Guitar Hero World Tour

"Guitar Hero does it again!"

Okay, first of all, this is a Guitar Hero review, so there will be no comparing to Rock Band whatsoever. I got the single guitar pack for Christmas 2008 and there hasn't been a single day I haven't played it since. Sad? Maybe, but then again, it is an awesome game.

Gameplay: 10/10
Guitar Hero's gameplay is brilliant. You use a plastic guitar shaped controller and play it by pressing the coloured fret button corressponding to the coloured gem on the screen and hit the strum bar. You may say, "Why not just learn to play a real guitar?" Well, that can take a long time, and is not nearly as fun as picking up your Guitar Hero game and rocking all over the world in Career Mode. There are 5 difficulties in Guitar Hero World Tour: Beginner, Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert. In Beginner you just strum along in time, Easy introduces gems and it gets harder and more exciting from there.

Audio: 9/10
Obviously in a guitar playing game the audio is very important. I love the setlist in World Tour, it has some very famous songs such as "Eye of the Tiger" and "Beat It" and there are absolutely no cover songs. However, there are a couple of French and Spanish songs, and with most of Guitar Hero customers being speakers of English, I think this could be a problem for some people in the singing career. The sound is very high quality and is volume adjustable, so if your bassist is too loud you can turn it down and you can always tell if you've missed a note with the loud sound you guitar makes. Make sure you turn it up really loud to disturb your neighbours.

Controls: 8/10
As I mentioned before, the controller is a plastic shaped guitar, and I have a couple of issues with it. First of all, the neck slider. Why need a neck slider? You don't really have to use it at all, when the purple slider notes come along, it's easier just to press the frets without strumming. Also, you can't tell where the different colours are on it, there are no bumbs or lines to tell you without you looking down what note you're on. I just don't see the point. The tilt sensor doesn't seem to work well either, and it's quite hard to find a gap in the gems to lift your hand away from the strummer to hit the star power button, and sometimes that doesn't respond well either. The drums can apparently be disresponsive aswell, but rarely. However, most of the time all the controllers work well and are part of the brilliance of this game.

Graphics: 5/10
The graphics in World Tour aren't the greatest you'll ever see. I don't think graphics are the most important thing here, but they could've done better. The character movement is very choppy, and the crowds aren't very realistic when you're playing. The bassist and guitarist don't really look like they're playing, and the singer has a white line for teeth. The new score multiplier is quite difficult to see when playing and the bright strobe lights at some of the locations can be disorientating. However, I like the way the singer looks like he's actually singing, as opposed to the previous games, and the guitarist and bassist often interact with each other, so it's not all bad.

Multiplayer: 8/10
The multiplayer is very fun, especially the band career. All the highways are on one screen and each person plays a different instrument. If you don't have any friends to play band with head over to Wi-Fi. Here you can play together or against players from all around the world. The slight issue here is that sometimes if you're a beginner and you want to play a battle against someone over Wi-Fi, you may get paired with an expert, which is obviously unfair on you. Also, in Wi-Fi and just with a group of friends, if your playing band together, it is very difficult to work out who is doing well and who is not as there is only one rock meter for the whole band so you won't know if you're failing until you've failed. You may also get picked to be in a band with a beginner over Wi-Fi and they may be behind, so you have to play even better to make up for it. Despite this, the battles and face-offs are ridiculously fun and addictive, with you eventually getting used to people higher or lower ability than yourself.

Extras: 8/10
The rockstar creator is suprisingly sophisticated, with many different options to choose from and extras to be unlocked in career makes this more fun. However, it can be quite difficult to create a famous rockstar you want to play as. Mii Freestyle is brilliant. You and a friend can basically jam for however long you like as your Miis to either a Blues, Rock or Metal backing or you can play the training cards to make some great music. It is a great addition to the game. A new custom song creator is also included. You create your own song that, when finished, can be uploaded to GHTunes, where you can download other peoples custom songs for free. Though its a nice idea, it is very difficult to create a decent song, and most of the time they end up sounding like phone ringtones. Lets hope this is improved in the next installment of Guitar Hero.

Overall: 8/10
Guitar Hero World Tour is a great addition to the Guitar Hero series. There are a couple of flaws that prevent it from being ridiculously brilliant in every way, but if you want a great guitar playing experience, buy this game. Obviously, the band pack is quite expensive, around £140-£160 or you could buy the single guitar pack for £70. Either way it's awesome. Bring on Guitar Hero 5!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/17/09

Game Release: Guitar Hero World Tour (w/Guitar) (EU, 11/07/08)