Update November 1, 2008 8:19am PST: Activision/Red Octane that make Guitar Hero World, have offered a drum tuning kit download (Windows XP only) which is supposed to fix the issues discussed in the review that follows. You will need a USB to midi cable which they will send you if you fill out a form here.

Saturday night at the stroke of midnight we joined a small line of people at the Tacoma, WA Best Buy as the first to buy the newest installment of Guitar Hero (Guitar Hero World Tour). After buying the $29.99 warranty for the bundle the total rang in at $233.90 USD. 

We got it home and immediately dug in. The drum setup was quick and painless and give you a sense of quality that the Rock Band drums do not have. They seem more realistic — until you start actually playing.

The laggy band mode drum syncing ruined the first time gameplay experience for me. The drums are better synced in solo mode and even when playing with one other player, but add two or three more band members and it’s a mess.

When hearing the beat and when to hit the notes is all wrong. I tried recalibrating in the options several times but never found the sweet spot in band mode. I hope an update through Xbox Live comes along that fixes this as a quick survey of the Amazon reviews show many complaints from other reviewers about the same issue.

In a music game like this, quality calibration is vital. I give drum calibration a 0 out of 5 stars. I was failing on medium difficulty whereas I’m able to play hard and even expert drums on Rock Band 2. The plan was to play all night, but our band grew tired of me failing on what should have been easy intro songs and we quit playing around 2:30am.

We didn’t break out the Guitar Hero microphone or guitar, preferring to play with Rock Band gear there. Reports on the guitar, bass and singing in Guitar Hero were all thumbs up from other band members.

Activating star power on drums and microphone

Your drummer and singer may wonder how star power is activated. It’s in the skimpy six page manual, but we’ll throw you a bone. To activate star power on the drums, hit both yellow and orange cymbals at the same time. On the microphone just tap the top of the microphone, no yelling in the yellow spots required like Rock Band. Kind of prefer Rock Band’s approach here.

GH Tunes sans vocals

Being able to create and share your own tunes with other players was a promising feature I was stoked about. We peeked at it briefly Saturday night and people had already created and shared some tunes mere hours after launch. Sunday after a fresh night’s sleep I checked it out in more detail.

Bummer alert: only instrumental tunes are allowed — drums, bass, guitar and even keyboards, cool — but no vocals. This is going to lead to a lot of axe shredding and drum pounding but will be a non-starter for vocalists.

Hopefully vocals will be added as part of an update someday (?). Or do we need to wait another year for Guitar Hero 5 to come out?

Summary and grade

For guitar, bass and singing, Guitar Hero World Tour is solid. Major thumbs down on drum syncing.  I think until this is fixed we’re going to see a bunch of drumless bands. Or bands where the drummer marches, literally, to a different beat.

As for the GH Studio? No vocals hamper but not ruin the experience. I’m sure others will disagree with wanting to hear people screaming out of tune, karaoke style, but the absence of vocals is noticeable.

Surely there must have been a way to add vocal tracking to GH Studio? Since the software can detect when the music is in tune, was it that difficult to add the ability to match GH Studio created vocals? Or was this a copyright concern, afraid that bands would be creating an endless stream of unlicensed covers? I’m guessing technology was a small part of the concern here and copyright issues are playing at least some part.

Whatever the case, Guitar Hero World Tour’s strength remains its roots: guitar. Bass and vocals for the game part are a decent add, but while the drums are fun to pound on they aren’t much fun to play — outside of single player mode — because of the lag/syncing issue. I also don’t like that the bass pedal isn’t attached to anything like rock band to keep it in place, although must admit not having any trouble with it moving all around.

Guitar Hero World Tour as a package ends up a mixed bag and feels way too first generation in everything but its namesake. Perhaps our band is spoiled by competitor Rock Band which really has the band experience down and sports a solid lineup of hundreds of songs available, while Guitar Hero World Tour pretty much is limited to what comes with the game. Almost all the prior downloadable Guitar Hero songs and previous songs in games are not forward compatible.

Guitar Hero World Tour sports an impressive list of tunes, don’t get me wrong — and there is the ability to download for $$ a small few tracks (like Metallica’s complete Death Magnetic album) as well as what other players create in GH Tunes for free, but it doesn’t come close to matching Rock Band’s currently available music library. And with the AC/DC Live at Donnington track pack coming November 2nd, Rock Band will raise the stakes further.

Put all this together and I wouldn’t recommend to readers or friends looking to form their first music game band experience to buy Guitar Hero World Tour over Rock Band 2 this holiday season. Being my favorite baseball hat of the moment is my Guitar Hero cap pictured above, I’m conflicted, but the differences between the two in band mode are glaring.

Hardcore music game fans like our band will buy it regardless. I wouldn’t label GH World Tour a totally disappointing band experience, but it’s not up to par with all four band members (sans the drums, it works good). If all you care about is a cool guitar, bass or vocal experience in Guitar Hero World Tour then stop reading and buy this game now. You might want to skip the bundle and just buy the game otherwise.

Grade: C+

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