GC 2008: Guitar Hero World Tour Hands-on
It's not just about guitars anymore.
August 19, 2008 - Activision and Neversoft are giving the public its first chance to try out the new
Guitar Hero World Tour, complete with drums, bass, guitar and vocals, at this year's German Games Convetion. They say good things come to those who wait, but you know how much we at IGN hate waiting. So we took the trip down to Los Angeles to visit Neversoft and get our hands on the German Games Convention demo a bit early.
Up for play in the demo are eight songs with full band support. The folks at Activision are holding off on letting us toy around with the music creation tools that allows you to compose your own Guitar Hero tracks and share them with friends, though not due to lack of prodding on both our and Neversoft's part. These guys are anxious to show off what they've done. That's for another time. For now, it's all about good old-fashioned rocking out. Here are the eight songs we took for a spin:
Bon Jovi -- "Livin' on a Prayer"
Coldplay -- "Shiver"
Foo Fighters -- "Everlong"
Interpol -- "Obstacle 1"
Lenny Kravitz -- "Are You Gonna Go My Way"
Michael Jackson -- "Beat It"
Linkin Park -- "What I've Done"
No Doubt -- "Spiderwebs"
Though you wouldn't expect it, the No Doubt and Michael Jackson songs were my personal favorites. That's not just because I got to listen to Neversoft and Activision PR guys try to sing the tough vocals while I played guitar and drums. The tunes are a great deal of fun to play in their own right. "Spiderwebs" has a catchy drum riff and "Beat It" has a great guitar part. They don't call him the King of Pop for nothing.
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That's not to say the others aren't good, too. Personally, I could do without the Linkin Park and Coldplay inclusions, but Bon Jovi is always a crowd pleaser at parties and the Foo Fighters track has a sweet drum part.
Enough about the songs. I'm sure the big question on everyone's minds are how the drums and new guitar play. The drums were naturally the first instrument I gravitated towards. This setup is nearly final, with just a few more adjustments to be made. The whole rig is completely wireless and runs off of two AA batteries, quite the feat for what it offers. The pads are all a great deal quieter than what Rock Band offers, plus they're velocity sensitive. The two cymbals can be raised or lowered and slightly rotated to get the best placement, something you'll want to do since hitting both at once is the way to activating star power. The whole kit feels quite sturdy and looks like it can take a beating.
If you've been playing Rock Band, it will take you just a few moments to get used to this kit. The motions are similar, but with an extra pad and two raised cymbals, this kit more closely mimics a true drum set. The drum parts for each of the songs are laid out true to how a drummer would actually play the song. That means a lot of riding the first cymbal (the high hat), and the left-most pad gets a lot of action as the representation of the snare. Since the pads are all sensitive to how hard you hit them, Neversoft has worked this into the gameplay. While playing, you'll see some different shaped notes coming down along with the normal gems. These accents indicate that you should hit the drum harder. Do so and you'll score more.
The new guitar plays just like the old one did, but offers a few new twists. There's now a touch pad on the neck that can be used mid-song. If you're playing bass (it still works on guitar parts as well), you can tap the touch bar to mimic a slap motion instead of strumming the bar. The touch pad can also be used to add a bit more to sustained notes in solos, similar to the extra buttons on the Rock Band guitar. A few of the songs we played had solos where the notes were strung together with purple lines. In these, you can just touch the appropriate section of the bar and slide your finger back and forth to hit the notes. I'm not such a big fan of this, but you can always ignore it and play as you did in previous Guitar Hero games.
You wouldn't think there'd be much to say about vocals, but Neversoft has added its own touch to this section as well. For those of us that are tone deaf, the game offers a beginner mode that only scores you on rhythm and ignores the pitch. Of course, if you can sing, there are extra goodies for you, too. Some songs have free form sections where you can sing or say whatever you like. Sing on key or in rhythm and you'll score more points. I didn't score more points.
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Of course, this game is about the band, not each individual part. The band mechanic relies on every link in the chain being strong -- if one person starts failing out horribly, everyone will lose. The star power pool is all shared, so keeping track of how your buddy is doing and activating the star power at the right time is the key to success on normal songs. Unlike Rock Band, you can't "save" someone once they've failed out, but activating star power will help them get a score boost and put them back on track.
And I've saved my personal favorite update for last. If you pause the game mid-song and then restart, the game will give you a three second countdown before everyone begins again. No more unpausing into the midst of a solo and scrambling to get your fingers back on the buttons. Sweet.
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