In the last three years, Guitar Hero has taken the rhythm game from niche genre to pop culture phenomenon. However, Guitar Hero developer Harmonix and manufacturer Red Octane split ways after the third outing, prompting Harmonix to up the ante with Rock Band, which took the concept of Guitar Hero and incorporated it into a band setting. Not wanting to be left behind, Activision and Neversoft have decided to go toe to toe with Harmonix and MTV by incorporating those same band elements, plus a few tricks of their own in Guitar Hero: World Tour.

Outside the obvious incorporation of band-style play, Guitar Hero: World Tour has a few other new tricks up its sleeve. There are also a heap of cameo appearances from famous musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, Sting and Ozzy Osbourne, and whole bunch of iterative improvements. This year’s track list is the biggest yet, with 86 songs packed onto the disc. Each track is the original master version, which adds an extra level of authenticity to the game. The set list covers a wide variety of eras, genres and artists including Michael Jackson, Oasis, Sting, The Eagles, Bon Jovi, Jane’s Addiction, Tool, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Willie Nelson. If that’s not enough for you, more tracks are available for download via Xbox Live Marketplace or the PlayStation Network. Guitar Hero’s online presence is not quite as prolific as Rock Band’s – songs are mostly restricted to packs of three, and only one Guitar Hero III DLC pack (Metallica’s Death Magnetic album) is compatible with World Tour.


The music creator is a powerful tool, allowing players to conceive and arrange their own tracks for the game. Due to copyright fears, you can’t add vocals for your tracks, but you can still produce some pretty good stuff. That is assuming you have the patience to do so, because creating your own music in Guitar Hero is a really drawn out process and doing it on a console with a plastic guitar isn’t exactly ideal. If creation isn’t your thing, you can pull a few tunes created by other folks from the GHTunes service, some of which are pretty impressive.

Guitar Hero: World Tour is available in three different configurations – the standalone copy of the game, the game + guitar, or the complete band set, which range in price from about $80 up to $330 (all prices in Australian dollars). The game is compatible with all previously released Guitar Hero guitars and most USB microphones, as well as the instruments from Rock Band with a few minor concessions (merging of lanes on the drums, no fancy touch stuff on the guitar). Guitar Hero’s band kit works perfectly with Rock Band, so you only need one set of instruments to play both games.

Despite the addition of the vocal and drum segments, the guitar section of Guitar Hero remains its best section. The new guitar feels noticeably different to last year’s Les Paul – the neck and whammy bar are longer, the strum bar is looser yet more responsive and there’s now a big long button you can press to activate Star Power. Also new is the touch panel, which lets you play specific notes in a track on a lower portion of the guitar without the need to strum. It’s a nice idea, but they don’t quite pull it off; players can easily unintentionally trigger the wrong note and transitioning between the frets and the panel can make you lose your combo, so it’s not really worth the effort. The bass side of things has seen a little attention with the addition of the open note, where you are required to strum without pressing any of the fret buttons allowing for a slightly more realistic bass playing experience. It still feels pretty similar to Guitar Hero III, suffering from the same ill-considered note patterns that plagued the game, although it is noticeably easier.


Drumming in Guitar Hero is a little different to Rock Band, in that you have cymbals in addition to the drum pads and pedal. At first the kit seems pretty flimsy, but it can take quite a bit of punishment – though gripping the sticks too tightly or putting a little too much power into your drumming will wear you out. Drumming plays much the same way as the guitar side of things, with the same note pathway and, sadly, the same ill-conceived note patterns. There’s not as much emphasis on maintaining a beat as there is in Rock Band, and most of the patterns are heavy on cymbals, regardless of whether the music track is or not. Star Power can be a bit tricky on the drums – it’s activated by hitting both cymbals simultaneously – the problem being that you rarely get enough of a break in the track to do so without losing your combo.

Singing is probably the weakest aspect of the Guitar Hero experience. The game gets the fundamentals right – it’s all about maintaining the correct pitch, but it has difficulty interpreting your pitch correctly. Low notes come out high and high notes come out low – sometimes you’re better off humming than trying to sing. While Rock Band had similar but less serious issues, the track list was more conducive to singing; many of Guitar Hero’s tracks simply aren’t appropriate. Does anyone really want to reproduce the cat-strangling vocals of Freak on a Leash, or sit through a bunch of really long solos while everyone else is having fun? Mind you, some songs on the track list are perfect for poorly performed vocal efforts, particularly Eye of the Tiger and Livin’ on a Prayer.

The quality of the Guitar Hero peripherals this year is somewhat concerning, particularly considering the hefty class action lawsuit aimed at Harmonix, MTV and EA over the shoddy Rock Band peripherals. Red Octane’s hardware is better, yes, but it is not without problems. I have not heard of anyone who has not had some sort of problem with the drum kit. Personally, I had an issue with the cymbal sensitivity, which was easily solved with the free MIDI-USB cable and tuning kit. Issues with the drum pads are equally prevalent but not as easily fixed. I did not experience any problems with the guitar, but several people have complained about strum bars breaking easily and/or quickly. The microphone output seems to be of a lower than expected quality, but it still gets the job done (assuming it wasn’t left out of the box, which happened to a few folks). Considering the hefty cost of the package, one should be able to expect that their kit is going to work out of the box, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.


Career mode in World Tour is pretty much the same old hat – play songs, make money, move onto the next gig while unlocking extra tracks. Things are slightly different in the presentation in that you play each track in the set list without returning to a selection screen – similar to Rock Band’s Band World Tour, though you can stop and save at any time. At the end of a set, you’ll be asked to play an encore or a boss battle. Fortunately, boss battles aren’t completely retarded like they were in Guitar Hero III; it’s just a straightforward tug of war contest without the silly power ups. The mode seems to lack the sense of progress one gets out of Rock Band’s Band World Tour, but it makes up for it by letting you play the career mode with friends online. You can also team up with your band mates and challenge another gang of four, but the game is best experienced in the normal cooperative manner.

The incorporation of band elements into Guitar Hero shifts the game from being a primarily single player experience into a multiplayer dynamic. While you can have a lot more fun this way, it seems that Guitar Hero is a “me-too” game, taking the concepts introduced by Rock Band and adding very little of its own. The guitar portions of the game still feel the most prominent, while vocal and drum segments seem a little under-developed by comparison. The thing Neversoft just can’t seem to get right is the note pattern in each song; they just don’t seem to fit the music or instrument you’re playing. Instrument build quality is also a major problem – sure, they’re better than Rock Band’s, but for $330, one should be able to expect instruments that work out of the box without any tricks. Still, if you can get past these problems, there is plenty of fun to be had with Guitar Hero: World Tour, but there is also considerable room for improvement.