Guitar Hero: World Tour

The Guitar Hero series has managed to raise the profile of gaming since its humble beginnings, being easy to play, accessible and most importantly: fun. What could easily have been another gimmicky novelty-controller based game managed to tap into something enjoyable and interesting. Guitar Hero was always best when played with a group of mates with several guitars, as well as large amounts of alcohol, making a sequel with band play almost inevitable.

Despite being beaten to the concept by previous developer Harmonix System's popular effort Rock Band, Neversoft were determined to make a better title with the Guitar Hero brand name backing them up alongside a huge budget. There are three main versions of World Tour available for the consoles: the solo game, a guitar package and a complete band edition. In this review I shall focus on the game itself and the guitar package in particular.

The core game mechanics remain largely unchanged, with a few new additions included with the inevitable new guitar. In order to play notes you hold down the corresponding fret(s) whilst strumming as they approach you on the screen. Hammer-ons and pull-offs are also present, more evidently on the higher difficulties. These notes don't require strumming, only the correct fret button to be pushed as long as you keep hitting the notes.

The new wireless guitars also include a touch pad towards the body of the guitar which can be used to play transparent notes; this feature is usually used in solos and can be very useful. The other key addition is the ability to play additional notes at the same time as holding sustained ones though this happens infrequently.

Other than these inclusions the game remains virtually identical to the other titles, with a "Rock Meter" monitoring your progress through a song; if too many notes are missed then you will fail and have to reply it. Star Power gives you the ability to double your current score multiplier (achieved through good play) and is activated by tilting the guitar after hitting a chain of star shaped notes.

The key single player element of the game revolves around the career mode, where you take on a series of gigs with multiple songs and an encore. When these are completed you unlock the next venue and some bonus venues you can spend career cash on. Occasionally you will face one of several boss characters, playing against them in a guitar duel before being rewarded with a special song. A nice addition is the combination of songs into a gig, meaning you can avoid going back to the menu between tracks, which makes it a lot easier than previous titles.

The song list is expansive with 86 included with the game and an online store available where extra tracks can be downloaded for a small price or as part of a pack. At the moment the list available is limited, though the developers promise regular new content to be uploaded including new albums and material from a variety of bands.

As a fan of rock and metal music I found myself very disappointed with the tracks available. From the list, I like perhaps 20 to 25 songs at most and find myself playing only 15 of them regularly. There are too many recent or obscure songs and the focus is primarily aimed at an American audience. It is clear that the game is trying to diversify to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, but in doing so is alienating the people that wanted to play the series in the first place. In previous games of the series, the songs would follow a template and include a challenging solo or unusual section to play, but many of the titles in World Tour are more conventional pop songs than rock or metal titles.

A track list is subjective, so for each person it will be different and no doubt this will get more people playing the game as there is at least one song for everyone, including some well known classics which are great for beginners. I can't fault the sound quality with every track being a master recording showing that gone are the days of dubious quality covers. At times though, even on the hardest difficulties, you seem to be playing notes that don't exist or at times aren't playing ones you can hear which can be distracting and frustrating.

Since the impenetrability of Guitar Hero III's final set, Neversoft listened and decided to reduce the difficulty of the title, again making it more accessible. Whilst you now never hit a wall of impossibility, the game provides no challenge to veterans of the series and only a handful of songs take multiple attempts on expert for proficient players. I was honestly astonished to be able to get to the final set with little difficulty on the hardest setting, considering I often struggled with many of the expert songs from the third game.

Yet, my biggest complaint with World Tour is that it is clearly designed to be part of a band package. Neversoft designed this game to be played with all the instruments and as a band, so selling it separately is doing it a serious injustice as it isn't providing a complete experience. By selling it as a "guitar package" I was expecting more from it, whereas there is little merit for fans of the series to get this particular deal.

It is clear that in order to provide an enjoyable experience, songs had to be picked that were good for each instrument. Yet when having just the guitar, far too many songs are unbelievably dull to play consisting of the same pattern of notes repeated over and over again. When you combine this with the fact that you may dislike many of the tracks it adds insult to injury, being forced to play a boring song which you don't even like.

There are several other issues with the game: the loading times can be ludicrous as you wait for a song to play or a level to load which is difficult to understand considering how basic the graphics are for a next generation console. Whilst the cartoony style suits the game well, they haven't noticeably improved and are already ageing.

In essence, World Tour isn't a bad game, but it certainly isn't a good game in the guitar package format. Selling a game designed for multiplayer use individually is fair enough, but the game has to be able to stand up on its merit individually, which World Tour can't do. If you are a long time Guitar Hero player then I can't recommend the guitar package to you. If you are a beginner and are new to the series, try and go for the complete package. No matter how you approach this, the solo guitar version is dissatisfying and not suited to the concept of the title and is the first truly disappointing Guitar Hero title.