World Tour fell flat on its face. It had so much hype, and so little it lived up to. Hardcores steer clear.
When I first heard there was going to be a new Guitar Hero, I was pumped. After the massive success of GH3, I'd figured, hey, this ought to be great! They've even got a music studio! Well, let me warn you why you'll be straight-up disappointed with Guitar Hero: World Tour. And please, remember that this is an opinion, as I'm not stating it as fact.
The Setlist: Terrible. Seriously, this couldn't be worse. This whole time in production we heard boasts of a "massive soundtrack" but when millions of rockers worldwide started playing the Lead Guitar career, they learned what really composed the Setlist. Sure, it's over 80 songs, but I'd say a good 95% of them are slow-paced, emo-ish, Cheap Trick-style light rock songs. It's a massive soundtrack alright, but it's filled with fluff. Even if you're in for the 100G Expert completion achievement, you'll have to dredge through those slow, boring songs. And it is not fun. If you adored GH3's Setlist, you'll hate GH: WT's. Even if you complete the final Setlist, if you skipped over any venues, you'll have to go back and play through the songs you skipped over just to save yourself the pain (If you want the achievement, that is). Sure, the last song sets are great, but let me tell you, those are the only ones.
Playability: Guess what, if you're used to GH3 hammer-ons and not GH2 or GH: A, you're in for even more pain! With World Tour comes the old, specific hammer-ons where you must press the button as the fret is on the strike zone (Whereas in GH3 you could simply hold the button down). But, good luck even seeing those hammer-ons as the fretboard is significantly smaller (Will elaborate in Interface). However, the tried and true Guitar Hero formula is back and it's still fun hitting those notes, but gee! I wish the songs were, you know, fun? At least Star Power works like Rock Band now. Even while SP is activated, you can still hit SP phrases (Thus extending your SP duration). This is a fantastic and much needed addition. Also comes the 'slider' sections (The Slider on the World Tour guitar is useless, will elaborate in Game Items), which work like hammer-ons, but you never have to strum. Simply press the button. This works well for difficult solos and allows you to two-hand tap with ease (Which is highly suggested for Hot for Teacher and Satch Boogie). Now for those who never owned a guitar? Don't even buy this game because you can't use a standard controller for Guitar/ Bass/ Drums. If you have a headset, you can plug it in and play Vocals, but the XBL Headset is sketchy and often doesn't read your voice as precisely as the GH: WT microphone. As for band play, it works fine and functions as intended. But that's unfortunately about it. When you're playing an entire gig of a career song set and you finish a song, there's an awkward wait to proceed. Trust me, you'll hate this. It's like they want us to sit and stare at our results.
Interface: Woe is me. The interface is a disaster. Here's a list of why the interface sucks.
-The fretboard is small in solo play. It's the same scrolling guitar neck you always see, but it's tiny compared to previous GH entries. It takes up about 50% of the screen at the bottom, whereas in previous installments it took 75%. Sure, it should look like this for band play, but that's band play! I don't want a crappy fretboard during solo play! It's even half as tall!
-The ROCK Meter is also smaller. The colors are more distinct so you can tell if you're doing great or not so, but it's smaller, like the rest of the interface. It's somewhat difficult to tell when it's blinking (When you're about to fail a song).
-What used to be your Multiplier Box is now a small, insignificant meter attached to the fretboard. You used to see your multiplier with ease (I.e. No multiplier, x2, x6, etc.), but since it's shrunk (Like everything else) you'll nearly never know what multiplier you have. You used to be able to use peripheral vision to see the color of your multiplier, but now since all you see is the gems that light up when you hit notes (Which denote progress into the next multiplier) and the multiplier (if any) itself above the gems in tiny font with faint color, you'll have to physically look over to see your multiplier.
-In GH: 3 and Aerosmith, you could see your note streak with ease (The same applies to Star Power). Now, it's a small-font, green number underneath your score, which is located under the ROCK Meter. Both are difficult to see. You used to be able to tell what streak you had because it'd pop up on top of the fretboard in nice, big font, but now it's in miniscule font and you'll almost never see it (The same with SP, once again).
-Choosing songs in an absolute hassle. Songs used to be in a straight-up list, easy to read, but now they're presented in the form of posters. Posters! So you'll have to consistently sift through all the posters to find just that one song. Wait, what? There's a list elsewhere you say? Not to worry, it's equally useless! Like so many other things, the list font is small, and when you scroll over a song, that one song becomes bigger, which quasi-blocks you from seeing other songs. Oh, and if you're looking for a song based on its difficulty, sift through the posters. Otherwise use the list sorted either alphabetically or by artist (Sorting it in chronological order is inexistent, which is a major flaw).
-The interface of the Music Studio is terrible also. If you were to select a song you've downloaded, you can't hear a preview of it. And when you select it and exit out, you return to the top of the song list, forcing you to go all the way back down (You see, there's a thousand tiny faults accompanied with a hundred huge faults which together drag this title down. This is one of those tiny faults).
-The entire Music Studio interface. Read the Music Studio section.
Game Components: They're all pretty bad, except the microphone and guitar. The guitar features a useless new slider addition, but it's not like you'll have time to switch between buttons to the slider (Located directly below the neck buttons). And even if your reflexes are that quick, have fun knowing which button you landed on (And you'd better not land on a button unless you're in a slider section, because pressing those "buttons" counts as a miss-strum), because they're not really buttons, they're touch-sensitive pads. So you'll have to look down, make sure your finger is directly above the correct pad, and then look back up (And by then, you've probably missed a few of the slider-section frets). Sure, during the slider sections, you can see which pad you're pressing down on because it lights up a column on the screen (corresponding to the strike zone's colors) to let you know you're on that pad (Slider-section only). No matter what else I say against this new guitar, there's no doubt you should still purchase it. It's heavier than the GH3 version, but the elongated strum bar is great, less noisy, and generally exceptional. The whammy bar is noisy (Akin to someone knocking on your door) but it's also extended, which makes it easier to grab 'n' whammy. The drums don't fare well, unfortunately. The cymbals are too close to the rest of the drums. Sometimes, when you reach for a cymbal, you'll end up hitting the bottom of it because it's so close. I have a friend who told me of two of his friends who both had drums and within the first week of use, broke. There's quality for you! As for the microphone, it works as intended, but as I said earlier, don't even bother with the XBL headset/ standard controller setup.
The Music Studio: This was supposed to be the defining edge in GH's triumph over the Rock Band versus Guitar Hero battle (I should throw it out now that you can't add vocals to custom songs). Too bad it doesn't work very well. First off, your sounds for each guitar, bass, rhythm, drums, and keyboard are all very limited, having you personally edit about the fifteen preset sounds to get the noise you want. Oh, and those limited amount of sounds? Yeah, the majority sound the same. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get that "sick electric noise". You'll grow sick of the default Lead sound. And chances are you won't get the desired effect when you take the time to tinker with the sounds. When you finally settle upon a sound, you'll go and record. After learning the clumsy recording controls, you play from scratch. It probably won't sound too great, but this is like your first Halo 3 Forge map: It sucks (PROTIP: Don't mash buttons, name your song UNBEATABLE, then upload it. Everyone hates those)! It takes a long time to nail a great song (But good luck getting it noticed. Will elaborate in a little bit). You can tinker with all the desired instruments, and record individual tracks for all of them, or even copy tracks from instrument to instrument, which works fine. To edit your song in an advanced manner, you have to be ready to conquer the highly dysfunctional GH Mix. You'll probably be using a guitar, and navigating with a combination of the strum bar and the wacky "thumbstick" on the WT guitar is an unnecessary thorn in your back. For example, to scroll the first note of a song, the button is on the bottom. To scroll to the last note, the button's at the top. Argh! It's a hosh-posh mix of irregular button placement. When you want to copy a section of notes to relapse in the rest of your song, you better record your notes right so that it lines up with a preset section of GH Mix. Otherwise, you'll see unwanted blank sections, so you can't really get a true overlapping sound, unless you record it just right. Furthermore, you lack the ability to place Star Power phrases and designate certain notes as hammer-ons. The hammer-ons are designated by the closeness of individual frets, and Star Power phrases occur (This is a guess) every thirty seconds of a song, so you may end up with an SP phrase at the end of your song. Worthless! "Well, that certainly blows, I suppose I'll just shred." Well, too bad the recorder itself lacks. I recorded a furious shredfest of pure awesomium. It consisted of holding down the green button, and rapidly (VERY rapidly) two-hand tapping the yellow button. This created that signature Dragonforce uber-fast momentum sound. Now, when I go to play it, I see that the Music Studio managed to record only the yellows. So now it's just a lame, non-parallel sound that could be done with the Lead Machine. Wait, what's the Lead Machine? Fairly basic yet extremely useful, the Lead Machine (Which could also be designated the Drum Machine, Bass Machine, Keyboard Machine, because you can implement it on those roles, but not rhythm) creates solos for you, in a sense. You can choose descending, ascending, or alternating rifts. Descending rifts play down from whatever buttons you hold down, ascending vice versa and alternating descend-then-ascend. Unfortunately, you can't set the speed at which this happens (Another minor flaw!). Now, the most disappointing aspect of the Music Studio is the lack of a note-placing system. I can't look at a graph then place notes wherever I want them using a drag-and-drop technique of sorts. Maybe this is some sick way of Activision disabling us from making impossible songs. Well, it's OUR SONG, if nobody likes it, who cares, why should you intervene?!
The Music Studio, but Everybody Else's Songs: So, you've made your song, now upload it for everybody to rock with! Well, you can upload it, but just once. If nobody notices it, downloads it or rates it, that's it. You'll NEVER get to upload it again. EVER. So, generally, it'd better be epic and hope that everyone notices it. Otherwise, it's lost to the world. Maybe your friends can search for it and rate it then, but you need the power of the rest of the world to help get it noticed. Neversoft has a dandy little section where they have handpicked songs that people have made. Too bad these guys are either leetist jerks or simply don't care enough to look at everyone else's songs (Probably because they know WT fell flat on its face, for example!), because since the day WT came out, it's been their songs. Just theirs. That magically has been rated five gold stars. There's a top rated of all time, and the songs on that list are truly great, representing the few that went through fire and flames (Heh!) to master the Music Studio. There are various other sections, but aren't really significant like the best ever section. Okay, well, I want to ignore what you've said before and how you've totally discouraged me, and I'm going to upload my song anyway! Sure thing, champ. First thing you do is upload it to your "File Share" (I got that from Halo 3, what better to name it?). Then you finalize it and upload it to GHTunes. And it's up! Well, too bad this song kinda isn't my best work and didn't get noticed. I guess I'll remove it from my file share. Well champ, I mean, CHUMP, you can't remove it! That's right, Neversoft just spat in the face of functionality! Once you've uploaded a song to your file share, you can't take it off. This has got to be one of the most massive flaws of all time. This is like Master Chief without energy shields, okay? So you'd better make well sure your song is going to be a hit and stay up there. Otherwise, you've got to rate songs (Numheaded concept) to increase your file share... Right, just let me take it off you dysfunctional Neversoft employees. I've rated what I would say around twenty-five songs and not a single slot open on my file share! And my crappy songs are still… RIGHT THERE!
Rock Star Creator: Fantastic. From the get-go, there's a plethora of options for customizing, from your band logo to your avatar's wrist wear. You also get loads of new unlockables by completing songs. There are definitely enough options to get what you want.
Achievements: These are a real mess. About half of them are secret. And get this; there aren't achievements for stuff like that massive one thousand note streak. Apparently everybody is JLC the Great (James Like Coulter, for the four of you in the world who play Guitar Hero yet don't know who JLC is) and note streaks are insignificant. Or maybe Neversoft figured, hey with specific hammer-ons, who's going to get a one thousand streak? And laughed it off as if it was no big deal. Better yet, nobody can tell if you've five-starred all songs on Expert! Fan-freakin'-tastic! Now, with the secret achievements. I mean, seriously, it's a secret achievement for creating your own custom guitar, and other stuff. Now here's a point I don't understand. I read online on an achievement list that one secret achievement is for getting something like two hundred thousand points on Satch Boogie (Something like that). I suppose Neversoft was thinking "Gee! We'd better make that achievement secret, or everybody will do it just for the achievement points!" No, you IDIOTS, Satch Boogie is a very hard song; I doubt your average achiever will do it for the points. Bottom line is that their secret achievements have gotten out of hand. An example of perfect achievements? Refer to GH3's achievements. Those were perfect.
Well, if you've read this far, your eyes may be burning. You may need glasses or something if you don't wear them already. Thanks for reading, seriously.
Peace!
Edit: Forgot online play. Direct quote from Minion123 sums it up:
"Online play has been destroyed thanks to removing the ability to duel people on the same difficulty level. THERE IS NO PRO FACE OFF! Online is filled with kids playing on medium and hard so they can cheat their way into a win. Finding no difficulty in the singleplayer I was hoping the multiplayer would offer some challenge but sadly no." -End Quote
Also: Choosing venues doesn't work too well. Before we could see a preview or a glimpse of what it looked like. Now there are simply too many venues and you won't remember any of them, so you're often charging blindly into a place you likely don't remember. On the upside, they all look great.