In case you’re just coming out of your drunken stupor after a long weekend, a flood of news concerning Guitar Hero’s next (other than the craptacular Aerosmith version) has been hitting the interwebs all weekend. It looks like that not only will you play bass and lead guitars, but you’ll be able to sing the songs and Guitar Hero World Tour will feature an “authentic” electronic drum kit. Wow, this is quite innovative… I haven’t seen something like this since… Um, I don’t know….
How bout Rock Band?
Let’s go over the facts and find out what the hell is the point of Guitar Hero World Tour, after the jump.
According to the press release, which you can read right here, Guitar Hero World Tour will have the largest, on disc, track listing of any music game to date, they’re also touting their super awesomer, monstrosity of a drum set. Check out a pic of this beast and feel free to click on it to enlarge:
All I’ve got to say is: Holy Crap. I can barely play the Rock Band version that has one less thingy to hit. Who is this for? Sure there are going to be those people out there that didn’t buy Rock Band and were perhaps waiting on Guitar Hero’s next offering, but there’s only one problem. Activision, in their infinite wisdom, is going to sell the bundle of a guitar, mic, drum set and game for $189.00. That’s $20 more than what Rock Band cost when it debuted and by the time Guitar Hero World Tour hits the shelves this fall, there’s no doubt in my mind, that you’ll be able to buy the entire Rock Band bundle for less than $140.00, heck, it’s selling for $149.00 on Amazon right now.
Here’s another little problem for Activision, for someone that owns Rock Band already, why in the hell would they want another video game drum set in their living room/basement/garage, cluttering up their home and defending their virginity?
What the heck is Activision thinking? Let’s see if there’s any redeeming qualities for this monstrosity, on the next page.
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Can you really say that Rock Band copied off of Guitar Hero when both were made by Harmonix?
i don’t know man, i like the Rock Band drum kit but this one looks a lot cleaner, besides you can’t beat the plastic cymbals.
plus not only can you make your own songs, but also characters, tattoos, guitars, and album art….at least thats what it said in GameInformer
GUitar hero on tour is for ds ¬_¬
@ maul: yeah, I know. Couldn’t find any world tour pix…
@Reilaos: Red Octane made the original Guitar Hero, not Harmonix.
Fixed
@Lono: Red Octane was the publisher, Harmonix was the developer… they BOTH made the first two Guitar Hero games together… on top of that, Konami made Guitar Freaks YEARS earlier… and it sounds like they’ve got a new game coming out (this year?) too… can you say three-way battle of the bands?
Back to the original topic, this kinda sucks because often the 2nd to market learns from the mistakes and shortcomings of the first to market. The Xplorer guitar that shipped with GHII for the 360 was a superior guitar (in build quality and functionality even though some preferred the shape of the original GH guitars).
It’s quite possible GHWT will have a superior drum kit than Rock Band. Rock Band isn’t perfect by a long stretch, but it was superior to GHIII. It’s entirely possible that Activision knew they’d lost the GHIII vs. Rock Band battle and have been saving their effort, songs, marketing for the one-two punch of GH:Aerosmith leading into GHWT. The rumored price pisses me off, at $189.99… that’s something I’m simply not going to pay. I already have _five_ guitars and a drumkit. If they pull this incompatibility thing again with the guitars, I’m going to be pissed and probably boycott the brand altogether. If I can get by just buying the game and a drumkit, I might consider that (although with Rock Band, buying the game and drumkit practically put you in the price range for the whole bundle anyway).
Even if GHWT addresses all the shortcomings of Rock Band… $189.99… I have a hard time dedicating over three games’ worth of money to another music game… I may be about worn out…
Ah yes, Harmonix did develop Guitar Hero…
Damn my early onset of Alzheimer’s disease….
Back on topic: even if the drum set is superior, complicating the drum set isn’t the answer. I mean, who is this directed towards? The gamers that are actually experts on video game drums is a small percentage of people and most real drummers scoff at the video game.
Why make it more complicated? If anything, take the freaking bass pedal out and then you’d have me lock, stock and two smoking barrels. It is rumored that the easy and perhaps medium settings will be bass pedal free. If that’s true, that’s pretty cool… There’s only one question left, as you said yourself: What about backwards compatibility?
I agree in a sense. Definitely a copy paste job with a few fancy words thrown in. But at the same time, the Rock Band drumset could definitely use some improvement. I do like what they did with the cymbals, and I disagree when you say it has become more complicated. The developers will most definitely make up for the complication by toning down the first couple difficulties. And if they don’t, well, then yeah they are making a mistake.
To be honest, I’m waiting for the next rockband game. And I don’t think backwards compatibility will be an issue. They could easily make the cymbals redundant for the first rock band with a small patch.
Little mix up I think here.
Guitar Hero: World Tour is a DS Game. The game you are writing about is Guitar Hero 4 for PS3, Wii etc.
Rock Band is too easy. The people who bash the Guitar Hero series are the people that suck at it, the people who say “Raining Blood is impossible on Hard!”, when my list says otherwise. I’m not claiming I Five Starred the song.. I’m just saying that 7 months after buying the game, I’m still challenged by it. I raped the set list for Rock Band pretty much from the get go (with a GH controller anyway). Why is it that I should pay double the price for HALF the replay value? For the option to pay even more on DLC?
As a result, believe it or not.. some people don’t OWN Rock Band. Myself included. I wont even get into the fact that like it or not, RB is published by EA, a company I still refuse to give my money to.
I’m not saying GH: World Tour will do the whole band any better than Rock Band, but I do see merit in the attempt. Rock Band panders and Guitar Hero does not. Rock Band wants you to Five Star you set list easily to encourage you to buy more songs and repeat the cycle. That doesnt interest me.
(I’m also not really interested in drums honestly, and absolutely uninterested in vocals.)
@ajnokia: Guitar Hero On Tour is a DS game, Guitar Hero World Tour IS Guitar Hero IV… click the Kotaku article if you still don’t believe me.
Sounds like Activision is going to confuse a bunch of people with their game titles…
Rock Band is not selling well here in Europe due to the ridiculously high retail price. If somehow Guitar Hero can be cheaper than Rock Band, then they’ve dominated Europe.
Not as many people have bought Rock Band as have bought Guitar hero. Rock Band is an unknown brand, whereas Guitar Hero games are instantly recognisable.
People are loyal to the GH brand, not Rock Band and I think they will buy GHWT because of it.
I think both of these companies are totally missing the bus on this whole thing. I don’t want more peripherals filling up my living room. I just want more songs. These companies would be much smarter to simply sell a dirt cheap game that simply offers an infrastructure to sell DLC. If I could buy songs at the Apple rate of $.99 and pick my song library, I would probably spend more then the $90 I spent on GH. I speak from the Wii side of the fence where we haven’t had any DLC so far.
No doubt james, no doubt. I agree wholehartedly, which is why I’m such a huge Rock Band supporter.
I agree with you james, just sell a game with more songs and aceess to new and the DLC you already have and i would buy that.
Also, i remember browsing gamestop.com recently and there’re releasing DLC on a disc for RB for Wii and PS2
I agree completely with the article. Given the whole guitar fiasco, I’m tempted to sit this whole next generation out. I mean, right now I have Guitar Hero 2 & 3 for 360, and Rock Band (also for 360). I play Rock Band with the GH guitars because I was not going to buy ANOTHER guitar when those work fine (plus I hear the RB one is crap). So now we are looking at GH4 adding another set of drums, and Rock Band 2 (presumably) not being compatible with any of the GH stuff anymore because Activision had a hissy-fit over them supporting Red Octane guitars. So umm, yeah.. like the article says, I don’t have room for all this crap.
I also agree with the above comments though – Rock Band is doing really awesome on the DLC front. That alone has me loving the game moreso than GH3 (which release DLC once in a blue moon, most of which sucks). I’d love it if they didn’t bother releasing a new title and just kept releasing more DLC… what else do they really need to add to the core program? Other than a song writer (which frankly, I am really iffy about how good that is going to be in GH4)
What’d I’d like is a Midi adaptor for my XBox360 so that rock band or ghwt could be hooked up to my existing 10 piece electronic drum kit.
Why the hell i would want a cheap 4 pad rock band kit is beyond me.
The 6 piece ghwt kit looks much better and is much more like a real drum kit and will teach anyone MUCH better co-ordination skills as you have to use your foot too!
Any real drummer would go for GHWT’s kit, that’s for sure.
Now, I realize that my wish for a midi interface probably will never happen (which is a shame as Roland, Yamaha, Traps etc make great kits!), but if I find that I can’t buy GHWT and then use the kit with Rock Band I’m gonna be seriously pissed off!
@Hydra:
These games are probably not intended for people with 10 piece electronic drum kits. Also, Rock Band’s drum set has a foot pedal as well.
WOW!! You people have lots of time don’t you to write so much. But you probably type fast. Im only 11 years old so I type s l o w.
So we have Harmonix considering RB2
Activision making GH:OT and GHWT and then Konami making some pathetic excuse for a rythm game ALL featuring plastic controllers!
To be honest if these developers keep this kind of crap up and not make them backwards compatible i’m just going to boycott the entire genre all together and get a real guitar…lord knows it will be cheaper and I can play any song I bloody like.
I can just see this genre imploding on itself because of stupid developers…
Im utterly shocked that the single benchmark that keeps popping up in favor of RB over GH is DLC?
Has your game console become the replacement for HMV? It’s not a damn music shop people! Its a god damn video game!
Of course I concede that RB got its foot in the door first on the whole band setup, they certainly did not reinvent the wheel. They stole the Guitar and Drums from Konami, the vocals from SingStar. They simply packaged it all in one box and dropped in some expensive (and broken) peripherals. The only thing its truly succeeded at is getting its foot in the door first.
I maintain that GH has the better gameplay for its core guitar based game over RB. If they can deliver the drums on par with RB and just give the player a QUIET drumset, they win in my opinion. Everyone is just upset they jumped the gun on the RB set and spent too much money on cheap, broken and noisy peripherals.