Guitar Hero World Tour Review

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

So that I have a canned response to everyone who asks me my opinion of GH:WT, I thought I would blog a review.  So here goes:

     The set list is AMAZING.  Some songs I didn't realize how much fun they were to play until I did it(La Bamba).  My fave guitar songs to play thus far:  Satch Boogie, Trapped Under Ice,  La Bamba, Beat It, Crazy Train, Escuela De Calor, Everlong, Hot for Teacher, The Kill, Today, the Tool songs, Re-Educatrion Through Labor, Rooftops, Santeria, Scream Aim Fire, Too Much Too Young Too Fast, Today, Purple Haze, and Weapon of Choice.

       A lot of people complained about the difficulty in GH3, and their complaints were well founded.  Forcing somebody to beat Raining Blood to pass the main setlist is somewhat of a sick joke in my book.  I appreciate a good challenge, but damn man, keep the hardest stuff as extras.  I think GH2 had an ideal difficulty curve.  I would get stuck on a song here and there, but I got past it and was able to beat the game without want to throw my XBOX out the damned window.  GH:WT approaches the GH2 standard a bit more, but it felt a little easier.  I was able to solidly beat nearly every song in GH:WT my first try, and there really weren't any hand crampers like Before I Forget.

  I have mixed feelings about the Career, I like the idea of playing several songs in a row, it is nice not to have to load a venue every time you pick a song, however, the load times in GH3 were fantastic, so I don't know what possessed them to fix what wasn't broken.  The venues themselves are imaginative and well-done, I ecspecially liked Sunna's Chariot  at the end.  I miss the more ordered way of playing songs in previous Guitar Heroes, and the deliberatly half assed story that went with it.  I know it's difficult to top facing off the devil himself, but i think they could have done better than playing times square on new years eve.

   As far as the equipment goes, I am extremely happy with the new guitar.  It is solid, strums well, and just feels better. I went back to my old Les Paul to play bass while my wife played the new guitar and I couldn't believe the difference.  The LP felt so light and flimsy after the new GH guitar.  I have been playing around with the touch strip a little bit.  I haven't gotten the feel for sliding yet, so we will see if that turns out to work as well as advertised.  One thing I do dig about the touch strip is you can "tap" your strumming, which means you can play slap bass or, you can alternate strumming and tapping if you feel like showing off (just don't break combo -- then you just look like an asshole).  My drums seem to be spotty, I a waiting for a midi cable from redoctane, hopefully after I recalibrate them I can give a decent opinion, I may just review them seperatley later.  I haven't tried vocals yet, I have read about some complaints about the difficulty in vocals, but my wife sang a few songs on expert and didn't seem to have too much trouble.

Online play is definatley a step up from GH3, you can actually party up now.  I haven'y played a battle of the bands yet, but i have done some band quickplay and it seems to work like it should, One thing I really enjoy, however, is the 2v2.  It is nice if you just want to team up with a freind to kick some ass, and it feels more true to Guitar Hero's roots.

Overall, I am fairly pleased with GH:WT.  It has some definite misses, but it has a lot of very strong points.  There is so much to cover, I ca't even fit it into one review, so I thought I would stick with what would be relevant to most pople out there.  The custom tracks are a very interesting addition, that feature may recieve a review all it's own.  I would definatley buy this gamemerely out of the quality of the guitar and setlist alone, I just wish that the deficincies like haw the career mode works would not be there so this game would blow me out of the water like I hoped it would.