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
Online Play
We had some complaints about Rock Band 2's online play, and Guitar Hero World Tour fixes some of those issues, but creates others. Here's the long and short of it.
In GHWT, you can't coop on your career path. Getting help unlocking songs from random strangers is a nice perk in RB2. Part of the problem in RB2, though, is that you either have to start a band and chose what everyone does all the time, or you have to join a band and be at the mercy of someone else's song picks. GHWT fixes that.
When playing with other people, every song a random band member is picked to chose the next song to play. This allows everyone to take turns choosing songs to play and is much better from a "just wanna play with people online" sort of model. And honestly, this is what we really wanted to do most of the time with Rock Band and had a hard time with. Joining other people's bands just lead to doing stupid challenges or other nonsense, and when we had other people join us they just dropped out and made us fail losing fans all over the place. With GHWT, there is no similar penalty for being screwed and left during a game, and if someone doesn't like the song you picked, they have incentive to stick around in that they might get to pick the next one.
With the headset jack built into the controllers, using voice chat over live is much more accessible. But we still didn't hear a lot of people using it. It is a little less necessary with this setup than with Rock Band though.
On the down side, you have to pick your difficulty setting from the settings menu before the song is picked, so if you go with expert you'd better be ready no matter what song your online friend chooses. Also you only have 10 seconds to decide to edit your settings between songs. So don't be slow either.
It is also not possible, when in the process of matchmaking, to decide you want to wait for a full band. The matchmaking process goes on and gives you one of two options: wait for it to finish working its magic or cancel. You might end up with two people, or one ... or maybe even three (though we were never matched up with 3 people). It's certainly less ambiguous as to whether you should wait for more people or not: you get what you get. But it would still be nice if you could set an option somewhere to definitely wait until you could be matched with at least 2 others if you wanted.
It's not a bad set up, the head to head play is better than in Rock Band, and the cooperative online play is fun as well. Both Harmonix and Neversoft have some things to work on for their next installment. Neither RB2 nor GHWT is perfect in the online department, but both have their strengths and weaknesses. Honestly, the best and most consistent way to have fun online is to play with friends you already know and skip the matchmaking. That's a good time on either game.
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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 ;-)