Metareview: Guitar Hero: World Tour

lol at eurogamer.

Rock Band 2 is the better game.

This talkback is going to explode. Let me just say I am sticking with Rock Band.

Rock Band is set up very well, but I don't get the same enjoyment out of it as I do with Guitar Hero....the songs just seems so much more satisfying to play guitar in a game, otherwise....i'd just pick up my Gibson.

Excellent point about us poor Europeans and PS3 owners being shafted, and not having any choice about getting this.
At least the intruments are quality, and we can import RB2 if need be, so all is good.

To preempt all the rampant fanboyism that joystiq usually sees on the RB2 GHWT issues:

Neither games suck, they are both equally good with minor differences.

Rock band has an arguably better interface.

Guitar hero has a song creator and more expansive character creator.

Rock band has an arguably better guitar

Guitar hero has a better drum set (sans kick pedal).

Both games have merits and drawbacks, stop just saying OMG SHIT SUX IM STICKING WITH ROCKBAND KTHXBAI.

The thing that I liked better about guitar hero is that it forced you to replay difficult songs to get more stars on a list. In rock band you are unlocking so much stuff all the time you never really have to battle through anything. I liked that sense of having to improve at a much earlier stage than rock band which didnt push me to improve until way latter in the game.

(I haven't played world tour yet, but both rock band 2 and rock band, guitar only... my wife wont let me get the drums =[).

My fiance loves to play music games and it's one of the few genres that we can play together. With that said we picked up both Rock band 2 & Guitar Hero World Tour (games). They are both great games. Here are some of our personal feelings ...

Rock Band 2 -
*Better in game instrument interface
*Better character creation suite
*The notes flow more in tune with the songs (this could have to do with the RB drums being re-mixed on GH WT)
*Cleaner (less busy) band world tour interface for selecting gigs

GH World Tour-
*Better selection or artist and songs
*Better special features - like the studio mixer
*More difficulty settings and a more appropriate difficulty leap between settings. RB 2's leap from medium to hard is not balanced.
*Better on stage band animations & more ralistic crowd movements

These are just some of the things we noticed from our early impressions with both games. It's hard to go wrong with either game and in all honesty they are equally as good. We can't speak on either new instrument bundles because we continue to use our original Rock Band drums & GH guitars. We haven't played either of them enough online to give an honest comparison.

The more inportant point is that you won't be dissapointed with either. I would say in the end just pick the franchise you prefer because they both stay true to their roots.

I don't play these games for the "game challenge" per say. I just want something that my friends will play and enjoy. Rock Band does that in spades and seems to be moving more towards party game focus while GH innovated with the song creator. Sorry, I never make anything in games. I just play them.

When did IGN start getting harsh? First Fallout 3, now this - I might even start believing their reviews soon!

I enjoy playing both games, I'm probably more in favour of Rock Band, but I still enjoy Guitar Hero. And Eurogamer bring up some good points. Rock Band was only released here a few months ago, and we have no idea when we'll see the sequel. So that makes the choice for a lot us a little easier.

Guitar Hero for me, until the Rock Band guys decide to stop screwing us over. I won't buy RB now, purely out of princible.

Ill stay with RB2, didn't enjoy the GH titles and almost gave up on the rhythm games till I got RB. Loved it and never looked back, sure the create your own music thingie is cool but I'll never use it. With Harmonix releasing new songs every week I'll stay busy.

"the unlockable gear doesn't match the effort put forth to earn it"

Ain't that the truth. I've beaten ever gig in Guitar Career except the bonus one. And with the exception of two songs, I've beaten every gig on expert.

My rewards? Several new guitar bodies, a few headstock, a new fret board, and some knobs that look like dice.

Same for bass career. Every gig but the last on expert...and again, a bunch of boards, some headstock, and a few knobs. (Oh and also new strings)

And (in typical GH fashion) unlocking the content isn't enough, you also have to spend your in-game bucks to actually use it.

To put things in perspective: In costs $610,000 in-game bucks to buy Ted Nugent once you've unlocked him. By comparison, the top ranked rocker in GHWT currently has only earned $200,000 or so over his WHOLE CAREER!

It's like in-game DLC.

its a shame in GHWT most of the songs are boring as hell, but yeah i totally remember that guitar, drums and bass in Beat It.

While the core gameplay of both games are nearly identical, RB2 (even rb1) is clearly the better, more refined game. It's obvious that more time went into both the planning and the implementation of nearly every facet of the game compared to GHWT. While it's not perfect, RB/RB2 feels like there was a clear cut vision behind what they were doing. They knew what experience they wanted to deliver and they focused on that. GHWT feels like a loose collection of ideas strapped to the back of an old system in order to get "something" to market quickly, with no real vision behind it all. It feels like a collection of rushed responses to what the competition was doing and not a serious effort at making a top notch full band music game.

I have both games, and let me say, GHWT seems like it was rushed just a bit. The story mode is disorganized, the music maker UI is not very well thought out at all (and the chord recognition is a little messed up), and the Live interface is a little clunky. Despite all of this, I'm enjoying the hell out of it.

I'll probably come back to RB2 within a few weeks, though, mostly because I still have a few achievements to get, but partly because it has better DLC support and the UI is more streamlined.

So, who cares which one is better, they're both fun.

I've never played Rock Band 2, so I can't comment on that. I did pick up GHWT two days ago, and I have been enjoying the hell out of it.

There's a few things that irritate me about the game though.

First of all, it's clearly obvious this game was designed with HDTVs being the only displays in mind. I still have an SDTV, and the text while playing a song is damn near illegible. Seriously, if you're going to speak, speak up. It's a freaking rock game.

Second, I wish the game were smart enough to detect that I am using the GH3 controller instead of the GHWT controller, and turn off the blue note-connecting-rope thing when playing a song. It's very distracting to me.

And last, poor gig implementation and a DLC WTF. The game, on your first run through each gig, will force you to play all songs in succession to complete the gig. After that you can go back and play through them piecemeal if you like The problem is that after each song is complete, while it's displaying your score, it checks for new DLC from their servers. If it finds it, it restarts your game without the choice to save your progress. So you have to play through the entire gig again. This one has happened to me twice now.

Now I don't want that to take away from the game, it's really all that I wanted it to be. I'm glad for the harder note charts; I was concerned that since the inclusion of other instruments it would skim on the good core guitar stuff.