red yellow green meter is smaller and harder to see than the RB/RB2 failure indicator. Since you can't save individual people once they fail out, you have to keep the band in by playing better, which can be tough, especially if it's not clear when you are about to fail (failing can happen in a split second and seems much faster than Rock Band in the worst cases). There are indicators of how individual band members are performing under the overall meter, but these are impossible to read while playing and thus totally useless except maybe to the vocalist.
Star power is shared between all band members. Once you collectively acquire enough, anyone can use it. If you build up enough to do so, multiple band members can use star power at once. As with Rock Band, there is an upper limit. Again, the indicators are less than easy to read for all band members as they are the vacuum tubes above the failure indicator. You kind of just have to hope it's there when you need it and that you didn't steal it from someone who needed it more.
The "highway" and the notes are a little different than in Rock Band (more like Guitar Hero 3). The tilt and perspective are slightly different, meaning that as they come down toward you, the spacing of the notes is not exactly the same as on the RB series. The notes also have more "height" to them in GHWT, and this adds to the effect. On RB2, the highway is also slightly convex. Anand feels like you have to have more of an internal sense of timing, but I think it's more about what you are used to.
I will say that the flatter, rectangular notes in Rock Band are easier for me to follow visually though. For whatever reason it's easier for me to tell when a rectangle lines up inside a rectangle than when a circle lines up over a circle (or when a line passes through a bunch of circles). Maybe it's just me. You can get a good sense of the differences on youtube, just search for "ghwt rb2" and you'll find lots of side by sides. If you are coming from GH3, you'll be fine, but it might take some getting used to if you've only played Rock Band games.
Detailed stats. Awesome. I want this on Rock Band 2.
Another bit I don't like about the highway is that the timing lines are all the same shade in GHWT. In both games, there are lines every eighth note, but in Rock Band, all the "and" lines are lighter. This helps me keep track of timing much better and I don't lose the count as often when it gets super complicated. Again, it's all about what you are used to and what works better for you. Personally I like the RB approach better.
That about does it for the actual playing of the songs. Let's get on to the quickplay and career modes.
Quickplay lets you select up to 6 songs to play back to back from all the music you've unlocked and downloaded. This is where it's at for the party game experience. It's much nicer than picking in between every song, as it allow a smoother gaming flow. We are still working with a flat list, so getting around is just as tough here as it is in Rock Band, but you don't have the help of difficulty ratings (even flawed ones) to help you find what you're looking for.
In quick play, if you can't get past a song you picked, no worries. You can choose to skip that song. This is nice if you run into some unexpected difficulty.
Career mode is much more complex and allows you to unlock songs by going through 5 different "careers." These are the careers of a guitarist, a bassist, a drummer, a vocalist, and a band. I bet you didn't see that coming, huh? For each career type it starts you out with access to a couple different set lists that are geared toward the type of instrument you are using. It starts off with easier stuff and builds up from there.
The problem with this is that in playing through each career you have to start off playing the noob songs each time. If I have to play Beat It or On the Road Again one more time I'm going to lose it. While this is a fine idea, I wish that having unlocked gigs in other careers would carry over, or that I could have one "career" that I could either play solo or with a band when I wanted to. Sort of like Rock Band. The GHWT method just feels clunky and it gets in the way of itself. The cheesy story I could do without as well. I really don't care about battling evil with my music or whatever.
Look, we're in Poland.
With a name like Guitar Hero World Tour, I suppose I expected something a little more epic. With Rock Band 2, navigating gigs was really just going through a bunch of menus, but the game made it sort of feel like you were traveling around the world. You'd fly around when moving between cities, zoom into cities when looking through venues, and dive into the gig when you picked it. Sure, GHWT's gig locations, like Rock Band's, are unique and represent the place you are headed to play, but it just feels lame looking at a wall and picking between some flyers to decide on a gig.
Now we're in the USA. Awesome.
Oh, and you need to pay for some gigs. I think ... well, the last time I checked anyway ... when you play somewhere, the venue pays you. Unless you damage things. That's a whole other story. But seriously, I don't want to buy gigs. Let me unlock them when I've done enough. Or make me buy something else that allows me to play a gig if it's got to be necessary to expend resources to access the songs. But the premise of "buying gigs" is just stupid.
The only other big thing is choosing difficulty levels. You do this at the beginning of your career. The Rock Band model of choosing difficulty at least per gig if not per song is a much better solution. Somethings are too easy to play on less than expert and others are too hard to play on more than medium. I don't want to be stuck into one difficulty the whole time.
Well, you can change the difficulty if you fail a song. But that seems like a cheap cop out and I'd rather just skip that step.
All in all, career mode is not as satisfying and not as "world tour"ish as it could be (or as Rock Band 2). Quickplay is great, as that's what we normally do anyway when playing with friends. And that just leaves online play to cover.
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Desultory - Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - link
I too have some issues with the drum kit and I also had problems with my first guitar. In fact, I ended up taking it back to the store for a full replacement. My down strum broke the first night and the cymbals were at once so responsive that hitting the drum pads activated them and also so unresponsive when I hit them. I'm not a "real" drummer, but I can play about half the RB songs on expert and all of them on hard and I was finding I couldn't hold a streak at all in GHWT. It was seriously ticking me off.After the exchange, I still had an unresponsive yellow cymbal. It was "dead" on one side...no problem though, switched it with the orange cymbal and it's much easier to reach the "good" side.
But the pedal...ferchrissake that thing sucks. Moves all over the floor and it's WAY too sensitive. My style may be to blame, but I learned to play RB drums keeping my foot down on the pedal and "bouncing". That's impossible with this pedal. The simple act of raising my foot often triggers a bass kick and once again it's impossible to hold a streak. I wish I could use my RB pedal with the GHWT kit. I like the kit better (more stuff to do and "real" cymbals) but the foot pedal makes playing drums impossible.
I actually found this article hoping to uncover some tricks for the pedal since I'm not the only person with this issue (Google is rife with people having the same complaint and two of my friends who bought the game are in agreement with me). I like the song selection better in GHWT but not being able to play drums is literally breaking my heart.
/sigh
jdport - Thursday, November 6, 2008 - link
It kind of bothers me when people write stuff about how Guitar Hero is the original franchise, that players "cut their teeth on". As I'm sure you know, this is true in name only. The creators of the original Guitar Hero moved on to Rock Band, so while "Guitar Hero" maybe have been the original... Guitar Hero World Tour shares nothing in common with it other than its name and the basic concept.
Also, the Rock Band 2 guitars and drums do have a hook up for the XBL headset. You just have to use the adapter that is supplied with the game instead of using the standard plug.
bootay69 - Friday, November 7, 2008 - link
I use the standard plug...the adapter is not necessary.afkrotch - Wednesday, November 5, 2008 - link
FYI: Guitar Freaks, Drummania, Piano Freaks, etc. Wiki Bemani. Now Guitar Hero was probably the first music game to be in the US, aside from DDR.EODetroit - Tuesday, November 4, 2008 - link
Honestly I'll never play more than two player mode, so I don't see the point of buying anything beyond my GH3 game.But I do like the commercial that I saw during MNF last night.
MaverickSY19 - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
Honestly I like RB 1 and 2 better for the reason that they are not to hard! I mean a lot of us can't play expert at all let alone breeze though it. I honestly like playing the songs and having fun with it, because as a kid we all did the air guitar and its nice to actually play a song with a fake one you can at least hold on to. :)Shoot I'll be happy when I can play RB or GH through all the way on hard let alone Expert. Shoot my wife can't even do easy :P I have yet to try her on the beginner level they added to GHWT.
crash resistant - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
GH isn't harder. It's more pure. RB has silly drum solos in the middle of every song, even on Expert.Singing in GH is harder, as you have to sing more to gain points- and there aren't cheesy tambourine solos that last what feels like forever.
I guess, it's true- GH requires more skill to attain higher scores- but it's relative to the game itself- You can't relate the score system to RB!
If you want to party, buy all 3 games. I'm telling you the truth.
DerekWilson - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
i disagree that ghwt is "harder" ... neither one is "real" in terms of hitting all the notes. which sucks.if you look at youtube and see the side by side charting, you'll see that some songs are harder on rock band 2 and some songs are harder on ghwt ... the ones that overlap anyway ...
as for the song choice, that does have an impact, and some of the songs that ghwt picked are really hard and some of the songs that rb2 picked are really hard. it all comes out in the wash in my mind.
crash resistant - Sunday, November 2, 2008 - link
Whoever reviewed this game made several errors and assumptions without further testing. They didn't even verify how star power works while drumming....1: You hit both symbols ANY TIME and it activates.. no need to wait for a break- and it DOES NOT lose your streak. Sad...
2: The drum pedal has never slid away from me, on two different carpets (thick and very thin at an office) or on a marble floor. Did they get a pedal with no grips? How unfair.
3: The symbols are very responsive- the problem is the angle. I can barely tap the symbols to get the response even with the little sticks that came with the kit, it just has to be at the right angle.
4: Symbols are symbols. You don't roll around and hit symbols as if they are drums.
5: The interface is waaaaaaaaay more responsive than RB1 and RB2. (Mind you, I love all three games because of song selection)
6: Tool?
Go buy GHWT and RB2, full band kits- now.
DerekWilson - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
1) you can't physically hit the cymbals anytime -- if you are required to play something else and you miss those notes, you lose the streak. any time you are physically capable of inserting a hit on both cymbals (either when nothing is happening or one cymbal is being played and you can just add the other one in) you'll be fine and won't lose your streak. The point of what I wrote is that it is very difficult if not impossible /in many songs/ to actually activate star power without missing other notes. there are some songs in which it's super easy to activate star power at any time with no problem. But the songs in which it is difficult are the ones you need it the most ...2) i've tried it on carpet and floor with no luck. if there are grips beyond the pads on the bottom of the kick pedal then we did not get anything else (and neither did my parents who also bought ghwt and are havign trouble with the kick sliding).
3) i mean responsive as in feel not activation of the trigger.
4) everlong. other's as well, but that's the big one. also, rolls on cymbals are not uncommon. especially on the hi-hat.
5) i dont know what you mean.
6) yes, sorry i didn't mention tool. tool is awesome. i love tool. i would have bought the game just for those songs ... but not everyone would ;-)