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Lost and Forgotten Are the Traditional Guitar Hero Fans
OK, so this is a review of the game-only Guitar Hero: World Tour Playstation II game. If you're here looking to get information and feedback on the bundle version or to hear about online play, you're on the wrong product page.

This review is for those traditional Guitar Hero fans. The fans who...

1: Thought the price of a full set (nearly $200) is a little steep.
2: Play casually.
3: Do not necessarily own a next generation console (Xbox360, PSXIII).
4: Do not play online.
5: Just want to play some good songs.

This was the original targeted audience of Guitar Hero back in the day and has been up until about a year ago when Activision took over and began trying to sway the demographic to the hardcore players. The general audience of gamers who may not even have considered themselves gamers until they picked up a plastic guitar and began jamming to Carry on Wayward Son. To me, this audience has been abandoned in favor of a very specific audience that doesn't mind paying more. Marketing wise it makes some sense but along the way Activision alienated their traditional family and casual audience.

I'm sure the game is uber-fantastic on the next generation consoles with the drums, mic, and internet options but for those of us who just want to play guitar, we've been sold short.

Let us begin.

First is the soundtrack. It boasts some excellent classic songs like Beat It, which is ironic since my review on Guitar Hero 3 called for this song and everyone thought I was insane, believing the franchise should not be "Pop Hero." There are other great songs like Hotel California, Crazy Train, Eye of the Tiger, etc. There are even some decent recent ones by Haley Something and Jimmy Eats World. However, there are several issues with the selection.

For one, it is overwhelmingly songs from the past 15 years. The designers had a huge love for 90s music. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but when you're trying to entice gamers from a wide-range of generations and bring in new ones on the basis of song recognition, you MUST balance your selection. It's as if the designers wanted to focus on young adults ages 13-21 and throw 22+ gamers a bone or two with Ted Nugent and Pat Benetar. This is bad marketing. Rock Band, at least, had the brains to balance their selection nearly perfectly. Very few songs prior to 1975 were used and the designers could've used considerably more.

I have a few minor issues with some of the selection of live versus recorded tracks such as Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze and Sweet Home Alabama. I thought the vocals were considerably better on the recorded tracks.

Lastly, the television advertisements showed players (hilariously portrayed by famous athletes including Michael Phelps) playing Old Time Rock and Roll by Bob Segar. This excited me as I love that song, so I searched and searched all 90+ songs for it... to no avail! I should have looked on the official website for a complete track list as they didn't include it. This is false advertising. Commercials for previous installments used songs actually from the games, this game should not have been an exception. If the song is there and I'm not seeing it, someone please tell me how to get it!

Next, the game is severely glitchy. I can tell Activision dumbed down the graphics and then directly ported it to the PSXII. Many times the characters on stage will do one move then immediately change a pose or position entirely. This happens at the end of every song. I've also had the game freeze a number of times when I'm customizing my character. Fortunately, this does not delete my memory card or data... yet. Lastly, the loading time is atrocious. I thought Guitar Hero 3 was bad, this one is even worse. Just to sign in under co-op, you have to wait ten seconds for the character visuals to load even if you're already set to go. Making changes to your rocker takes several minutes and half of that is loading time.

Again, I can tell they dumbed it down for last generation systems but daaaang. This was more then awful.

My last complaints deal with the format itself. Unlike previous Guitar Hero installments, World Tour requires you to play through an entire play list to advance to the next group of songs IN ONE SITTING. This means you gotta set aside at least ten minutes to play each 'gig.' To make matters worse, the more you advance in the game the LONGER the gigs get. One particular gig took me almost an hour. This WILL alienate casual gamers as the game requires a lot of time just to advance. This is not Oblivion or some extensive RPG that requires a lot of effort, this is Guitar Hero, the game that is supposed to market to the casual gamer! The audience should never be forced to do anything unnecessary and that's exactly what this is.

To a certain degree they did keep the boss battles albeit under different rules. Instead of sending battle thingies back and forth to screw the other up, you just play and play. I still think they could have done without it. Lastly, they now make you pay money to unlock certain gigs. I think this is a big no-no especially since the songs were not even worth it unless you're a Tool fan.

Now, despite my large reservations I do have some praise. The designers did fix two major issues. The first is when you pause. Originally you had to immediately jump in the song but now you have a few seconds to align your hands. The second improvement is that you can now hoard star power in co-op and build star power even when it's deployed. This makes point maximizing that much easier.

Then there's the sound studio. I'm still trying to get it to work but I think you need the full kit. It's a nifty idea but will be lost on those who just bought the game only.

All in all, the game is not bad but the designers forgot many things. It seems as though you have to play it on a next-gen console and with the full set in order to truly appreciate it. This is bad for marketing. I'll stick with Wii Music until the prices on the sets drop like 50%. Get Guitar Hero 2 if you're new to this. It's not glitchy, had great songs, and doesn't require a whole paycheck to own.

Impressive...
Guitar Hero World Tour lives up to it's lofty expectations. The set list is LONG and diversified ranging from metal to world music to pop and country. The introduction of drums, bass and vocals greatly enhance the games long term replay value. I am really impressed with the BASS option for the game it is spot on and very fun to play. The difficulty levels now include a BEGINNER level in addition to the EASY, MEDIUM, HARD and EXPERT options. Another good feature of World Tour is the ability to toggle between difficulty levels and still continue through the same set list. There are also some new play options for guitar/bass such as continued sustain notes and open strum notes. It took me a good couple of days just to complete the game ONE time, so you really get a good bang for your buck. I have not even gotten to the create your own rocker or song creator options yet. The Bottom Line...this is the BEST title in the guitar hero series...yet...Guitar Hero Metallica is on the horizon. Highly Recommended.

Disappointing
For some background...

I have all of the previous Guitar Hero games so I was very excited to see this coming out (even though I'm not getting the other instruments or a new guitar). I've played Rock Band several times, though.

My purpose in the GH games is to enjoy the challenge and go for the highest score/number of stars that I can, the ultimate goal getting 5 stars on every song in the game (guitar only). If that's how you play the game, here are some observations before you buy. First, the bad:

- They totally changed their format and unsuccessfully tried to copy the setup of Rock Band. I liked the format before that included the vertical list, unlocking songs, etc. in a natural progression that was easy to see on screen and follow; you always knew what you'd accomplished. That is no longer the case.

- Fonts: I have a large TV, but all the on-screen fonts and texts are WAY too small and very hard to read! I have to squint to read songs lists and stars acquired. They could have trippled the font sizes and still had room for the bad graphics.

- Load times/Navigation: Loading the game takes forever, transition screens take forever, and there are extra confirmation screens that do nothing but add time to the eternity it already takes to get somewhere. This was a growing issue between GH2 and GH3 and I was shocked to see it got much worse.

- Song Groupings: The songs have virtually nothing to do with each other. In the other games they had basic themes (e.g., 'British' bands, 'Easy' bands, 'Punk' bands, 'Heavy' bands, etc.) and the difficulty was well done in a steady progression. They also, more or less, chose good songs. World Tour is the opposite on all counts, and there was one instance where one of the easiest songs of the game was paired next to one of the hardest. It's ridiculous.

- Difficulty: As a whole, these songs are MUCH easier than the previous GH games, but this is probably because they had to dumb it down for the other instruments for mass appeal. Regardless, for those of us that helped make the guitar-centric game so popular it's WAY too easy when compared with the older games. (And in my opinion, the songs that ARE hard aren't good songs so the motivation to play them over and over again isn't there...)

- Song selection: While I know it's totally subjective, I need to vent a bit. I think GH3 had the best soundtrack, period. There may be a lot of songs in this game but compared to the previous GH releases I think there are a lot of BAD songs. Check the playlist carefully and really consider it before buying. I kept waiting for a song to give me some crunch and there was only one or two in the whole game.

- Stars and progress: GHWT uses archaic, miniscule skull graphics, tiny stars, and small numbers to hint at which difficulty you played the song and how you did. Gone are the days of achieving higher progressions and knowing where you're at by selecting a difficulty level. My way of playing is obviously not the same as everyone, but my goal is to get 5 stars on every song for every difficulty. This new format makes it virtually impossible to easily track that on the main song menu when compared with all the previous games.

- Tool: I liked the concept of the Tool-only gig and the graphics in the background were a nice change, but the three songs they picked were almost identical. That band has some very different stuff so even though they were fun to play I was pretty disappointed as there wasn't enough variation to keep it interesting, especially since those songs are so long.

- New Guitar: Playing the notes on the neck is a pretty cheap gimmick to try and compete with the Rock Band guitar (which has buttons in the solo position on the neck). If I had the new guitar I wouldn't use them anyway as the placement of those special notes in the songs isn't very conducive.

And now, the good:

- They changed up the star power so that you can accumulate it when it's already triggered. This is a great improvement.

- Pausing: You can now pause the game in mid note and there's a countdown and you can resume in mid-note without a hitch. This is fantastic.

- Bass: They added a whole bass section, which is sortof a fun twist to play.

All in all, if I were to choose a band-centric game I'd choose Rock Band or Rock Band 2 hands down. They've got a better soundtrack, the graphics are better, it's crisper. For those of us who are achievement-driven and guitar-centric, this game is going to gain some serious dust on the shelf. Let's hope they redeem themselves with the Metallica release in the Spring...

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