Guitar Hero's Fourth Installment is Mediocre at Best
When Guitar Hero World Tour was announced in early 2008, it quickly climbed its way into my "Most Anticipated Games" list for that year. The game promised many things, complete character and instrument customization, a mammoth track list, a studio mode for creating your own songs, and state of the art new peripherals. Unfortunately, World Tour rarely delivers on any of these promises. While it can be fun at times, World Tour's many problems usually outweigh the good qualities of the game.
I believe that the track list is the back bone of any hopeful rhythm game. World Tour boasts a massive 86 song track list, but only a few that I truly enjoyed playing. Obviously my music taste bears no impact on the game's quality, but I felt the genre distribution was sorely lacking. Guitar Hero III struck a perfect balance between classic rock, modern rock, metal, and everything in between. World Tour is an admittedly classic rock focused game, with all but a few metal or otherwise songs. It's sad to say this, because the game does take many risks with it's track list. Guitar Hero 2 did the same thing, but did it right because the songs were fun to play. World Tour's tracks aren't all that fun, especially on Guitar.
The gameplay for the single player portion of the game has changed drastically from Guitar Hero 3. Instead of descending down a list of songs that slowly increase in difficulty, the player chooses "gigs" to play. Gigs are sets of songs that range sometimes in quantity, and always in quantity. Too often did I find myself seeing a gig and only one song I really liked in it. I was forced to play through a bunch of crap to play what I really wanted to. It makes the game laborious and less rewarding than previous installments.
To add insult to injury, the game's presentation while playing is muddy and unecessarily crowded. The old Guitar Hero interface has been abandoned for a crowded, sloppy new system. The ever important score multiplier is now a time strip next to the fret board, and the rock meter has been shrunk too. While these seem like minor complaints, the flaws are magnified even more while playing the game. I'm not entirely sure what Neversoft were thinking when they were doing this part of the game. They made the perfect interface in Guitar Hero 3, they didn't have to re-invent the wheel.
The graphics in World Tour aren't the best either. While most bad looks are forgivable in rhythm games, World Tour's cartoonish art design that made the series looks notably worse here than in previous installments. Like all GH games since III, the game features "celebrity guests" that you can play with after progressing through career. The player models look good enough, but the motion capture, particularly on Billie Corgan and Ozzy Osbourne, makes them look like androids. Guitar Hero can sell on name alone, I don't think it needs celebrity faces on it to push more units.
The new peripherals are generally great. The new guitar controller just may be the best plastic guitar on the market right now. The strum bar is perfect, reminiscent of Rock Band's, but with the "click" that has somewhat defined the series over the years. The neck is detachable, but the buttons are still perfectly responsive, as I haven't run into a problem with them yet. The drums have big, quiet pads and the cymbal slices are a nice touch, but they can be incrdibly unresponsive at times, especially if you got a launch kit. The microphone is fine, nothing to complain about there.
And with new peripherals comes new "innovations" to gameplay, right? Well, sort of. Some songs have touch-slide enabled sections, but since the touch slide can't be used throughout the song as an alternative play style, the hassle of shifting around the controller outweighs the prospect of looking "cool". The drums have fill sections, but they just don't feel very satisfying. You get one point per hit, which could even out scoring issues, but it's just not as satisfying as in Rock Band. The vocals have freeform sections, which thanks to hackers and glitchers, has been exploited tenfold and rendered the vocal leaderboards useless.
On the online side of things, the game has a generic matchmaking system for getting a game going. However, good luck finding a game online. The problem isn't too few players, it's the fact that the game needs four people to start a band quickplay game. This means that 99% of the time the game will search for players, finding a drummer and additional guitarist (or vice versa) in a matter of seconds, but then spend minutes looking for a vocalist. You can't just play with three people either making it incredibly hard to enjoy one of the most crucial elements to the game.
In this day and age, Downloadable content has been one of the biggest and best revelations in gaming. Rock Band has taken this concept and executed it beautifully, giving new content each and every week. These songs span all genres and are a great way to build your music library. Unfortunately, World Tour's DLC is released sporadically, and when it is, it's almost never anything good. The first few packs have been almost completely classic rock focused, with the occasional "metal pack" with a few underground bands. It's really hard to understand why such a mainstream franchise like Guitar Hero would keep churning out songs most people have never heard of. Since the game's launch I've bought one song.
If you don't like Neversoft's DLC, make your own right? With the new studio portion of the game, players can make their own songs and upload them to GH Tunes, where their stuff can get rated and posted on a leaderboard. Unfortunately, the music creator isn't intuitive, not user friendly, and cumbersome to navigate. While some people have managed to make some pretty entertaining renditions of classic game themes, the GHTunes system really just feels like wasted potential.
While my review has been pretty scathing, the game isn't complete drek. If you see the game's set list and enjoy many of the songs on there then by all means, pick this one up. You'll have fun with it, but don't expect anything near the calibur of what Rock Band has done to the rhythm game genre. The peripherals are great, the difficulty has been turned down a few clicks, but even the most casual players will find this game sorely lacking in what has made the series so appealing: accessibility.
