Guitar Hero World Tour V. Rock Band 2

Dan Richardson

With almost all notable platforms finally having received both Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2 (sorry Wii owners- you have to wait a month longer), comparisons must obviously be drawn between the two games. Both feature support for a full band (a drummer, singer, guitarist and bassist), both share some songs and one of them is even named after the other’s freakin’ story mode. Harmonix is even (reportedly) the world’s largest current producer of drumsticks due their game’s success. But in the current economic climate, which game ultimate trumps the other and is worthier of your cash?

The answer is not as simple, nor clear, as many sites would have you know. Feeling your confusion and bewilderment, the Sammich have created this rather nifty guide. Good stuff!  

Instruments

This will be the first category many people will be interested in. If you’re forking over about 150 smackers, you want to know the cruddy plastic instruments you bought are slightly less cruddy than the competition’s, right?

World Tour

The Guitar Hero instrument bundle really is a mixed bag. Firstly- the guitar. The actual instrument is longer than the last model, meaning it’s less likely to be confused with something made by Fisher Price. The strum bar is perfect- a brilliant middle ground between the accurate but loud GH3 guitar and the original Rock Band’s mushy but nice-sounding model. The big addition is the new “touch-slider”- a strip on the neck which reacts to your (gasp) touch. Unfortunately this broke on my guitar within about a week and had to be turned off from the pause menu as it kept randomly playing notes mid-song (this is apparently not an uncommon fault- buyer beware). As with the GH3 guitar, the neck can be detached for easier storage.

The drum set is the real draw to World Tour. The damn thing looks awesome. Unfortunately, it doesn’t play as well as it looks. The biggest flaw is the bass pedal, which is plastic, flimsy and slides around the floor while you’re playing due to the fact it isn’t attached to the rest of the kit. Also, whilst the cymbals look very cool they really aren’t very responsive, especially the orange one. They don’t feel as precise as the rest of the set. You’ll find that you’ll occasionally get your drumstick caught underneath them too, although that might just be me being ‘special’.

A big plus for the World Tour equipment is that it is all (excluding the very bog standard microphone and the PS2 instruments) wireless by standard, although that obviously requires the occasional battery change.

Rock Band

Hm. This is an odd one, since the Rock Band 2 instruments haven’t even been announced for non-American territories. Unless you’re importing from abroad or are from the future, you’ll be buying Rock Band 1 instruments if you live in the UK, so this article is describing those ones. [Any upgrades for the RB2 instruments I’ll put in square brackets]

The Rock Band guitar was quite different from Guitar Hero 3’s on release. It features smaller ‘solo’ buttons at the bottom of the neck which negate the need to strum during epic solo sections. These are completely optional to use unlike WT’s touch strip, so if they go wrong it doesn’t matter as much. The main buttons are positioned slightly differently to GH’s Les Paul too, almost touching each other. The mushy strum bar is like marmite- you’ll either love it or loathe it [RB2’s strum bar is slightly better, giving more of a ‘click’]. Try out a guitar before forking out the cash.
The drums are completely functional- they aren’t as flashy or cool as World Tour’s, but the get the job done. The immediate difference is that there are only four pads as opposed to the five on World Tour’s (when you include cymbals), meaning that playing World Tour on Rock Band instruments is an epic pain in the arse. However, the pedal is fixed in place properly [RB2’s is actually lined with metal for much needed reinforcement] and all the pads are very responsive. It sounds like a bloody pneumatic drill when you’re playing it though, due to poor sound dampening [an area the RB2 set improves on significantly] which is easily trumped by the competition.

Verdict

In my opinion, the best set of instruments is the Rock Band 2 one. But obviously they aren’t out here yet. I’d definitely recommend the World Tour set over the original Rock Band one, as long as yours isn’t faulty like ours. HOWEVER- if you’re still in the market for your first set of instruments come September, the Beatles Rock Band’s kit is looking very promising and only costs about 30 quid more than the other ones; it might be worth waiting to check that out.

Track Listing

A music game is nothing without a good track list, and these two games are no exception. Many songs are featured across both titles (some bands are obviously a bit desperate for cash), which is rather annoying if you buy both. ‘American Woman’, ‘Everlong’, ‘Eye of the Tiger’ and ‘Go Your Own Way’ (amongst several others) are songs which appear in both games, but luckily both titles provide exceptional unique collections to complement them.

World Tour

‘Beat It’ by Michael Jackson, ‘Crazy Train’ and ‘Mr. Crowley’ by Ozzy Osbourne, ‘Hot for Teacher’ by Van Halen, ‘The Joker’ by the Steve Miller Band and a plethora of Tool songs are main highlights of this iteration of Guitar Hero. Jimi Hendrix also makes his gaming debut in World Tour, but severely under whelms in terms of the fun factor.
Other offerings are more questionable- why the hell anyone would want to have anything to do with ‘Escuela de Calor’ or ‘On the Road Again’ is beyond me. Put simply- the filler in this game is numerous, unskippable and worse than ever, even if the highlights are the best songs in the series to date. The inability to use content downloaded (and often times bought) for Guitar Hero 3 is inexcusable.

Rock Band

It’s obvious the folks who work at Harmonix really love music. ‘Ace of Spades’ by Motörhead, ‘Any Way You Want It’ by Journey, ‘Battery’ by Metallica, ‘Chop Suey’ by System of a Down, ‘Coloney of Birchmen’ by Mastodon, ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’ by Duran Duran and ‘White Wedding’ by Billy Idol are all great songs and feel amazing to play. The US launch of Rock Band 2 was even the worldwide premier of ‘Shackler’s Revenge’ by Guns n’ Roses, which is certainly nothing to be scoffed at.
The filler is certainly less obvious in Rock Band as well- ‘Aqualung’ by Jethro Tull and ‘Alex Chilton’ by The Replacements, for example, aren’t songs you’d immediately think of attributing to a music game but work very well (I personally have bought a Replacements album due to hearing Alex Chilton). Rock Band also triumphs over Guitar Hero in that the amount of downloadable content (DLC) it offers- Harmonix has the upper hand over Neversoft in that their experience with DLC stems all the way back to when they developed Guitar Hero 2. Rock Band’s downloadables span literally hundreds of tracks, some of which are free. The ability to rip the Rock Band 1 disk’s library to your console’s hard drive (sorry Wii owners) to use in Rock Band 2 puts the potential library at roughly 400 songs. That’s a lot.

Verdict

Rock Band 2’s track listing is the best in any music game ever made. While World Tour has many strong points (such as the first licensing of Tool songs in roughly a decade), the sheer amount of crap you have to wade through in order to play them isn’t really that great.

Presentation

One could (legitimately) argue that visuals don’t really matter in music games. However, these music games are meant to be played by groups- they are, after all, party games. A good party has more than four people, so invariably someone is going to have to stand and watch. It isn’t any fun to watch an ugly game.

World Tour

Technically, World Tour owns this section. Its character models are incredibly well rendered (not well designed, however), going hand in hand with particle effects and crazy stage events which make what should be a dull visual experience entertaining. Neversoft follows hot on the heels of Guitar Hero 3 and Aerosmith’s trend of including famous band members for player use: Billy Corgan, Sting, Ozzy Ozbourne and (somehow) Jimi Hendrix all make awesome appearances. It would have been even better to have Slash make an encore, but maybe that’s too much awesome for one game to handle. Tool’s stage is unique by only showing the band’s signature artwork by Alex Grey in the background, which is fairly neat. The character creation tool in World Tour is also far superior to Rock Band’s, offering almost anal amounts of facial customisation.
Outside of the game engine things turn sour, however. The main menus (and all subsequent ones) look outdated, the stereotypical ‘Cheez Metal’ (I so just coined a new genre) art style feels stale and the game’s general appearance is slightly shoddy- even the loading screen’s four separate images have noticeable compression issues.

Rock Band

Rock Band competes purely on artistic merit- while it doesn’t boast any celebrity rocker appearances, the characters you create won’t look like something that’s crawled out of Mordor. Camera cuts, filters and depth of field replace Guitar Hero’s aircraft carriers and flying skulls to really focus on the band (and therefore the music).
Animation in Rock Band is far superior to Guitar Hero’s for some inexplicable reason- the drummer actually hits the right pads at the right time, lip synchronizing is top-notch and the finger work on the strings is ridiculously accurate.
Despite not being based on actual people, all of the characters in Rock Band display lots of personality and emotion- truly a merit to the developer’s visual team.

Verdict

Both sides offer very different styles, so it really just comes down to opinion. Watch a couple of videos on Youtube and you can make your mind up yourself. While Rock Band has a much cleaner look, many prefer the Guitar Hero franchise’s ‘Cheez Metal’ art style.
You’d think that with today’s standards of graphics these games would be close to photo-realism. With such small areas and with set animations, it is certainly possible to have graphics with Heavy Rain quality visuals. Also, sort those freakin’ crowds out. Jeez. 

Overall

Both games excel in different areas- gamers interested in a challenge and who would often play solo may prefer Guitar Hero, but the best party game is, by far, Rock Band.
Guitar Hero offers a music studio to create your own tracks- a novel idea which is poorly implemented (sound quality is awful and lots of micro-managing is required). Rock Band offers a drum trainer, citing authentic drum beats and fills which you can learn and use mid game for extra points.
If you can, try both games out before buying. Neither games are awful, so you won’t regret your decision too much either way.

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