Guitar Hero World Tour

Preview from Jae, Jae, Jae and Jae - Friday, 31 October 2008 @ 8:38am

Sometimes I just think I’m getting too old for this place. I thought games were all about sitting in front of a television with a small box connecting your controller to it. Now we have wireless technology, motion sensing, internet capabilities and plastic musical instruments. I look around my living room wondering where I can fit the next plastic guitar and drum set. Then I look at the Mrs who as a disapproving look on her face. There’s no way I’ll have a permanent home for a band set! Anyway I took a visit out to Activision’s HQ in Sydney recently. It’s quite a nice get up with a great room to rock out in. I’d like to take this opportunity to pay out on my fellow Sydney crew, Starks and Oracle, we could’ve made a whole band but you had to go and be all ‘busy’ with stuff like making a living, having a life and spending time with women. By women I mean each other. The game I got to spend the afternoon with was Guitar Hero World Tour.

It was worse than it looks

There needs to be a disclaimer put in place here. I, Jae, am the worst player of the guitar/drum rhythm game genre in history. I’m pretty sure every Sydney AG member will attest to this. No I’m not being modest, where I lack in guitar strumming and drum beating I make up for in pop singing and sushi making. I get the game and what you’re meant to do but I’m simply not very good at doing it. Let’s just put it all up to a dysfunctional childhood. That being said, it doesn’t matter if your musical talent is as bad as a Hilton sister, you can still have fun with World Tour.

Being fairly new to the musical games of this generation I picked up Rockband before consulting with the locals on Guitar Hero. I had played some GH here and there but the aspect of playing in a room with 3 others all as a band really took my fancy. I was a DDR and Beatmania vet from way back in 1998 but since then music games have taken a back seat to FPSes and photo taking arcade booths. I prefer playing in a group rather than solo as my neighbours just think I’m a try hard wannabe.

I won’t bore you with all the features like over 85 tracks on the disc and Wii specific content. Instead there are two features that really stand out over the competitors. The customisation feels infinite when it comes to pimping out your character. If I were a rock star I’d imagine being a guy with shoulder length hair, a small bald patch and piercings running down one side of my face. World Tour lets me do that and makes it look sexy. As you earn more money with gigs in the game you can then purchase more sexy. The clothing, accessories and body modifications are endless. If you liked playing dress up with your Barbies then you can easily spend hours just creating your character.

The other mode, not done in music games to this extent, is the ability to create your own tracks. For someone as musically talented as me, there would be no hope for you in this mode. If you have just one musical bone in your body than you can invest in creating your own tunes to share and play. A big feature for the enthusiast musicians this mode is called Music Studio but I like to call it Little Big Hero. Using guitars and the drums you can record tracks to play locally or over the internet. I can’t wait to jump online a few months from now and check out the best creations posted by users around the world.

Singing "Twinkle Tinkle little Star"

The quality of the instruments had improved over any others in the genre. The guitars are larger than they use to be, although still not as big as I’d like, the drum set is sturdy and the bass pedal ain’t too heavy either. The new touch panel on the guitars is a nice feature but won’t be a necessity with many of the tracks. I did have an issue when hitting the cymbals on the drum I’d hit so far down my sticks would go under the cymbal and I’d spend a micro second getting them back up so I miss the next beat. Although I’d put this all down to my inability to play games more than equipment fault.

The next time they make a “Sex, drugs and Rock n Roll” t-shirt it should really just say “Sex & Guitar Hero because you won’t need the drugs”. This game will be the musical game to trump all this season. If you’ve already heard about World Tour you would’ve made up your mind about getting the game long before you clicked on this page. That being said anyone sitting on the fence about this one need no longer get splinters on their bum. This game will be fun, it will suck up countless party hours and you will become so close with your friends you can smell them. Straight to the top of the Christmas list folks, get it, jam with it and make love to it.