Guitar Hero: World Tour (PS2)

Guitar Hero - Perhaps one of the most known games series' to come out in the last 5 or so years. Known for being a "Party atmosphere" game and widely considered a favourite of people with or without actual musical ability.

I myself dismissed Guitar Hero until the 3rd game in the series came along, mainly due to me being very sceptical, thinking it had nowhere near as much enjoyment as playing a real Guitar. After playing ...
...immediately went out and bought Guitar Hero III.

The basic concept of all the Guitar Hero games is to yourself become a 'Rock star' by going through life as a Guitarist of a local band, from your humble beginnings to finally becoming of legend status. It's closely based on the Japanese arcade game GuitarFreaks, which was released a long time before Guitar Hero became a household name.

The previous Guitar Hero games allowed ... more

Guitar Hero - Perhaps one of the most known games series' to come out in the last 5 or so years. Known for being a "Party atmosphere" game and widely considered a favourite of people with or without actual musical ability.

I myself dismissed Guitar Hero until the 3rd game in the series came along, mainly due to me being very sceptical, thinking it had nowhere near as much enjoyment as playing a real Guitar. After playing at a friends house, I was indeed hooked on it and immediately went out and bought Guitar Hero III.

The basic concept of all the Guitar Hero games is to yourself become a 'Rock star' by going through life as a Guitarist of a local band, from your humble beginnings to finally becoming of legend status. It's closely based on the Japanese arcade game GuitarFreaks, which was released a long time before Guitar Hero became a household name.

The previous Guitar Hero games allowed you to use a Guitar shaped controller, equipped with 5 frets (each indicating a different colour), a strum bar and a whammy bar. The way to progress through each level is to 'play' along to famous songs, by hitting the frets and strum bar at the same time when the corresponding coloured icon hits the screen line.

Now I've bored the pants off everybody, I'll get onto reviewing the actual package itself.

So what do you actually receive in the package? Well, as of this review I'll assume that everybody will be buying the full monty, which includes a Guitar, Drums, Microphone and of course the game itself. Everything is generally easy to set up and took me around 10 minutes to get everything up and running.

First impressions of the game were not so good. The overall graphics seemed to be poorer than that of the last game and undoubtedly were similar in quality to that of the 2nd in the series. despite this, I wasn't too bothered about it, after all, the game itself relies on game play and not graphics.

I explored the new facets of the game first. Firstly the 'Create your own rock star' feature was a nice introduction. ultimately it is quite limited in what you can do as far as creating yourself goes, but again it is a clever little feature and one that gives the game a bit of a personal touch to it. Basically it allows you to customise your body, outfit and instrument of choice.

Secondly I checked out the "Music Studio" which apparently gives you the ability to create your own music track using all the above instrument. Well, the functionality of it in my opinion is awful. Opinions vary, but it's nowhere near to actually using a real Guitar or Drums, it's just dreadfully out of time to what you are playing and all in all, it would take you literally weeks to get something half decent sounding out of it. I've tried using it time and time again, but obviously to no avail.

After my bad experience with the music studio I was ready to get off and do some actual gaming. I used to the Guitar first, as I was used to doing so. It's much what a expected as far as storyline goes. You have to basically take jobs from different countries who require guitarists to play at gigs with them. There's wasn't particularly a huge mix of countries in there, which was surprising seen as how the game is named World Tour.

The gameplay has been altered slightly from Guitar Hero 3. There are new parts to the guitar, which has increased the number of different icons or 'gems' on the screen. There are now slider gems which allow you to use the slider on your guitar to play them with, without using the strum bar at the same time…. Daft feature if you ask me. I've had problems with that aspect of the game with it actually receiving the signal from my guitar to the game itself, increasing the number of mistakes I make on the songs.

Very noticeable on this game is the ease of the game. I had no trouble with any songs on the 'Hard' difficulty, but indeed had many problems with Guitar Hero III on that setting. Again, it's much similar in its approach to that of Guitar Hero II, despite being made by a totally different company. The little glitches in Guitar Hero II are also quite prevalent on this game as well. The one I find to be of most annoyance is the game not registering me doing tap's and hammer on's on a regular basis, much like the slider function previously mentioned.

The songs that are included on the game are all original tracks and range from Country to Metal. The list is quite impressive and has a mix of famous and obscure tracks, generally upholding the Guitar Hero tradition of doing it that particular way. You get to meet a few celebrities through out the game as you descend into more famous territory. I won't spit them all out, but a few that are involved include Ted Nugent and Ozzy Osbourne.

After I had completed the game, which took a lot less time than I anticipated, I was quite keen to use the other instruments. I ended up using the drums first and was pleasantly surprised. Being still a beginner on the drums, I took it very slowly, using the easy setting first. It took me a few games to get into the rhythm, but eventually I did. The way the drums are set out is excellent and their reaction to being hit seems to be perfectly accurate to the icons on screen. All in all, the drums seem to have some very complex challenges along the varying levels and I'm sure would keep drum enthusiasts happy.

The Microphone was something I was a little reluctant to use, but eventually agreed to. The microphone measures the pitch of your voice to that of the song and basically rates you that way. I'm quite an awful singer and I don't mind admitting it. My pitch is horrible, but the microphone I'm sure would be good for all those avid singers out there waiting to wail some falsetto or growls out. It must be good at tracking anyway, because it recognised me as a terrible singer.

I was wanted to find out how the game works in a group atmosphere, so I brought it to a mates on a Friday night. I'll say this before hand, make sure your friend or you have a big TV, otherwise it's not a very worthwhile experience.

The game allows as many as 4 players at the same time, acting as a 'band' and indeed uses a triple screen mode with the vocals being shown at the top of the screen and another guitar controller acting as the songs bass guitar.
It really is a whole heap of fun to do. Especially if someones had a few drinks and wants to use the microphone.

So, summing up, I'd probably give the game an 82/100. Mainly the rating is for the extreme enjoyment that can be had playing this game with all available instruments and the fact it gives you a new challenge with the Drums and Vocals. I think the main criticism of this game is that they didn't spend enough time perfecting the storyline part of the game, the Guitar play is a little less accurate than Guitar Hero III and the game is rather easy to complete, if you've played previous games in the Guitar Hero series. I wouldn't get the wrong idea about the game. If you're a beginner to the series, then this is a perfect place to start.

The package itself is a hefty price. I paid $300 Australian for it around the Christmas period. By that, the UK price should be around 140-160 pounds I'd assume. I'd say it was probably better value for GH Newbies, cause it will literally give you months of entertainment. Still, if you're a fan, you'll probably still buy it anyway.

Thanks for reading, hope my ramblings weren't too much!

Andy 

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