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GDC 2009: Guitar Hero World Tour PC Hands-On

Full-band rocking comes to the PC courtesy of Aspyr Media.

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Aspyr Media struck a bad chord with its PC port of Activision's Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock last year, a competent translation that had strangely sluggish performance even on high-spec machines. The company is hoping to right the wrongs with its PC version of Guitar Hero World Tour, promising that the issues that plagued Legends of Rock will be--like the New Romantic movement--a thing of the past.

This will all run smoothly, Aspyr says.
This will all run smoothly, Aspyr says.

Aspyr plans to release World Tour in North America in June this year, and will bundle the game with one wireless guitar controller. An Aspyr spokesman told us that the PC version of the game will also be compatible with PlayStation 3 peripherals, so wannabe rockers can round out the band experience by buying separate PS3 drums (and an extra guitar). Any USB microphone will work with World Tour on the PC.

In terms of music content, the entire song list from the console versions of World Tour will be available, as will the online-play options. But though the ability to create your own songs will be included in World Tour PC, the GH Tunes store--the global service that allowed PS3 and 360 owners the chance to share and download other users' songs--will not be made available. And as of publication time, there was no confirmation as to whether PC players will also be able to buy new songs online.

As for performance, the Aspyr rep told us that World Tour will ship with the same minimum specs as Legends of Rock, which for their time were quite lofty. We had a brief bash on the PC using the drums on the Foo Fighters' "Everlong" and found no sluggishness whatsoever. However, we'll have to wait until we get more playtime to see how consistently smooth the game will be. Keep it locked to GameSpot for more on Guitar Hero World Tour for the PC as it reaches its release date.

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