Tuesday 27 Jan 2009

A brief glance through our past reviews will reveal that we have an enormous amount of love for rhythm games, or any games that feature music prominently. The simple fact is that we adore music, we love videogames, and so when the two intertwine they usually produce something we find extremely enjoyable. Guitar Hero was for a long time the pinnacle of this, in our humble opinion, but was overtaken by the fantastic, magnificent, no-superlatives-are-enough Rock Band. With World Tour, the original guitar franchise seeks to take its crown back, and while there may be differing opinions on which is the better between the two, there is no doubt that between them we have the greatest rhythm games ever created.

A Brief Rundown

The Guitar Hero formula is well known by now - first you choose a song you probably haven’t heard of unless you’re approximately 40 and love American metal or hard rock played by a band you might have heard in some action movie soundtrack. While this song is playing a stream of circles in various colours come flying down the screen and you’re tasked with pressing the right button (or fret in guitar-speak) and flicking the little lever (strumming in guitar-speak) on your guitar-shaped controller at the right time. If you do it right the song plays like it’s supposed to, if you don’t the guitar part stops and the crowd voices their disapproval. When you get back on time and in the groove the crowd cheers you on. The appeal of the game is in the tactile feel of it all - it really feels a lot like you’re playing the guitar and being a rock star without any of the effort required to actually play the guitar or be a rock star. The payoff is nearly instantaneous - on the easiest level you feel like you’re really doing it - and it lasts a long time because the hard songs on expert are truly finger-numbing.

All of this was available in the last three (or four if you count the Aerosmith game, five if you count the 80’s one, but no one does) games in the series, but Guitar Hero: World Tour marks the biggest jump in the series yet – the introduction of drums and voice. Yes, it’s a response to Rock Band’s success. Yes, it’s a knock-off in that sense. That doesn’t diminish the fact that it’s a big jump in functionality and in enjoyment for the series. For us Guitar Hero has always been about the multiplayer, the jamming, the hanging out playing Sweet Child o’ Mine, but it was limited to two people at a time playing lead and bass guitar only. World Tour ups the simultaneous players to four by adding a drummer and a singer to the band, making it perfect for those gatherings with friends.

The drums

The drums are the single biggest change to the game over Guitar Hero 3, and the most obvious reason to get World Tour. If you’ve ever had any kind of desire to play the drums, here is your chance! You might baulk at the price of the kit, but then you should look at the price of a real drum kit - the World Tour drum kit is phenomenally good for its price. The kit has three pads representing, approximately, the snare and two toms, two cymbal pads representing your hi-hat and crash cymbals, and a bass pedal representing your…bass pedal I guess. What is missing compared to a basic real rock-band-type drum kit is another tom, the rider cymbal and the hi-hat pedal. You can, in fact, plug in another bass pedal to get the hi-hat pedal function, so the World Tour drum kit is a very close approximation of a real set of drums.

The experience of learning to drum via a game like Guitar Hero: World Tour couldn’t be more fun. There’s a beginner mode which simply requires you to keep time - you can hit whatever pad you like as long as it’s at the right time. This is a great addition to the game (and applies to guitars and singing as well) because it gives those who are not musically inclined at all a starting point they can manage and use to build confidence and a stronger sense of rhythm. The next step is easy mode which usually requires you to hit just one pad at a time and throws in a bass beat once in a while. Medium mode starts to be a little more realistic with the hi-hat being hit at the same time as the snare or bass pedal. But Hard is where the party is at. Hard will kick you and laugh as you crumple on the floor. Hard will laugh at your puny forearm muscles when they start to twitch after playing Trapped Under Ice. Hard will make you feel like a real drummer. Expert will make you feel like a masochist.

A quick note should be made here – on the PS3 the Rock Band 1 or 2 drums work with this game (with, amazingly, the note-charts adjusting to the four-pad setup), and Rock Band 2 works with these drums. This, and the fact that PS3 games are region free, means that you can buy the World Tour instrument kit locally in South Africa and import the Rock Band 1 and 2 games for the best of all worlds and a massive track list to enjoy!

The singing

If you’re one of those too-cool types who laugh at people playing SingStar, this is not for you. If you’re a pop-loving top-40 listener this is also not for you. If you’re a pack-a-day smoker with a gravel voice, black jean pants with chains falling out of their pockets and a Grateful Dead t-shirt, this is probably made for you. Honestly, the track list in this game is not made for singing by normal humans. The person who thought that Korn’s Freak on a Leash would be fun to growl has the most wonderfully dark sense of humour, but the one who thought The Beastie Boys’ No Sleep Till Brooklyn would be fun to shout is just sadistic. There are some songs you can actually sing, such as Eye of the Tiger, Living on a Prayer, The One I Love, Rebel Yell and Hotel California, but it’s obvious that the majority of songs were chosen on the basis of their guitar and drumming components. Nevertheless, it’s still highly entertaining for everyone else in the room having someone trying to sing songs by Tool, and a singer in the band certainly increases the fun factor.

The guitars and the changes

The guitar section of the game is pretty much exactly the same as before, and the level of difficulty felt very similar to the level of Guitar Hero III to me. A slight improvement to the bass guitar is the inclusion of a no-fret note – a bar across your highway indicates a strum without pressing any frets. This makes bass-playing ever so slightly more challenging than before so it’s a welcome change. The other change is the guitars themselves – they have a big button that can be used for star power. Unfortunately this button is not in a place that’s easily reached while playing and more often than not you end up pressing the pause button if you try to use it, so it’s still far easier to flick the guitar up vertically (and infinitely more in keeping with the spirit of the game, surely!). It’s also slightly disappointing that the PS3 guitars (and drums, and mics) are not wireless, but I guess you can’t have everything. The guitars are very well made with good feedback in the strumming bar and in the feel of the fret buttons. The new slider section halfway up the neck of the guitar is meant for solo sections but I found it really difficult to move to without breaking my rhythm and really difficult to use in playing accurately. It may just be a case of getting used to the way of playing without strumming, but I didn’t get my head around it and was often too busy trying to survive to try it.

It seems that either Neversoft didn’t want to be seen to be knocking off Rock Band completely or Harmonix got a patent on the whole “saving band members” mechanic, but in World Tour if one of your band members fails, the entire band fails. This makes it much more important what level each player chooses because you can’t be rescued by your team mates very easily. There is still a level of collaboration though – if you collect Star Power your band-mates can deploy it (the drummer by hitting both cymbals at once, the singer by tapping the microphone), so your good playing can carry another player through tough places by letting them use the Star Power they need to make it. It’s a subtle interaction, but it makes a big difference to your chances of success if you use it well.

The career and the music

Guitar Hero: World Tour is a big investment in terms of money, but it’s the sort of game you can play for a very long time. The game comes with 86 songs to start with – a massive number that will take over 7 hours just to play through once each without any breaks or failures. Then multiply by the number of instruments that are interesting in single player (i.e. the lead guitar and the drums), and the number of levels you can play at and you’ve got a huge number of hours for just single player alone. But even after that (or preferably instead of that), just jamming with friends in the multiplayer will last ages (take it from us, this never gets old), especially when you start buying songs from the PlayStation Store. This is another big advantage of the PS3 version in South Africa as the Store is easily available and in Rands. With stuff like R.E.M, The Raconteurs (yes!), The Killers, The Smashing Pumpkins, and the one track to rule them all, Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run, and more each week, the track list is both varied and highly customisable. I only wish the rate of song release was little faster than 3 songs a week because it’s going to take forever for the whole of OK Computer to be on there.

The career mode itself hasn’t changed much, other than the ability to do it together as a band. Each gig has a number of songs which have to be completed in order, with no skipping allowed. Each time a gig is completed a new gig or two is opened up, and so it goes on to harder and harder songs. It’s simple and straightforward which is great, but having to take the good with the bad (in terms of songs) means sometimes you have to slog through what sounds like nails scraping a blackboard to get that one song you want unlocked. I don’t know why the songs are not all available to you in quick play mode right from the beginning: why limit the enjoyment of newcomers to the game with a small track list?

But in the final countdown, this game is simply tremendous. Its ability to draw in people is only matched by games like Wii Sports, and it also offers a depth of play to the dedicated that is truly remarkable. There is a lot of variety in the music so most people will find a set of songs they will like, unless they’re a classical or jazz-only music-lover. World Tour really is what video games are all about – rocking out with your friends!

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Contributor:	Peter

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