Guitar Hero World Tour

Note: this is reviewed off the US version of the full band kit of the game. A local Australian review will come close to the game's local release

If anyone wanted proof that a scoring system doesn't always work when evaluating games, this is it right here. On one hand, you've got the playing experience in Guitar Hero: World Tour: get four people or more together to drum, sing, or "play" guitar and I defy you not to have a blast. Forget the Wii, as a proposition to show your mates, this trumps it.

But as we're seeing with hardware-reliant games, there's another side to the story. Build quality. How do you make a piece of kit that is compact, affordable and won't break after a few hours of someone wailing on it? Seems like that eluded EA with the first Rock Band, and while Activision Blizzard have put out a superior set of drums in terms of feel, they didn't nail quality control either.

As we reported last week, there's a "sensitivity issue" with an undisclosed proportion of GH:WT's drum kits. The kit I picked up - part of the "second wave" of shipments that hit a few days after launch - had this issue too. For me, the cymbals were not working right.

Some drums don't always pick up a "hit". They're not broken as such - it took me ten minutes to google a fix and make them work perfectly, but it's still bad news especially when Activision Blizzard would have witnessed the hammering Rock Band copped from it's problems in this department. I was "lucky" in that my cymbals were at fault - that's a mere warranty-breaking philips head screwdriver and piece of tape away from a fix. The larger drum heads wiill require a less common tool to open them.

The above is unforgiveable, really. The freakin' drums. The big selling point. Is there anything more frustrating than trying to break your longest streak of correctly hit notes knowing that sooner or later the "bad drums" will let you down? But. At the risk of sounding whimsical, once it's fixed, it's fixed. And the experience after that... potentially the most fun you have had in a videogame to now. No joke, not a word of a lie. Solo, with a friend or with a stack of people, a fully functional GH:WT is the stuff that changes the conversation around gaming and who it can cater to. It really is that good.

Why it rocks, and why the music industry should care

The refrain employed by publishers working on music games has typically been "this is good for the music industry because it introduced people to music they haven't had time for before" - or similar themes. And you know what - this type of product is proof of that. Yes, you'll love blasting out the songs you know and love but the revelation of GH:WT is the songs you would normally switch channels when they came on. Old and cold hits like Living on a Prayer from Bon Jovi go from being cringeworthy evidence of a style deficiency into must-plays, not just because everyone knows them but also because the team who has handled the transposition of the songs to game format really seems to go all out on the well known numbers. That's not saying half the songs in GH:WT were done in someone's sleep, but you will definitely notice different levels of "fun" between different tracks.

You'll find that your music taste starts getting diversified as the music you love is joined by the music you dig playing in-game. The flipside is when your faves don't come over as fun when you're playing the game. Take my tragic example. In the course of Johnny & the Cobras progression (on easy mode, naturally) in the game, I scraped and saved $8000 in game currency - which took most of the main run through the game - to unlock Tool's trilogy of songs. Being a massive fan of "Parabola" and of Danny Carey's distinctive drumming style, I was keenly looking forward to trying on the sticks. To date my performances have been lacklustre, often fleeing in quickplay mode to, er, Jimmy Eat World instead.

What does happen is you're part-forced, part-coaxed into being exposed to new music. Unlocking the full tracklist entails playing through a great deal of material you may not be familiar with (god help anyone wanting to complete it on vocal mode), annd besides that you'll also have your friends who absolutely insist on play 30 Seconds to Mars (protip - don't volunteer to drum this one, it's an utter mongrel). Musical tastes tend to take a back seat to enjoyment factor, which is a pretty good outcome.


Showmanship works

The presentation of the game won't shock anyone who is used to Guitar Hero. Instead of one or two "note highways" you have three, with a horizontal section up top for vocals. Notes scroll down (or lyrics, sideways) in their respective sections. Hit, strum or sing the respective notes as they pass down the bottom in time to build your score. Easy.

The fringe elements - the menus, the 3D concert backdrop and cut scenes - alll have taken a step up. Drummers will enjoy playing your third(?) last gig in Times Square for NYE 2009 with Sting on bass, Ozzy on lead and Zack Wylde on guitar. You'll also enjoy playing the unlock song during the credits - without any fear of failure - just the note highway as the backdrop takes you through the sky to Asgard, your "final" gig.

If you've taken the time to, you'll enjoy seeing your avatar on stage - the create-a-muso function as we've reported previously is fully featured, although you'll best be served aiming for a cartoony end result in keeping with the game's style. Naturally I created John Kreese, leader of Johnny & the Cobras and kitted him out in a cobra kai-esque black outfit. Barefoot naturally. You can try making "yourself" but to date I've had more luck creating caricature versions of well known people. Maybee it's easier that way. Point being - it's well worth diving into so you don't end up playing as Billy Corgan for instance.


Cautionary notes

Musical types have enjoyed sneering at the plastic guitars and to be fair, despite excellent build quality and functionality, the mainstay guitar controllers still are the weakest link in your GH:WT performances. It's the element furtherest removed from reality. If you're on the mic, people know soon enough if you're a dreadful singer, no matter what the game says. Similarly, you can see the awkward struggle with the drums while the rhymthmic are only an hour or so away from looking the part on drums. But guitar? Hell, anyone can slowly press a few buttons, or at least how that seems.

As anyone who has played SingStar or Rock Band (or even karaoke) can testify, there's an element of immersion that comes from being the direct driver of the action. The disconnect between lead guitar in particular (bass is a little better because of its simplicity) in game and playing it in reality does tend to get accentuated when you see the game in action. The singer will be wailing away, the drummer will be bashing away while the guitarist will usually be quite still, concentrating furiously on hitting the green, blue and yellow notes at the same time. It's the nature of the beast, but thought it was worth noting.

Also the difficulty tuning is a bit odd. Singers will be able to muddle through on just about any difficulty level, experienced Guitar Hero players will have guitars wired on Expert I'd imagine, although Hard is completable by hacks yours truly. Drums? The difficulty level spikes drastically between levels. Beginner is too easy - obviously aimed at kids or simpering folks who really don't want to think. No colour buttons to hit, just a horizontal bar (the same mechanic used to tell you when to hit bass drum) that scrolls down in time with the beat. Hit anything and you're set. yawn. Easy then will see you usually having to hit both cymbals and a couple of drums. Repetitive at times but for faster tempo songs a pretty good workout. Medium and you're suddenly getting thrown some simulateneous pads to hit and the introduction of notes to hit harder. Hard boosts the tempo and punishes your bad timing and coordination...as for expert...well I never got through a song on hard. Medium is a good playground once you're attuned.

The thing is if you're actually getting into the hang of things you start drumming properly - i.e sticking to the beat and tempo and the easier levels (including medium) tend to keep your actual required beats to a more pedestrian level. So the gap is going to be pronounced. If a skilled drummer can mentally get in their heads the positioning of the pads, they're arguably better off on Hard or higher than gimping their tempo and timing on lower levels - as long as their mental signature matches the Neversoft transposition. Either way it's probably the right design decision - and a good incentive to boost the difficulty level.


Encore

While guitar remains the most gamey, and singing is well, a doddle, the drums steal the show - as you'd expect with the kit taking up space in your living room. The note transposition is at times pure mastery. The Neversoft team have a genius (or maybe more than one) working in this area - if there's a highlight or emphasis point in a song, it seems like there's always the chance to fire off star power at exactly the most appropriate crescendo-ish dramatic moment. Once you've got it mentally wired which pads correspond to which colour, you will be belting away with force. Show me a line of people playing GH:WT drums and I'm now confident I could sort them in order of experience on this basis alone. The tentative tappers who just start out jabbing away down one end, with people hammering away down the other.

It's a momentum thing - first you'll reach the point where you don't need to see the kit and drums, then you'll start switching drumming hands dependant on the upcoming notes, then you'll quickly perfect the art of firing off star power (both cymbals at once) as part of the overall song. From there it just gets better - getting your foot technique down for the bass drum pedal (my shins were killing me on this, so I found reversing the pedal so you're using the heel of your foot as opposed to the balls works an absolute treat - try it), then perfecting runs off between cymbals and snare, then tricky sustained simultaneous hits, emphasis hits where the game encourages you to hit the drums harder - they all await. Screw expert, if you can get over 95% average on medium on drums, you're ready to try out for a gig at your local.

At the end of the day, this shouldn't be about an arbitrary score value. This game is one of the rare few that just about anyone is guaranteed to have a massive blast out of, online or in person. I haven't even touched on the mixer or GHTunes (which already as a tonne of music that obviously rips of licensed works, haha) but suffice it to say these are good for a workout and creative types will love laying their own tracks down.

Despite the potential drum flaw you may experience (I played this on the US kit, but don't think the AU shipment will be an y different), the quality of the gameplay is too good to pass up on. Pure, unadulterated joy.