Guitar Hero World Tour Comments by Johnny Minkley

I take it this preview was filed from somewhere a long way from Brighton. If not, GET TO BED! Have you seen the time?

Nice to see a preview catering for us Night Owls!

Got to say this looks very nice n' all - probably worth starting to save up now though. Even if it is cheaper than Rock Band thats still a big ask to push through my 'finance department'.

... I hate the f--king Eagles, man...

Oh, and first?

edited for: Whisky fingers.

I'm in Brighton. Johnny is not. I feel like I'm the one who paid the highest price. :-)

So what has California got that Brighton.. er,hasn't......

....mmm, yeah, I take your point!

Being up late in Brighton is all the rage.

I saw a bloke in a Rock Band Tshirt today. Normal, middle aged guy. The kind you see at B&Q on a Bank Holiday Monday. He was wearing a Rock Band tshirt. Guitar Hero might have to try a bit harder I reckon.

Yay Linkin Park =)

Bout Time Anyway...

RedOctane will be the critical strike in this battle, I doubt Neversoft's development abilities after the horrific mess that was some of GH3's note charts but the quality of RedOctane's hardware can never be brought into question. If GH4 beats out RB then it'll be them who should be taking the credit.

I had to check it wasn't April 1st when I read this! GH opening up the world for the modding community, fantastic idea. The drums look more like a proper drum kit as well in terms of layout. Bring it on :D

This will more than likely appeal to those people who already have invested in GH3 previously. Retail wise, they could probably bundle those fab looking drums and mic with the software for a reasonable sum price. With a large install base for GH 2/3 ( having a few friends with guitars already) they have the advantage of being perceived as cheaper. Most baulked at £170 for RB (ie 1.0) but the GH franchise has the luxury of being able to hit price points for single instruments + game.

The informed players will quote Harmonix as having the best note charts etc, but to the uininformed masses price + song list + brand will be the deciding factor.

ps I love the look of those GH drums.

Rock n roll cliche alert, but this is Rock Band turned up to 11.

Spinal Tap version please.

Think I'll be trading in Rock Band when this arrives XD

It's still Neversoft, though, isn't it? After the mess they made of the note charts in GH3, it doesn't really matter how many songs or features they stuff into this one, it still won't be as fun to play as Rock Band.

Besides, there's no way I'm shelling out on a whole new set of plastic instruments. Just not going to happen.

Looks bloody brilliant.

And I do wonder if making Rock Band 360 exclusive in Europe will have hurt its chances of really solidifying market share - any PS3 / Wii / PS2 owner - and those 360 owners who didn't take the plunge yet - is now surely going to bide their time and wait for this to arrive.

I know I am.

Looks good, and I love the customisable note charts, although I'll remain skeptical until I've heard with my own ears that the resulting 'music' you make doesn't sound like the Elite II midi tracks.

As with every release in this segment, song list and note charts are everything. Rock Band have nailed it. Hopefully these guys can too.

For available evidence of RedOctane's expertise one need look no further than the disappointment many GH veterans feel with the standard Rock Band guitar - switching to the latter is like breaking your vintage Gibson only to find your mum's bought a replacement from Argos.

Many may have felt like that, but personally I thought the Rock Band guitar was easily better.

Everything in this game sounds good, but I'm worried about the most important thing of all: the note charts. Harmonix reigns utterly supreme in that area, and Neversoft has a lot of catching up to do.

Sounds F**KEN AWESOME! (I dont normally swear about things, but if they pull this off I will most definitely get this!)

For available evidence of RedOctane's expertise one need look no further than the disappointment many GH veterans feel with the standard Rock Band guitar - switching to the latter is like breaking your vintage Gibson only to find your mum's bought a replacement from Argos.

Many may have felt like that, but personally I thought the Rock Band guitar was easily better.

I think it's a lot to do with familiarity. I had GH1-3 and now have Rock Band, and at first I didn't like the RB guitar, but now I really like it. The strum bar feels totally weird at first, but on balance I've found it much easier to do up & down strumming on than the GH3 version (which I still use as a second guitar). The buttons are difficult to get used to but once you have, there's no real problem. I can use either guitar quite happily now, the only difference is that the RB one feels less like a toy because it's larger & heavier.

I like EightHours also seem to be in the minority as I think the Rock Band guitar was a much more polished and professional piece of equipment than the cheap plastic X shaped guitar I got with the 360 version of Guitar Hero II. It's bigger, the materials are better, it feels more solid and I much prefer the neck buttons. In fact the only thing that I found slight worse was the strum bar and its slightly less precise feeling generated by the lack of a definite click, but after an hour or so I didn't find it made any difference to my gameplay. Now I'm no expert as I struggle to play the guitar tracks on hard in either game, but I definitely feel the Rock Band guitar was a more solid professional product.

However it looks like this new guitar hero guitar may have pinched some of the materials from the rock band one, and if they have upped the size as well it could well be excellent with its better strum bar implementation. However the neck buttons are still raised, whilst I prefer the flat rock band ones as I find they make it easier to slide my fingers from the high set of 4 to the low set of 4 and back again.

I was however very dissappointed by the Rock Band drums, in particular how damn noisy they are. I find it detracts from the sense of occasion of being a rock band drummer when it sounds like I'm knocking 7 bells out a set of naff cardboard boxes, almost drowning out the sound of the actual music in the game.

Sounds amazing!

If the drums are as good as they appear to be, and if I can play them "live" as it sounds like I will be able to, then I'm in. Didn't buy Rock Band so no duplication for me but I wonder if I will be able to use the original GH guitar with it? I guess that depends on whether it comes out on PS2 probably

Softer drum pads is a good idea, the RB ones make too much noise and don't bounce enough. I've modded my drums though with neoprene pads (and a metal kick pedal) and now they're superb - quiet and really bouncy.

Personally I don't see a huge amount of point to the raised cymbals unless you're a serious drummer already. For a layman the drums are difficult enough just with 4 pads at the same level, and you have to wince when visiting players start hitting the rims / housing etc when they miss, I can only imagine the chaos will get worse with a more complex set-up. The 4 pads being aligned with the on-screen layout make it more intuitive to the regular person - and most people get totally caned by the drums even on medium to begin with.

TBH I still see the GH frachise chasing the hardcore - sure there may be 'loads' of people interested in hacking GH to create their own music, but I bet they're a tiny proportion of GH players so I think the track creator will be mostly unused by the majority of people. Better hardware will be good, as will a big tracklist with lots of headliners, but in fact the only thing that really matters at the end of the day is how the game feels to play. This is still a total unknown and Neversoft have everything to prove following the screw-ups in GH3. I can't believe they're not just canning the whole boss battle idea, it's fundamentally f*cking stupid. I bet marketing are telling them to keep it in because they can get some celebs in there to push the product.

Looks awesome. Still worried about the durability of the drums, more so with those raised cymbal pads. I've broken such things on a real electronic kit, so I'm not sure how those ones would stand up to enthusiastic pounding.

There is a secret to the RB guitar: 50p buys a guitar pick. Use it. Or, learn to "funk pop" with your thumb.

Those drums look AWFUL. Am I the only person who thinks they look cheap and shitty? The 3-pad section looks so easily breakable, the cymbal risers look thin and cheap, and the pedal looks like it'll snap much faster than RB's; that, on top of the shitty Neversoft notechart, makes it a no-sell.

Plus: LINKIN PARK? Fuck off! Maybe if the game had turntables and a sample box...

Okay, here's my take.

I'm planning to get Rock Band on the weekend. I read this preview and this looks really interesting (especially the drum kit, which is a big draw for me since I already play real guitars). But this is what my gut tells me:

Rock Band seems to round off a lot of the edges that I find obnoxious about the Guitar Hero franchise. Yes, the rock-posturing is still there, and the crazy costumes to some extent, but it seems toned down so that it doesn't constantly remind you that you're supposed to be living out some kind of childhood fantasy that I never really had. It's reflected in the clean, not-too-ostentatious interface design, and even the straightforward no-nonsense nature of the name itself.

And indeed, it's possible, that in 6 months time I'll realise that I bought the wrong product and have to start over again, but at the moment my instincts suggest that Rock Band will maintain better downloadable content, a more palatable experience for someone who never really had any interest in being in KISS, any number of hair bands or indulge in what might be termed 'cock rock', and a greater number of friends who also have it and so will know a few songs to join in with.

Besides... in 6 months it'll be christmas :)

I've modded my drums though with neoprene pads (and a metal kick pedal) and now they're superb - quiet and really bouncy.

Is that a relatively easy/cheap thing to do? At the moment my only gripe is that our drummer tends to give the pads so much welly it can be a bit distracting for the rest of us.

Alright, my only gripes are loud drums and the fact that it's hard to find a spot for the whammy bar on the Fender that doesn't either hit buttons by accident or get in the way of strumming.

The track creator sounds hellishly complicated. It seems by the description that if you've got enough know-how to create something worthwhile with it then you're likely to be, um, a musician. So what's the point? There's also a ton of things about GHIII that really bothered me (the bonkers, occasionally unfair difficulty level, the joyless slog of the boss-battles, the generally uninspired track-list, the rampant misogyny) that I'm not hearing have been fixed, so, y'know. I'm not getting too excited about this at the moment.

Rock Band seems to round off a lot of the edges that I find obnoxious about the Guitar Hero franchise. Yes, the rock-posturing is still there, and the crazy costumes to some extent, but it seems toned down so that it doesn't constantly remind you that you're supposed to be living out some kind of childhood fantasy that I never really had. It's reflected in the clean, not-too-ostentatious interface design, and even the straightforward no-nonsense nature of the name itself.

I think all of that is fair comment. I really like the character designer - obviously, I'd like a few more faces/movesets/costumes to be available, but hey isn't that always the case with character creators and generally I've not had any problem getting to the look I was going for. I had no real problem with the presentation of the first two Guitar Hero games (although the third really rubbed me up the wrong way), but Rock Band definitely has a bit more of a naturalistic style without being tediously realistic for the sake of being realistic and the general consensus in our house is that it "feels" a bit better as a result.

@rodafowa

I've heard about lots of fixes. Some people alsolutely swear by the method of taping long socks over each pad - supposed to dampen the sound and make it more accurate, too.

By far the cheapest method would be to mod the sticks themselves, by, say, adding a few layers of foam or even kitchen towel to the end. That's the first thing I'm gonna try when I get it, so we'll see how it works.

From the other comments, sounds like Rock Band might continue to be the choice for people who want a more well-balanced experience, but we'll see.

"On one side, there are the clunking corporate dinosaurs like EMI, which continues to flounder in a post-iPod world, its business precariously reliant on the latest dinner party vacuity from a whiny pseud who likes to scrawl embarrassing slogans on the back of his hand".

Hehe, so true, so true. I used to work in the digital music market a year ago, and dealt directly with many of the major (and minor) record labels, and EMI were always very backward in embracing digital music, their catalogue of 'new exciting artists' was always terrible and never very exciting.

And, more to the point, "it could be full of bad words that would piss off Microsoft and Sony". Best not let your boss near it then, Brian.

:D

The character design looks terrible and I hope they'll put some work into the drummer's animations (which were terrible in GH3). The studio feature is something that will probably appeal to a very small part of the playerbase. Fun for 1 minute, until you realise that playing the guitar with 5 buttons is tedious, and that you have to be a hell of a good drummer to make it sound good.

Other than that, I'm curious to see how it turns out, but I'm more looking forward to Rock Band 2's announcement during E3, with new instruments (rumoured).

Sounds good, but it will all come down to the price for me, as mercenary as that sounds.

Rock Band was far too expensive, and I certainly won't be buying it at the current price.

Over to you, Geetar Hero.

"If people have their own favourite band, be it The Beatles, Led Zeppelin or AC/DC, we could totally make a game for them. It'd be amazing."

MAKE A SYSTEM OF A DOWN ONE!!!

This sounds amazing! Good price point (i.e. no more than £100 MAX) and I'm in!

"MAKE A SYSTEM OF A DOWN ONE!!! "

Hell yeah! Stick Serj's solo stuff on there too, and that would a cracker of a game.

I think rock band 2 will up the ante again. After importing GH3 when it came out and being stuck with a faulty guitar and crappy note charts and boss battles I think I will stick with RB. HMX have released at least 3 DLC tracks every week for the last 6 months, that alone is worth my loyalty.

soad hero. sweeet

Anyone else notice how the bbc iplayer goes all the way to 11?

I've modded my drums though with neoprene pads (and a metal kick pedal) and now they're superb - quiet and really bouncy.

Is that a relatively easy/cheap thing to do? At the moment my only gripe is that our drummer tends to give the pads so much welly it can be a bit distracting for the rest of us.

It's really, really simple if you buy them - I got mine from RocPadz but there are others available. Avoid foam pads, they wear out way too quickly (the foam compresses). If you go really cheap, you can DIY it and buy 4 standard office mouse mats (rubber with fabric top layer) from Staples and cut them yourself, applying them with rubber glue. I preferred the prefabbed versions because I'm lazy and also they've already figured out the right type of glue to use that doesn't damage the drum pads.

I can't stress how much these pads improve the drum experience. They cut down the noise by at least 50%, maybe more, and the sticks bounce much more, making it easier to play.

Cheers metalnut, I really appreciate the info. They're maybe a little pricey at 20 quid, but I'm sorely tempted anyway. I suppose that having the face of the drum raised makes you less likely to hit the rim as well?

I'd be up for a SOAD one too...

It's so frustraiting to watch the Guitar Hero / Rock Band battle at the moment. Guitar Hero is coming up with some really good ideas for this round and I'd love to give 'em a go but:

1) In order to fully experience all the new stuff I have to buy the whole damn kit over again despite having 3 guitars, microphone and drum kit in the house.

2) Far more importantly, Guitar Hero 3 was a massive let down compared to 1&2 thanks to the terrible note charts. Oh I'm sure it's more of a challenge for the experts but for the bulk of us who play these games for fun.... Sorry but Rock Band / Harmonix just kicks the crap out of 'em.

Still, maybe I'm being unfair. Maybe Nerversoft will sort out this glaring problem with this release and all will be sweetness and light. I'm not holiding my breath though.

I'm surprised by all the GH hate in here. WT sounds amazing and will surpass RB easily if everything is true.

/preorders

Well, hitting the rim can result in a crap plasticy sound, but it still registers as a hit.

Gonna get my pads from http://www.rockbanddrumsoft.com/mcuthick...

Look sweet and aren't foam, which I think might not be durable enough and look/feel tacky.

Add a keyboard peripheral damnit!

Ahem... Anyway, you think the GH3 note charts are bad? Me and my mates have been playing Rockband a fair bit recently, and everyone who tried playing the guitar, on any difficulty, was uniformly bored shitless by strumming the same note over and over and over and over and over again. And again. And over again.

Are you all playing a mysterious secondary version of Rockband with exciting guitar gameplay or what?

Me and my mates have been playing Rockband a fair bit recently, and everyone who tried playing the guitar, on any difficulty, was uniformly bored shitless by strumming the same note over and over and over and over and over again. And again. And over again.

Totally agree - easy level is a waste of time for guitar and generally GH is far more interesting to play.

Peope might also find timpany mallets (or similar) a good alternative to drum pad covers. They do change the way the sticks feel mind, but if you aren't already a drummer you probably won't care.

http://www.vicfirth.com/products/timpani...

Must agree that any ps2/wii/ps3 owners will now probably wait for this rather than get rock band (when is it coming out by the way? surely they relaise now the longer they leave it the less and less they will sell?). Hope ms paid them a lot for exlusivity as it looks like it will back fire on them.
Unless of course GH4 isnt realeased here for months/years after the stateside release too.

"Hell yeah! Stick Serj's solo stuff on there too, and that would a cracker of a game."

Agreed.

And maybe a bit of Scars on Broadway, as well.

Ahem... Anyway, you think the GH3 note charts are bad? Me and my mates have been playing Rockband a fair bit recently, and everyone who tried playing the guitar, on any difficulty, was uniformly bored shitless by strumming the same note over and over and over and over and over again. And again. And over again.

Are you all playing a mysterious secondary version of Rockband with exciting guitar gameplay or what?

So play a song with a more 'interesting' guitar part :) I've found there to be plenty of tough guitar bits on Rock Band, unless you were a high-level GH3 Expert player.

Rock Band isn't a 'guitar game' it's a 'band game'. Some songs aren't about the lead guitarist furiously stroking the neck and hogging the limelight. Listen to the songs, and you'll find the note charts are a direct reflection of the actual song, they're not like that just for a laugh. In GH3 Neversoft saw fit to embellish that and stick all kinds of extra notes in which had nothing to do with what the guitar was actually doing in the song, throwing in chord notes where there was no actual chord and pretending that one guy can play lead and rhythm at the same time - maybe that keeps it 'interesting' but for me it totally killed the immersion - it just drew attention to the fact that I was playing a button-mashing game and not a guitar. I'll take immersion over arbitrary gaming challenge, personally.

I too find Rock Band boring in comparison to GH3. The drum kit feels unnatural too. I'm hoping the GHWT Drum kit feels nice to play.

IGN did a review on a Pelican set of drum pad's silencers that look pretty decent, which I've asked my girlfriend to pick up when she goes over to the States next month.

I've got the same problem with GH3 as you do Metalnut. The note patterns just didn't make sense to me, not only did they throw in extra notes all over the place, but note progression didn't follow what it should have. The missed HO/PO's where they should have been, they put gaps in fast sequences where it should have been one single play IE fast parts where it should have been G,B,Y,R over and over became O,B,Y,R or O,B,R,R for no reason whatsoever, and generally, Neversoft made a mess of things. It made it so I never really wanted to play GH3, and just went back to GH2. Its making me slightly suspicious that all the previews are heralding this as the next messiah, and focusing on these amazing new features, but no ones discussed this fairly major game flaw that caused a fair few fans of the GH series to turn their back on 3.

Harmonix/Red Octane was an amazing collaboration, as you had a group who could make amazing note patterns and rhythm games, and a team who focused on making rhythm game controllers, and its a shame that it fell apart.