Guitar Hero World Tour Comments by Tom Bramwell

@Barry - if you're mainly going to play guitar, the most important factor to consider is how many of the songs you really dig in the tracklists for each game. I like Rock Band because the drums are fun, and my wife likes to sing, and it's good for parties, but if I was just going to play the guitar, I'd probably still be playing GH2. I prefered the guitar-centric music of Guitar Hero (seemed appropriate...) whereas Rock Band is largely pop songs chosen for familiarity and vocal accessibility... and it's a lot of contemporary stuff that I happen to dislike. 80% (random large percentage) of enjoying either of these games comes down to listening to music you enjoy.

I had heard that EA plan to release Rock Band 2 in the UK at the end of November, so I'll be waiting for confirmed news before buying anything.

Rock Band forums are reporting that the PS3 GH:WT drum set does not currently work with Rock Band 2. 360 seems to be okay and the RB1 and RB2 drums work fine on GH:WT on both platforms. Great...

Oh, and there seem to be a significant number of reports of problems with the GH:WT drums and guitar having issues in much the same way the RB set had last year.

As for the game, the Guitar Hero franchise lost me with the awful music charts in GH3 which sacrificed fun for difficulty. By the sound of this review not only has that issue not been addressed but GH:WT hasn't managed to develop a good career mode for either single or multi player when compared with Rock Band. I think I'll pass on this one unless I see it cheap either on offer or second hand.

Is this, or RB / RB2 worth getting if your only intrested in it for the guitar playing side?

I've only got RB, but much as I love it I'd have to say hand on heart that the guitar playing is probably the weakest aspect of the game. There are just too many songs in there that were picked for great drum or vocal parts that are (whisper it) actually quite dull to play on guitar.

Which isn't to say there aren't some gems, and the fantastic DLC support helps immensely. But I probably wouldn't pay full-price for it purely as a guitar game.

Hi everyone

I've spent the day reading reviews on this (Guitar Hero World Tour) and Rock Band 1 & 2.

I am looking at getting either GHWT or Rock Band for the PS3. I like in the UK and I am unsure what my options are.

Is Rock Band 2 out for the PS3? I heard somewhere that the 360 had exclusivity rights over it, so it took forever coming to PS3.... or is that Rock Band 1? :S

I'm looking to get one of these for the Xmas season, to have a laugh with my friends and family.

I have GH3 & GH: Aerosmith for PS3 and also GH: On Tour on DS and find all of those enjoyable.

Please could someone advise whether Rock Band 2 is coming to PS3 in the UK this year? Also, whether I would find Rock Band or GHWT more enjoyable?

I'm also confused what peripherals work with the other game, GHWT instruments working with Rock Band and vice versa. Please note that I'm asking about PS3 peripherals, not 360 or Wii
Many thanks in advance.

so if you have rock band gear can you use it for this? or is it just the other way round?

for 360

@ Joco84 - my honest advice right now would be to wait. The PS3 GH:WT drum set does not currently work with Rock Band 1 or 2 and until they've got that sorted out I wouldn't recommend buying GH:WT just in case it never DOES get sorted out. Rock Band is out now for the PS3 but there's some fairly strong hints that Rock Band 2 may arrive before Christmas.

After reading several reviews on GH:WT I wouldn't recommend it for anyone that uses these games as 'party games' with friends who may never have played these type of games before. The multiplayer mode in Rock Band allows you to 'save' a player that fails a song up to three times and even if someone fails more than three times it's possible to scramble through to the end of the song if the remaining players are very good (and you're close to the end of the song). On GH:WT if one person fails, even once, everyone fails.

It also seems that they've still not managed to nail the note charts in GH:WT and, on the harder difficulty levels, will have you playing notes that don't exist in the actual song. This is fine if you're interested in the maximum possible challenge but it really gets in the way of having good ol' fashioned fun as you play a note and don't hear anything from the soundtrack. Then there's the lack of an equivalent to Rock Band's world tour mode which encourages you to think in terms of a band and gives you some very nice little touches (fans, roadies, managers etc) as you progress.

So yes, I'd say wait for Rock Band 2. From everything I've read it's the better game, in my opinion has a far better track list and has a vast library of DLC to choose from.

Thanks BOFH_UK

I was close to importing RB2 last night, but I'm now hearing stories that the DLC on the UK PSN store does not work with imported versions....

Anyone else got advice for me on which to buy?

Sorry, some really stupid questions for this regarding the Wii version...
will my GH3 guitar play this GH:WT?
can i even buy the game on its own?
If i buy GH:WT with the new guitar, can i use the GH:WT new guitar to then go back and play GH3 with a friend?
Can the different instruments play at different levels in the same song? (Drums on easy, voice on medium, guitar on hard, bass on expert - that sort of thing because it annoys me endlessly on GH3 with either getting booed off on hard or bored mindless on easy depending who is over playing).

@Jdoki - the note patterns in GHWT are much better than GH3, I play at medium/hard difficulty level and have done around 80% of the lead guitar tracks and I've not once though i was just mashing buttons, they seem to be much more 'in tune' with the song

There's some interesting comments being made in here in response to people asking whether to get GH or RB, some I can agree with, some I can't. My two cents for what it's worth, this is coming from someone who has been playing since Guitar Hero was launched in the UK and has every iteration of both franchises (bar the awful DS version of GH - less said the better!).

I'll also pre-empt any accusations of bias up front by saying that personally I prefer the GH series, but I have my reasons which I'll try to make clear.

[b]Party game for everyone[/b]
This has been summed up quite well. Let's start with Rock Band. The key thing as has been stated is that RB has the "rescue" option. Individual players in a band are allowed to fail a song up to 3 times before they are out of the song for good, and can be rescued by another player who is still in the game triggering star power. This is a big bonus for people who aren't used to playing, and in theory there will always be one "gamer" who is good enough to have SP on standby to rescue the person who has dropped out. On GHWT, if one player crashes out the whole band fails the song, however this can be mitigated by careful SP management. To explain - instead of players saving SP for band members who fail, the player who is failing should activate SP to get out of the danger zone. To be fair this should be standard tactics in RB anyway, the save is a last resort.

The flip side of that is that if a player is failing, they probably have the difficulty set too high for their standard. Whilst it might be frustrating to fail a song, really if you're struggling you should go back and try it on an easier setting. GHWT now has a level below Easy called Beginner, it would be hard work for someone to fail on this level and reintroduces the concept of GH for the masses. This also opens up a greater portion of the full set of songs to all players, but let's be fair - the harder songs shouldn't be easy to complete.

The difficulty curve for the absolute novice is not that steep, and both games cater well for the more casual player. That brings us nicely to the song selection.

[b]Track list[/b]
First off, if you've never played before you might only consider the tracklist as a way of choosing which franchise to opt for, so as Darc suggests it makes sense go for the one which is more aligned with your taste in music. Pre-GHWT, the sheer size of the catalogue of songs available on RB meant there was usually something for everyone and swung the balance in its favour. With GHWT clocking in at 80+ songs that's perhaps less of a divisive issue now, and don't forget you pay for additional content on RB, it can become an expensive hobby.

There are two downsides to selecting purely using this method. The first is liking a song doesn't necessarily make it fun to play. Freebird is one of my all-time favourite songs, but (note charts aside - I'm coming to that :P) it just doesn't lend itself well to GH. It's 9 minutes long and the first 5 are mind-numbinglly tedious to play. There are other examples - Ziggy Stardust on GH1 is great fun to play on real guitar, it's a pain to play on GH, a big disappointment for me The reverse is true of course - songs which you wouldn't list of being songs you'd choose to put in the game, or might not evn like, are fantastic fun to play. You can put anything by Heart in this category for me.

The brings me to the second point, namely that the GH series has introduced me to a lot of new music and broadened my horizons. I'll not list my musical tastes here, suffice to say there are bands I now listen to I would never have listened to before, or hadn't even heard of.

As such, personally I wouldn't let the tracklist be the only factor in choosing one franchise over the other. If you don't mind shelling out for the additional songs when they come out and there are no songs you HAVE to play which are exclusive to the GH series, then with the wealth of download content RB is the winner here purely on the basis of the amount available.

[b]The guitar game[/b]
I have gaming mates who disagree with me on this so it's a bit of a marmite one I think. There are two aspects to this - peripherals and note charts.

Let's be quite clear on this - I am very biased on the peripherals side. I can't stand the RB guitar controller. The strummer feels woolly and loose and not precise enough for trickier strumming parts, sections I would nail on GH I couldn't get a decent combo going on RB with the proprietary controller. The buttons on the fretboard similarly feel clunkier and don't help on intricate parts. For me the GH controller wins hands down on the usability front.

As for the note charts - ahhh, the note charts. Quite a lot of history to follow on this to put it into context, but if you can't be bothered to read it all the summary is this - don't be put off by the naysayers talking about overly complicated note charts on GHWT, to my mind for the pure guitar experience it's still the better of the two franchises.

When GH1 came out, a few people got to grips with it earlier than others (Priest et al) and people watched the Youtube vids mouth agape as they got 5* on Bark at the Moon on Expert. However by the time GH2 came around a lot of people had been putting the hours in and reached a decent level of competency. The result was that a not-insignificant portion of the gaming community finished the game on Expert the first night it came out, and it wasn't too long before people had 5* on every song as well. The gamers achieving this were understandably quite vocal about their achievements on the GH boards and elsewhere. The natural conclusion drawn from this was that GH2 was "too easy", and the devs said they aimed to address this on GH3.

Move forward in time a little, and the devs delivered on their promise. This proved rather divisive - the note charts were made more difficult but at the same time the window for hitting the notes, i.e. how precise you had to be with timing, was lowered. The result was that if you could contort your left-hand to the appropriate shapes it was actually easier to hit 5* on what would have been a ridiculous feat in GH2, meaning the hardcore gamers had less of a challenge, and there was a populist movement to decry the note charts as overly difficult. Cue the GH backlash.

It's interesting to see people don't think this has been addressed in GHWT. From my perspective, GHWT is a very different beast to GH3. For starters, the tracklist has much more of an RB feel to it. There are a lot more nice-to-play songs which don't need too much thought to get through and are actually fun to play. I'll be the first to admit I never went back to the first dozen or so tracks on GH3 once I'd cleared them.

The note charts themselves seem to match the songs - easier songs have easier charts, and if the song is difficult then the note chart accurately reflects that. Beat it, Hot For Teacher and Satch Boogie need to have tricky solos and tbh have made a good stab at recreating the feel of the tapping solos within the confines of the tools available (i.e. 5 buttons and a strummer), especially Beat It. BYOB and Assassin have similarly done a great job of creating the manic feel of the main riffs as well. Perhaps the one thing which has gone wrong is that the devs have addressed issues of a perceived too-high difficulty level by changing both the note charts AND the tracklist. There's no Jordan and no Fire and Flames on here, which means there's no song which could take you weeks or even months to master.

As I said at the top - there's a very bandwagonesque feel to knocking the GH note charts, don't be put off by this. I certainly never questioned this aspect and was surprised by the amount of noise it has generated.

[b]Bass[/b]
Bass was always the poor relation in both GH and RB. A fantastic idea when it was introduced, but online you would see people drop out of co-op games if they didn't get to select being guitar first, highly indicative of the fact that a tedious bassline means a bored player. There are of course songs with great basslines which are fantastic to play, but you can't build your entire songlist purely to ensure each has interesting parts for all the players, similarly you wouldn't reject a song purely on this basis.

I'm sure this wouldn't sway people on its own, but the introduction of the open note in GHWT (where you strum the note without holding the fret buttons down) has opened this up enormously. On a real guitar there are a lot of times when you play an open string, or pull-off to an open string and I was surprised this hadn't been introduced earlier. It's a shame this wasn't added to the guitar as well, but I suspect they wanted to give the bass a unique selling point to make it more interesting, and it's worked.

[b]Drums[/b]
Drums was the main reason I got RB. As a casual RL guitarist I'd never had the chance to play drums, but what music fan wouldn't relish the chance to batter the skins. What I didn't suspect was that within a week the only instrument I'd be playing on RB was the drums, for all the reasons I've listed above. I was lucky in that I got a drum set that worked and didn't break (especially as I imported), and had great fun working my way up to being fairly competent at most songs, and with some practice not too shabby at the really tricky later songs - Won't Get Fooled Again, I'm looking at you! Good job RB.

I can understand people's reticence to fork out again for more drums when, on the 360 at least, the RB drums are compatible with GHWT. We'll have to wait and see how the RB2 drum peripheral shapes up, but for me the leap from the RB drums to the GH ones is as big a leap as the changes to hammer-ons and pull-offs between GH1 and GH2.

First off - the layout. Plenty of pixels have been dedicated to this, but in brief the RB set is like a set of drum pads, GH is a more realistic layout with two cymbals. After one night playing pro face-off on drums, my GH/RB gaming mate and I both agree the GH layout just "feels" so much better. Purely from a comfort perspective, we were both able to play much longer.

Then there's the quality of the equipment itself. One of the main criticisms of the RB set was that there wasn't enough bounce in the pads. On a real kit you should hold the stick lightly between thumb and forefinger and let it bounce back up. Experienced drummers managed to do this very well, but for the casual gamer this was not forthcoming. On the new GH set, even a novice like me could get enough bounce to do some nice double hits (where you let the bounce make the stick hit the pad twice for each time you bring the stick down) which makes faster sections much easier.

Until the RB2 drums come out, GH has stolen a march here.

[b]Summary[/b]
Having played both franchises for countless hours, if someone asked me which one to go for I would always recommend GH based on the peripherals and the gameplay experience, with a caveat that RB has more songs. Hopefully the above will be useful background information for anyone who is trying to choose between the two.

One final point. I'm writing this from the perspective of a gamer who plays mostly with other gamers. I'm working on the assumption that if people are on the boards here they are also gamers who are looking at this from two angles - which would be better for me, and which would be better for friends and family having a go. I think my thoughts as a gamer are quite clear, what I hope I've put across is there's something for the casual gamer in both games.

One final final point - I've not mentioned singing here because I wouldn't want people to mention my own awful singing and it only holds a passing interest for me, but both seem to do a good job. If you want karaoke though just go and buy Singstar ;)

I've been really impressed with my rock band drum kit. I purchased my GHWT on the PS3, mainly because I prefer the online play compared to the xbox. One thing I've noticed as I work through the levels - you do have to smash the pads a lot harder (like a proper rock star) so if you live in a flat (like me) you may get hassle about the noise ;-)