It all started out when I heard about Guitar Hero 2. Never heard about Guitar Hero until a Guitar Hero 2 commercial came out. The game looked cool, so I tried it out. It was a blast. After reaching Expert, I became hooked.

Then Guitar Hero 3 came out. It was executed amazingly. I love it when my fingers are all over the fretboard. What I didn’t like is the change in the hammer-on/pull-off system. But I love the very challenging songs.

And guess what? So many people complained about how songs were too hard for them.

And here we are, with the disaster of Guitar Hero World Tour. After just waiting to get this game, it seems like they just rushed this game out the door with faulty hardware and terrible game decisions.

The song list (a very important element of the game) has been rushed. It seems like they just picked out random songs to throw in instead of choosing them carefully. After playing through several songs, I almost fell asleep. All I was getting was really boring ’70s songs that I’m sure not many people really care about. Some of these songs are in Spanish! Who the heck made the setlist!? Aggro? Shiver? One Armed Scissor? Good God? Toy Boy? Etc. ? WTF???? I really started to get bored of these songs, so I just went back to Guitar Hero 3 for a while, then finished up Guitar Hero World Tour. After completing the game and looking at the entire setlist of unlocked songs, VERY few appeal to me, very few are enjoyable as a group, and very few are challenging for experienced players. Come on! Where’s the real artists? Dragonforce? Buckethead? Guns ‘n’ Roses? AC/DC? I only enjoy a few songs in this game. And most of those few are already in Rock Band!

The difficulty. Expert on GHWT = [. . . ] any guitar game. All songs are way too easy for me to play. I’m a person who likes challenging songs. Unfortunately, World Tour is really lacking in these. When developing this game, I think they focused WAY too much on making this game “family-friendly” that they forgot to think about us hardcore gamers.

Even worse! They add a new, pointless addition to the guitar. They add in a slider bar, which is very difficult to use. Yes, you can use the frets instead, but the slider notes seem too mushy due to the fact you don’t have to strum on them, even after missing one (slider notes are the #1 reason I got rid of this game). It just destroys the “Guitar Hero feeling” when playing on guitar. Rarely anyone I played with online used the slider bar. That’s saying “No one likes slider notes. ”

Even the new model of the guitar is terrible. The start/select button layout has been poorly designed. With a HUGE select button and 2 start buttons (all so close together and close to the strum bar), I am frequently pushing those buttons on accident at random times. This is a nuisance, especially to us gamers who 2-hand-tap on complex parts. Also, I hate how they altered the strum bar. It’s more mushy and has a less powerful click that makes it harder to strum quicker on fills.

Then comes the vocal system. Terrible. When it scores you, it scores for EVERY second of your singing. Even on Beginner difficulty, 100% is pretty much impossible. Props to Rock Band for having to sing “phrases” to 100% a song on vocals.

Note tracks are poorly laid out. Whenever I sing vocals on the song “Monsoon,” I can clearly see errors in the charting. So, I have to sing the song a little differently in order to get it right. And it’s not just this song. Many songs have poorly laid out note tracks. Most songs are overcharted, undercharted, and misscharted.

I do not own the drums, so I can’t say anything about that.

So, why 2 stars instead of 1, you ask? Well I’m giving them a small amount of credit for at least not FORCING you to use the slider bar on the guitar.

I was thinking about Guitar Hero: Metallica (I’m a huge fan of them and they have very hard songs for players). But after finding out that they will still add in slider notes, I am done. I will no longer buy a Guitar Hero game from Activision, because they destroyed Guitar Hero.

I’m going to switch to Rock Band from now on. I traded Guitar Hero World Tour back to GameStop and got myself a copy of Rock Band 2. I do not regret this at all. Rock Band 2 > Guitar Hero World Tour. Good job Activision, thanks for buying the best video game franchise and doing nothing but ruin it. I’m not buying any Guitar Hero games until they either remove slider notes, or have an option in the game where you can convert them into normal/hammer-on notes, which I don’t think is gonna happen and Rock Band 2 has better gameplay anyway. Well, so long Guitar Hero, it’s been fun.
Rating: 2 / 5