When you’ve got two games that are pretty much the same, you’ve got to strive to find the differences between them to be able to make a decent comparison.
And don’t be fooled – this really is a comparison review. When you had the likes of Midnight Club: LA facing off against Need For Speed: Undercover, you could make comparisons, but they wouldn’t be as important as the one required here as if you bought one and didn’t like it, another purchase probably wouldn’t kill you. The reason for comparison here though is purely fiscal, as when you’re splurging over a hundred English pounds, you don’t want to make the wrong choice.
Guitar Hero: World Tour is essentially the same game as Rock Band in terms of how the game is played. The notes come down the screen toward you as you play as either the vocalist, drummer, bassist or lead guitarist as they always did, and progress through the game is based on whether or not you can get through each track that you’re tasked with completing. Bass is immediately more challenging and fun than with Rock Band thanks to the addition of an “open” string, where you must strum without holding any of the fret buttons whenever a purple line appears on your note chart. Elsewhere, everything is much of a muchness, although Guitar Hero: World Tour’s career mode is nowhere near as deep as Rock Band 2’s, and it won’t provide the same sort of longevity. You get the ability to play sets of songs to unlock other sets of songs and that’s about it. For a game where up to four players will be playing at a time, all with differing tastes, that really isn’t enough to be going on with.
As with most music games, the game itself is only as strong as the tracklist on offer. Guitar Hero: World Tour misses out on the win here again, as even though it provides some awesome tunes in the form of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” and Paramore’s “Misery Business” – the depth of content just isn’t there. If you buy Rock Band 2, you can import all of your paid-for and downloaded content into the game from the original title, and this can feasibly give you hundreds of tracks to play through from day one. With Guitar Hero: World Tour, even though I’ve bought downloadable content for Guitar Hero 3, I can’t import it – or the on-disc tracks from the game. The same happened with the transition from Guitar Hero 2 to Guitar Hero 3, so I’m not surprised in the slightest. Ultimately though, this means that even though you can use the Song Creator to make your own tunes (if you have the patience and the skill), you start with 86 tracks to make your way through – once they’re unlocked via the career mode. Now that sounds like a lot, but there’s a relatively high filler-to-content ratio, certainly more so than with Rock Band 2. Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band’s “Hollywood Nights” isn’t filler, you say? That’s your opinion.
With regards to bundled instruments, Guitar Hero: World Tour comes out on top – by a fair way – and this may be what seals the deal for you. The drums that come with GH: WT are quieter, sturdier, and more responsive and due to the two cymbals that come as default, feel a heck of a lot more realistic than the RB2 kit. The pads provide a nice rebound and this makes the actual playing of the game a heck of a lot more comfortable. One point I would make is that if you thought that the original Rock Band’s bass pedal was flimsy and tacky, then you haven’t seen anything yet. However, looks can be deceiving, and despite always threatening to break at the merest tap of your foot, the Guitar Hero: World Tour bass pedal holds up incredibly well to the abuse of the amateur drummer, and works well enough too. The bundled guitar is of very good quality too, and is infinitely more responsive than Rock Band 2’s.
In summation, there isn’t a massive amount between Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2. Both will provide a decent amount of playing time and fun for your money, and both are expandable via the waves of downloadable content that is available. However, GH: WT doesn’t have a massive amount of worthwhile tracks available for it and the tracks that are available just aren’t as good as the ones on offer from EA’s effort. This, along with the lack of any depth to the career mode, seals the deal – as if you’ve got four people around to play the game and you can’t get a consensus on which track to play because everyone is luke-warm about each of them, then the game is going to feel pretty short. Guitar Hero: World Tour is very good indeed, but it isn’t this week’s number one – even for solo guitarists.
