Activision CEO introduces Guitar Hero World Tour

And so the downfall of the music gaming genre commenced.

It's about as bad a blatant rip off of Rock Band as you can get, but Rock Band simply looks.. better..

also the drums are just different. Hard to say they're better. The guy is playing them like they're made of paper.

I love the players faces, looks like they are all having a blast.

(-_-) (o_o) (-_-) (*o*) ('>')

"It's about as bad a blatant rip off of Rock Band as you can get"

Yeah because rectangle notes and calling star power "overdrive" are so original.

I realize they created the franchise, but when you're starting over with a new one you could at least change up its core a *little* bit, like maybe not making star power have the exact same effect and note charts work with the exact same vertical scroll with a 5th orange button added on hard difficulty?

Actually, rectangle notes originate in the Bemani franchise. But that's neither here nor there.

"Holy crap, Harmonix totally stole their own game!"

Seriously, vcise. If you're going to be an activision tool at least realize a few things I noticed while watching this clip....

1. Oh look, they brought back the original meter which didn't suck! Neversoft apparently realized they couldn't design a decent GUI to save their life so instead they just copy pasta'd the old one.

2. Amazing how the screen layout is 100% identical... of wait, the score meter is on the left now instead of the right. They are really cranking up the originality on this one.

3. Despite having a full year to stare in awe of Rock Band while taking notes, the band, the group, the scenery, everything basically holds about as much love and attention to care as an art staff who's basically just showing up for the paycheck. Rock Band's visuals apply filters, zoom in, display a wide variety of performances, and has a rock band feel to it beyond compared. Guitar Hero IV basically, well, stand there. Set pieces with no energy, no feeling of performing a concert, no interacting between the members.

I said it before, I'll say it again. I don't have a problem with competition in this genre, in fact I encourage it. But we're not seeing competition. We're seeing Konami stumbling drunkenly on stage like Amy Winehouse and Activision throwing up a massive "me too" logo on all their shit. Harmonix is not only leading this industry, but their drawing the map for where Activision is going to fuck up next.

There is nothing more rock and roll than Paula Abdul.

Yeah, that was even better than watching him pimp out a miserable Tony Hawk.

"You see folks, Tony was once the face of a critically acclaimed extreme sports videogame franchise, which we ran into the ground. So now he's going to ride out his endorsement awkwardly holding a plastic guitar."

"Be sure to catch him next month, when he'll be wearing an army helmet and reading a cue card that says, 'Buy Call of Duty 5, developed by Treyarch'."

Yup.

I yelled BURRRNN!!! at the computer, cuz that was pretty harsh and hilarious.

Also, Joystiq, I'm getting that fappin' HD hummingbird ad avery other time I click on something. Reply? ADVERT! Page 2? ADVERT! Comments? ADVERT! And sometimes now it seems as though it's learned that I hit 'skip' within 1/2 second EVERY time and decides to ignore me. It's fast becoming frustrating - please look into it. I understand that there need to be some adverts to keep you all in gold chains and comfy sofas and whatever the devil it is that you bloggers need to sustain you, but it's just getting silly now!

Firefox + AdBlock

... doesn't always work.

+ filterset.g

you know morons, when a webpage does not display properly/has problems, the solution is not to get firefox, the solution is to fix the damn code on the page so it displays properly in all browsers. When I complained RobLink I got the same response from those firefox hounds.

I use avant browser, and it never works. If I try long enough I can usually start a comment, but I cant reply to anybodies. to reply, like im doing now, I must switch to internet explorer. And even then it takes like 15 reloads before it actually works properly, and the hummingbird ad goes away.

Its been like this for over a month now and its realy annoying. I dont understand why joystiq has not fixed this. Whats worse is its just the one ad, and it has the need to come up on every click, comments, then again on replying, for EVERY story.

Why not make it come up once a day, or at least per hour, and make it WORK with browsers, especially the default one that comes with windows.

Thank you Mike. I know nothing really about computers, have no clue what the hell +filterset.g means, and I'm sure this makes me less of a man that the experts above. But the fact is that the ads used to pop up every hour or so, mybe half hour if I was busy on here. Now I'm getting the damn ads with every other click. It's really annoying, and I'd hope that the 'Stiqers care enough about their readers and the community that has come about here to do something to help us. Chris? Luddy? Anyone? Hearing me? HELP!

You know I use IE7 w/ MS's ad blocking service on max and a community memory leak patch and I've yet to see whatever the hell you guys are talking about. In fact I will probably never go back to that clusterfuck of poor coding called Firefox.

@mike:
I had never heard of the Avant Browser before, so I went to see what the dealio was. For the heck of it, I decided to run it past Acid3. Failed 88 tests out of the 100. Ran it past Acid2. Not pretty... not pretty at all.

If your browser of choice chooses to be so incredibly standards non-compliant, I don't see how you can expect a website to program for it, especially when so much effort would be required for a userbase so small.

I'm not going to say you should get Firefox, but I will say: Get a better browser.

..said GH to RB when it was made too.

Well, seeing as how the first two GH's were made by Harmonix, it's wasn't exactly 'stealing'.

Plus, they changed the notes from being to circular to being rectangular -- now that's originality!

Umm Rockband was created by the original team that made Guitar Hero (though Konami beat them all to the punch with a guitar game).

Fuck Guitar Hero.

Oh NATO, NATO
How many times does the fact that Rock Band is made by the original creators of GH. GH just has the name.

His comment is true, Guitar Hero was made before Rock Band, so there getting back at Rock Band by stealing its ideas because it stole there idea in the first place. Neither games are original anymore.

Dude you're not getting it. The people who made rock band made guitar hero 1 and 2 and created the idea. HOW CAN YOU RIP YOURSELF OFF?

Saying that Harmonix ripped off Guitar Hero to make Rock Band is like saying that Nintendo ripped off of the Gamecube to make the Wii.

tmac,

The idea wasn't created by Harmonix, you should look up Guitar Freaks

yah, Im actually hyped about this game

As you can see on the video, the dude playing the drums was hitting them too strong the first few times, you can hear the loud notes, and afterwards he understood that he had to hit them lower...

That is awesome! Harmonix has to come up with an idea like that that in a way penalizes you for hitting the drum too hard

he wasn't getting penalized, he probably realized (or got yelled at by someone off stage) that the damn thing was gonna fall apart if he kept going at that rate

Hearing that in the vid made my day. Loved seeing them get called out for copying, and it was towards the CEO of activision no less. Pure gold.

If you actually want to hit the keys you have to concentrate... I have never seen a "fun" concentrated face :P

Amen.

About the bass beats for the drums, there were very, very faint lines scrolling down like RB drums.

good, now we all know wii owners don't have to shell out another 70 bucks for a mew shell

Yea, there definatly gonna put Eruption in GH: WT, because it has such outstanding vocals...:/

Another reason why GH should stay with just guitars; no more cool songs w/ no vocals.