Guitar Hero World Tour: The Best, The Worst, and Everything in Between

Final Words

So what do we have? Something better, something worse. Something good and something bad. Guitar Hero World Tour is not perfect. But neither is it a waste.

Guitar Hero World Tour is, in our opinion, the best music game out there when it comes to guitar simulation. The added tweaks like open notes, the neck slider (even though it's tough to use and a little gimmicky), and the physical changes to the guitar itself have really gone a long way to keep the original franchise on top in this department. There are some songs with a more interesting guitar implementation on Rock Band 2, but then there are some songs with a better adaptation on Guitar Hero World Tour. All in all, GHWT is best for guitar and bass fun. That's not to say it couldn't be better if it took some cues from Rock Band for the interface. But the actual playing of the notes is just more interesting.

Having said that, for everything else, we prefer Rock Band 2.

The drum kit, while interesting, features the worst kick pedal imaginable (to be fair, we haven't tried Konami's, but we don't expect much there). The cymbal positions don't really feel right for some songs and the cymbals are not nearly as responsive as the awesome pads (which are better than everything but the ION pad). The pad layout is awkward at times, and the mapping of the songs to the kit can be frustrating whether on a GHWT kit or on an RB kit. The only reason to pick up the GHWT drum kit is if you have an electronic kit with a midi out and you would rather play that. But even then, if you're a drummer, you might want to wait and see how well that works (if it works) with Rock Band 2, as Harmonix built the better overall drumming experience. And activating star power with the drums is just unreasonable in some songs in GHWT.

Drumming in GHWT could be better with a properly laid out electronic kit or an ION Drum Rocker with the blue cymbal added on. I think I've got the best layout for it, but it's still more complicated than it needs to be and not as intuitive as RB2. For those that care, what you want, from left to right is: yellow cymbal, red pad, yellow pad, blue pad, green cymbal, green pad, blue cymbal. Obviously the cymbals would be raised, but you would also want to get the red and blue pads as close as possible and maybe raise the yellow pad up out of the way a bit.

Vocals in GHWT can be frustrating, as it's really hard in some songs to hit the transitions properly. It also seems pickier about matching pitch than Rock Band 2. Activating star power essentially requires interaction with the XBox controller as tapping the mic really doesn't work well.

The interface in GHWT is clunky and career mode is tedious. We prefer the non-cartoonish look of Rock Band, but that's just a preference issue really. But while we're at it, the character animation in Rock Band 2 is MUCH more acurate. the fingering and picking of guitars and bass and the drumming are very evenly matched and smooth in Rock Band 2 even on complex songs. In Guitar Hero, some things are just wrong and many motions are abrupt and jerky.

Picking difficulty for an entire career is also unsatisfactory. This should be on at least a gig level.

Honestly, I wish we could take the songs from GHWT along with the guitar innovations and some online play tweaks and shove them into Rock Band 2. That would give us nearly the perfect music game experience. Oh, but we need a better kick pedal. For both GHWT and RB2. And a hi-hat pedal. And more drum triggers (but done the right way)... On second thought, we've got a long way to go until we see the perfect music game.

But for now, GHWT is great for guitar and bass, but Rock Band 2 takes the cake for drums and overall gaming experience.