Genre: Music
Publisher: Activision
Platform: PS2, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360
The Guitar Hero series takes that inevitable step into full-blown band simulation a little later than the competition. The time seems to have been spent coming up with new twists on solid foundations, to varying degrees of success.
Guitar Hero arrived on the gaming scene with such swaggering force that it quickly propelled party games into hitherto unknown levels of popularity. As happens all too often with these overnight successes, however, the fame proved too much and the band broke up - development team Harmonix scampered over to MTV Games to create Rock Band and publisher Activision recruited Neversoft to maintain the Guitar Hero name.
The two concurrent series' managed to strike a level of amnesty when it was announced that (more or less) all peripherals would be compatible with either of the band simulators. A nice gesture to the over-burdened consumer, to be sure, but it's also the reason that this review has something of a niche appeal being that we played on Rockband hardware.
World Tour offers both single player and multiplayer career modes, wherein one creates a band and starts gigging in pursuit fortune and glory. Players can play lead guitar, bass, drums, or sing as they make their way between venues performing a wide range of popular rock songs.
With up to four players able to jam on the same screen the display can take some getting used to. With four separate sets of notes scrolling about the screen at once and indicators showing how well things are going - rock meter, star power, etc - stashed in any available nook, it can be quite difficult to judge exactly what is going on at a glance.
The inherent differences between the two series' peripherals are handled respectfully in World Tour. Where the Guitar Hero drum kit offers five different impact surfaces, Rock Band has only four, to compensate the software conflates two drum lanes into a single string of notes. As the Rock Band drums do not have velocity sensitivity the armoured notes that require harder strikes are simply removed when the incongruent controller is detected. Neither guitars nor microphones offer changes dire enough to require much attention.
Added customisation like robust character building and a difficult song customisation studio are unlikely to entice much attention beyond brief appreciation for their inclusion.
And so, as it often does, the real choice comes down to song selection, which is very much a personal preference. World Tour offers an initial 86 master recordings from divergent eras, but just between you and me, I think Rock Band's line up has the more standout tracks.
Summary: Guitar Hero World Tour offers one of most absurdly fun party game experiences ever to grace the home console. As to how it stacks up against its very similar competitor, gamers can be very happy in either choice, especially since both offer hardware compatibility.
This review bought to you by Gamefreaks.
