Guitar Hero World Tour: SPOILER THREAD

[Lizard_King]

So, yeah. In general it's pretty great. If I had to draw an analogy, I'd say it's the Saints Row 2 to Harmonix's GTA4, and for one reason primarily: it believes in constantly rewarding the player in videogamey ways, as opposed to Harmonix's "the experience is its own reward" approach. I'm about evenly split between the two, allowing for the joy of the new, and I'm looking forward (dreading?) to having two music platforms with legs.

For instance, it provides you with as much feedback per song as you can handle, at least playing individually (may also work for band, don't know). Much like GH2's post-deconstruction, but with rewards for each aspect that you excelled at.

Other than that, like I said in the other thread, they appear to have fixed the note charts, at least as far as I can tell. The aesthetic is a little bit Rock Banded, but really it's very much a Guitar Hero look but much better than GH3.

I think they addressed many of my complaints so far. At the very least, the guitar should be on everyone's shopping list.

[Rock8man]

Bravo on the thread title btw. It uses existing boring thread naming trends but in a clever way. Well done. :) I love thread titles like that, because they put a smile on my face in the weeks to come. So much better than "Guitar Hero World Tour: I've actually played it".

[Wholly Schmidt]

Well, I've only played one set, but:

Originally Posted by Lizard_King

So, yeah. In general it's pretty great. If I had to draw an analogy, I'd say it's the Saints Row 2 to Harmonix's GTA4, and for one reason primarily: it believes in constantly rewarding the player in videogamey ways, as opposed to Harmonix's "the experience is its own reward" approach.

You're high as a kite. If ever there was a game where the goal is for the experience to be its own reward, it's a fake plastic rock game. I haven't actually played far enough to understand what you mean about it constantly rewarding the player, so maybe I'll end up agreeing with what you're saying, but it definitely won't be from the way you've expressed it here.

Originally Posted by Lizard_King

I'm about evenly split between the two, allowing for the joy of the new, and I'm looking forward (dreading?) to having two music platforms with legs.

Mostly dreading here. I'm glad for competition meaning Rock Band should continue to get better, but I really don't like the idea of any artists I want getting locked into the platform I don't. This isn't really a complaint about GH:WT, it's a complaint about the scenario we're in, but oh well.

Originally Posted by Lizard_King

For instance, it provides you with as much feedback per song as you can handle, at least playing individually (may also work for band, don't know). Much like GH2's post-deconstruction, but with rewards for each aspect that you excelled at.

Yes. This is clearly better than Rock Band, and it's only crazier when you think that Rock Band is on its second iteration without any detailed post-song breakdown. I really hope this is one of those things where competition eventually drives RB to improve. The silver lining is that for such a glaring fault, it's also trivial. It's hard to wrap your head around Harmonix overlooking the feature or imagine some reasonable rationale for its absence, but it's also hard to care in light of the rest of the game.

Originally Posted by Lizard_King

Other than that, like I said in the other thread, they appear to have fixed the note charts, at least as far as I can tell.

I hope so. I'm only three songs in though. What I'm most curious about is the overall drum charting as well as how it translates to the RB drums. It's too late at night to break them out right now though.

Originally Posted by Lizard_King

The aesthetic is a little bit Rock Banded, but really it's very much a Guitar Hero look but much better than GH3.

As someone who was actively defending GH3's look when everyone else was critical, I would like to point out that I was an idiot. GH3 didn't look so bad when it was just a departure from GH2, but in light of Rock Band it's nothing short of embarrassing that a game looks as terrible as GH:WT. It fails artistically and technically. Everyone looks like a creepy claymation exaggeration that was then laminated in shiny plastic. The hair is the most freakish and unnatural I've seen in a video game in quite some time, and it has funky transparency issues against the backgrounds. The arenas look like someone vomited a few more effects onto the PS2 game. There's a lack of atmosphere, figuratively and literally. Rock Band absolutely captured stage lighting, shadowy silhouettes against spotlights, and the haze of smoke and pyrotechnics. It looks like it was actually filmed, with grainy video effects and whatnot being the absolute way to go. Everything had a soft, natural look to it. GH:WT's already plastic characters pop out against jaggy backdrops with no technical finesse whatsoever. Ugly, aliased, directionless.

Rock Band 1 and 2, from the interface to the arenas to the characters to the animations, looks like it was designed by artists and musicians. GH:WT looks like it was designed by someone who has played a Tony Hawk game.

There is exactly one area of GH:WT I'm visually pleased with, and it's the cutscenes and menus. Like the videos in the first, the animation is slick and actually has a consistent and pleasing artistic theme. Honestly, GH would've been smart, maybe even revolutionary, if it had gone in a completely different direction and pulled off some badass cell-shaded version of that look for the whole game.

Originally Posted by Lizard_King

I think they addressed many of my complaints so far. At the very least, the guitar should be on everyone's shopping list.

The guitar is on my shopping list. So I'm with you on that one.

Buy this game if you just really like some of the songs available here. That's the boat I'm in. I'm putting up with the rest of the game because the experience is its own reward when I'm drumming to some Tool. This won't be what I reach for at parties, and it won't be what I download tracks for.

[Reldan]

I've been playing for the last couple hours and have a few comments.

Pros:

-MIDI port on drum kit works quite well - I had my Roland kit hooked up in no time. As an added bonus the velocity sensing capability works through the MIDI hookup as well.

-Guitar seems to work quite well. The neck-to-body connector looks 10 times better than the GH3 guitar - I'm hoping it's as reliable as it seems to be.

-I'm liking most of the song choices I've come across so far.

Cons:

-I'm not quite a fan of the 5-note layout. Perhaps it will grow on me. Right now it feels more restrictive than RB's 4-note charts, because 3 notes are locked to be drums and 2 are locked to be cymbals. In RB it felt like you always had 4 drums and 3 cymbals to work with, but with this it's always 3 drums and 2 cymbals.

-Whose idea was it that the drums themselves can't be used to scroll up and down in menus? You seriously are telling me I need to reach over to the D-Pad to navigate? Epic fucking fail.

-RB feels a lot more polished. RB to me is like media software, GHWT is a console video game. The list of songs looks and works even crappier than it did in RB1.

-I do not like the vocal track layout. I have a really hard time being able to tell how well I'm doing, especially if I'm trying to play and sing and am not putting 100% attention to the vocals.

[Reldan]

Originally Posted by Wholly Schmidt

You're high as a kite. If ever there was a game where the goal is for the experience to be its own reward, it's a fake plastic rock game. I haven't actually played far enough to understand what you mean about it constantly rewarding the player, so maybe I'll end up agreeing with what you're saying, but it definitely won't be from the way you've expressed it here.

After each set you get a bunch of fake plastic dollars and a fake plastic sponsorship from a real-life company. As the least, there's perhaps a sense of fake plastic progress to be had in the career mode. I suppose the RB analog was collecting stars, but GH sure gives you a hell of a lot more pop-ups to have to click through.

Personally I'm more into the experience of the game. This isn't the type of game that can be "won." At the least, winning is defined more in terms of improving your personal skill at playing the game, and the only person who can judge that victory is you. It's interesting that the game seems to try to give you a sense of progress towards some ethereal "win" state, however. I know plenty of people for which that helps with the enjoyment, so I can't fault it too much.

It does seem a bit cheesy that everytime you finish a song your guy poses while everyone else in the band points at you like you're the most awesome guy in the world. And it looks pretty much exactly the same after every single song, because you only seem to be able to do one animation.

[MyNameIsWill]

Did you guys get the bundle? Playing World Tour with its own instruments is in a league of its own compared to using Rock Band instruments. RedOctane does plastic instruments well and they absolutely nailed the new guitar and drum set.

[Lizard_King]

Originally Posted by Wholly Schmidt

You're high as a kite. If ever there was a game where the goal is for the experience to be its own reward, it's a fake plastic rock game. I haven't actually played far enough to understand what you mean about it constantly rewarding the player, so maybe I'll end up agreeing with what you're saying, but it definitely won't be from the way you've expressed it here.

I was contrasting the two experiences, not necessarily ruling out one in favor of the other. My point was that GHWT gives you videogame style rewards for everything, whereas RB simply relies on giving you a certain type of overall fake rock experience to draw you in. It's pretty clearly expressed in what I said above, and apart from flipping out generally about how much more you love RB I don't see you offering much that doesn't agree with what I say.

As someone who was actively defending GH3's look when everyone else was critical, I would like to point out that I was an idiot. GH3 didn't look so bad when it was just a departure from GH2, but in light of Rock Band it's nothing short of embarrassing that a game looks as terrible as GH:WT. It fails artistically and technically. Everyone looks like a creepy claymation exaggeration that was then laminated in shiny plastic. The hair is the most freakish and unnatural I've seen in a video game in quite some time, and it has funky transparency issues against the backgrounds. The arenas look like someone vomited a few more effects onto the PS2 game. There's a lack of atmosphere, figuratively and literally. Rock Band absolutely captured stage lighting, shadowy silhouettes against spotlights, and the haze of smoke and pyrotechnics. It looks like it was actually filmed, with grainy video effects and whatnot being the absolute way to go. Everything had a soft, natural look to it. GH:WT's already plastic characters pop out against jaggy backdrops with no technical finesse whatsoever. Ugly, aliased, directionless.

I can tell you worked really hard on that description, so I'll just note that I don't agree. I think GHWT looks much better than GH3, and that I think it has developed an enjoyable, distinct appearance that makes it a realistic alternative to RB in that sense. Also, the videos online do not do it justice, because it really looks terrible online. Also, if at any point you defended GH3's graphics, you should probably just exempt yourself from that aspect of the discussion for the rest of your life.

Rock Band 1 and 2, from the interface to the arenas to the characters to the animations, looks like it was designed by artists and musicians. GH:WT looks like it was designed by someone who has played a Tony Hawk game.

Or possibly someone who made a Tony Hawk game. How perceptive of you!

Buy this game if you just really like some of the songs available here. That's the boat I'm in. I'm putting up with the rest of the game because the experience is its own reward when I'm drumming to some Tool. This won't be what I reach for at parties, and it won't be what I download tracks for.

Good for you. I hope your one man revolution really sticks it to them while they are pocketing your cash.
Anyway, for me a GH3 level of song quality would have meant that no matter what the artist I would not have viewed it as something worth buying. GHWT, at its simplest, fixes that, and I'm liking it.

[wumpus]

-I'm liking most of the song choices I've come across so far.

Hopefully, since 18 of them (at last count) are in Rock Band2 + DLC. :)

Looking forward to playing with my new GH:WT fake plastic rock toys, but leaving on a week-long business trip, so It'll have to wait. It's killin' me. I will live viscerally through you guys until then! DO NOT DISAPPOINT ME!

[Midnight Son]

Got a few questions:

Can you make a band like in RB2, with stand ins and all? Can you take them on tour, switching characters as you go?

[Robert Sharp]

I'm a bit confused. I want to rent GHWT and play with the RB2 instruments. Will that be a problem?

[Midnight Son]

No lefty flip?? Oh wait, downstrumming doesn't seem to work in lefty mode. Hehe.

Also: the 13 year olds on the GH forums are causing a melt down. Something about faulty instruments. It's deja vu all over again!

[Wholly Schmidt]

Originally Posted by Lizard_King

Or possibly someone who made a Tony Hawk game. How perceptive of you!

Well that was sort of my point. If you can't manage to make characters look like anything more than disfigured Tony Hawk extras, maybe you shouldn't be handed other franchises.

[Wholly Schmidt]

Using RB drums with GHWT seems to work fine so far. Only played four songs. Maybe Reldan's problem with the overall five note drumming setup in GH will apply here as well, but so far so good. It doesn't feel crippled or broken by using a different setup than what it was built for. Now I haven't tried the GHWT drums, so maybe if you have both you would have a hard time ever going back to the RB set, but if the RB set is all you've got and you want to save money, I don't think you have anything to worry about.

[Lizard_King]

Originally Posted by Wholly Schmidt

Well that was sort of my point. If you can't manage to make characters look like anything more than disfigured Tony Hawk extras, maybe you shouldn't be handed other franchises.

Agree to disagree?

[armand v]

Originally Posted by Midnight Son

No lefty flip?? Oh wait, downstrumming doesn't seem to work in lefty mode. Hehe.

Also: the 13 year olds on the GH forums are causing a melt down. Something about faulty instruments. It's deja vu all over again!

my strum bar only works when I strum upwards. Is this normal? I'm a newb to this but is this what I get for attempting something new?

[Pumpkinhead]

The ION kit does not work with GH:WT out of the box but a patch has been promised by Neversoft to fix it. Also the RB2 custom bass is not detected in GH:WT if anyone is interested.

My early impressions are that the GH:WT character creator system is ten times better than RB/RB 2. That's not a huge deal for me, but my wife is going to love it. I've spent an hour designing my first rocker along with all of his instruments. You can also choose the color of your note track background for each instrument, which is a nice touch.

I am now sure that I like the round notes of the GH games better than the rectangles of RB. It is much easier to tell quickly if that impending drum roll is 5 notes or 6 notes when I first see it coming in GH:WT.

The song selection presentation in RB2 is much nicer. You see the individual instrument difficulty in RB2. In GH:WT I don't see an easy way to do that. Also quickplay lists in GH are limited to 6 songs. Not a big deal, but I wanted to play Death Magnetic in it's entirety and I could not.

I am looking forward to starting a career later today and getting to the Tool songs and Pull Me Under.

[Midnight Son]

Originally Posted by armand v

my strum bar only works when I strum upwards. Is this normal? I'm a newb to this but is this what I get for attempting something new?

Not normal. You should be able to strum up or down in lefty or righty mode.

[armand v]

Originally Posted by Midnight Son

Not normal. You should be able to strum up or down in lefty or righty mode.

great, I'm gonna go make a ruckus at walmart now. At least it came with a coupon for a bucket of chicken from KFC

[Gunmetal]

Any comments about the availability of the full set? Rock Band was very hard to get a hold of when it launched, so I'm wondering........ I should already be at Best Buy, shouldn't I?

[ChiTownBluesFan]

Originally Posted by Pumpkinhead

The ION kit does not work with GH:WT out of the box but a patch has been promised by Neversoft to fix it. Also the RB2 custom bass is not detected in GH:WT if anyone is interested.

Guess I won't be getting the game for awhile then. I don't know that I can play on anything other than the ION kit anymore.

[sluggo]

I love the game, but almost everything about the interface in GHWT is a disaster. Case in point: the song selection screen:

- GH3 had a solid song selection interface that was superior to Rock Band 1's. One tab for main setlist, another for bonus songs, and another for DLC. Now it's one massive list, like the old Rock Band format. They've actually gone backwards.

- Aestetically, the song selection screen is disgusting. All the fonts are different sizes depending on the length of the song. We used to see a persistent list of scores and stars for every song, now the song data only pops up when you select a song. Again, they've gone backwards.

- There's nothing on the quickplay selection screen that tells you how the songs are currently sorted. Sure, there's a tooltip that tells you how the list will be sorted NEXT if you click a button, but there's nothing that tells you how it's sorted NOW. WTF x100.

- I wonder how long it's going to take people to realize that sort by "career" is GHWT code for "difficulty." Seriously? With all the retarded font-resizing, you couldn't find room to put in the word "Difficulty"?

- The sort-by-difficulty rankings are completely broke. Final-tier songs like Hot For Teacher, Scream Aim Fire and Trapped Under Ice are listed about 25 songs from the end of the setlist. Songs ranked harder: Modest Mouse and Tokio Hotel -- easy songs that come up relatively early in the GHWT campaign.

This stuff drives me crazy, because it's not like you need to know C+ to program or are trying to engineer a drum set that registers fast snare rolls. Interface issues like this just show a complete lack of common sense.

[Lizard_King]

That's definitely true. My first inkling of this was when I saw how text entry was handled...

[armand v]

Ok, got back from walmart, got a new everything but now it seems on this new one the whammy bar doesn't have full range of motion. Is it only supposed to go forward from its starting position?

[sluggo]

Yes, it's only supposed to go forward. That's been the case for every guitar that's ever been released for any of these games.

In other news, I just picked up a bundle from Best Buy ... and my guitar is broke. I can upstrum fine, but when I downstrum, the game thinks I'm hitting green, so I can't actually start a game using this guitar. Wow.

[Reldan]

Originally Posted by sluggo

I love the game, but almost everything about the interface in GHWT is a disaster. Case in point: the song selection screen:

That's what really struck me as odd when I first started playing. This is the umpteenth generation of music games at this point, and the interface feels worse to me than GH1 did. Amazing. Also, any time you need to enter text the interface for that feels like it came out of the High Score screen from Donkey Kong (the original Donkey Kong). Holy crap.

I also do not understand at all how they managed to botch up scrolling through their interface just using drum pads. I do not want to have to put the sticks down and reach over to the D-Pad every single time I have to use the interface. This is even more annoying since I don't have the drums set up in the normal way - I just have them connected to my real drums through the MIDI port. I don't really have anywhere to put them that's within easy reach, but I have to keep them in reach (solely for scrolling up and down...). I don't really have a good solution so far as they aren't exactly tiny.

For the amount of experience, time, and money put into this game, I absolutely fail to comprehend how they managed to botch what should have been the easy part.

Fortunately the root of the gameplay is good. They've just managed to make getting to it harder than I would have thought possible.

Originally Posted by Schmidt

Maybe Reldan's problem with the overall five note drumming setup in GH will apply here as well, but so far so good.

Here's a few of the issues I have with the 5-pad charts.

-Open/closed hi-hats. In RB these would be charted with closed hits on Yellow and the occasional open hit as Blue. In GH they don't differentiate at all so it's just charted as straight Yellow notes (See Living on a Prayer in both games for an example of this). This is an oversimplification and essentially they are leaving stuff out of the Expert charts as a result. This is because in RB they could use both Y and B for the hi-hat and have G be the crash, and they don't have that option now in GH.

-Only two toms. There are numerous examples of drum fill patterns that use Yellow, Blue, and Green toms in RB. In GH from what I've seen they chart what would have been Yellow in RB as Blue, and what would have been Blue and Green in RB as just Green in GH. Again this oversimplifies the Expert chart. I'm trying to imagine, for example, what the intro to Enter Sandman would look like in GH. They pretty much nailed it in RB but it would look quite off in GH.

Frankly, the most basic rock drumset is a snare, 3 toms, and 3 cymbals (hihat, ride, and crash). What the GH:WT set is is a jazz drumset - a snare, 2 toms, and 2 cymbals (hi-hat and crash/ride). I'm sure they could perfectly chart jazz drumming (ironically counterproductive), but it doesn't capture rock drumming very well at all.

[armand v]

Originally Posted by sluggo

Yes, it's only supposed to go forward. That's been the case for every guitar that's ever been released for any of these games.

In other news, I just picked up a bundle from Best Buy ... and my guitar is broke. I can upstrum fine, but when I downstrum, the game thinks I'm hitting green, so I can't actually start a game using this guitar. Wow.

thanks for the info

hopefully, bestbuy's return policy is as good as walmart's; they took mine back no questions asked, only briefly looked in the box to make certain everything is there

[Lizard_King]

I guess RB2 adding no new gameplay features spoiled me...I was expecting the touch pad to require a tutorial, but I did not see open notes (bass), drum star power, or whatever the hell is going on with vocals (a for star power, crowd sections? freestyle phrases?) coming. None of them are game breaking, and in fact I really like the open notes so far although I wish my first try on bass hadn't been Vicarious. Actually, scratch that, it was a great way to learn.

A little confused on band star power. It seems like it only benefits the character activating it, even though both contribute to the pool? I don't know quite what is going on, but that's one place where RB's approach has a clear edge so far. And the tutorials involve way to much talking and too little actual practice. I pass just as I'm starting to figure out what is going on. The many features of the touch pad are still mysterious, although I really like the fact that they don't force you to use it and you can just do them HO/PO style without the initiating strum. Definitely a cut above RB's "Learn a new mechanic that only works in specific sections and forces you to rethink how you play altogether", but I have yet to successfully "slide" through a section. Need more Ramblin' Man, I guess.

To add to the interface quirks, the way it handles unlocking songs and band leaders (as well as where you are at in your career) is needlessly cryptic. For instance, I got through the second tier on lead last night by myself, and then when I went to play drums as my wife played lead (on her gamertag), we found ourselves back at zero (I still had my money, just no venues unlocked. So she could play the Tool songs without a bunch of other stuff, we ended up going back to quickplay, and there had to exit out (she selected it in the menu) in order for me to select it on the menu (band leader?) and get the songs I'd unlocked (which seems to be based on total funds?).

Anyway, I think RB's band based drop in/drop out is a lot more logical, especially in how it links progress to the band and not the character alone. I do like the instant switching in difficulty at any song, though, that makes sets a lot less monotonous.


Reldan noted how peculiar he found the drum set, speaking as an actual drummer. Makes sense, but I have to say that short of the e drum setup he has, I haven't had this much fun whapping on plastic drums since the pre-disillusionment first moments with RB1. The note charts (at least on medium) seem calibrated to make you have a good time flailing away. Whatever that means, I know, but I'm really looking forward to trying out more songs. Did I mention the pedal is great?

[Ryan Markel]

Interesting that the addition of an input pad makes the drumming undercharted, simply by virtue of the layout of the kit.

[Midnight Son]

Originally Posted by sluggo

I love the game, but almost everything about the interface in GHWT is a disaster. Case in point: the song selection screen:

- GH3 had a solid song selection interface that was superior to Rock Band 1's. One tab for main setlist, another for bonus songs, and another for DLC. Now it's one massive list, like the old Rock Band format. They've actually gone backwards.

- Aestetically, the song selection screen is disgusting. All the fonts are different sizes depending on the length of the song. We used to see a persistent list of scores and stars for every song, now the song data only pops up when you select a song. Again, they've gone backwards.

- There's nothing on the quickplay selection screen that tells you how the songs are currently sorted. Sure, there's a tooltip that tells you how the list will be sorted NEXT if you click a button, but there's nothing that tells you how it's sorted NOW. WTF x100.

- I wonder how long it's going to take people to realize that sort by "career" is GHWT code for "difficulty." Seriously? With all the retarded font-resizing, you couldn't find room to put in the word "Difficulty"?

- The sort-by-difficulty rankings are completely broke. Final-tier songs like Hot For Teacher, Scream Aim Fire and Trapped Under Ice are listed about 25 songs from the end of the setlist. Songs ranked harder: Modest Mouse and Tokio Hotel -- easy songs that come up relatively early in the GHWT campaign.

This stuff drives me crazy, because it's not like you need to know C+ to program or are trying to engineer a drum set that registers fast snare rolls. Interface issues like this just show a complete lack of common sense.

Well, um, how did the skateboard handle?

Seriously, it sounds like maybe Neversoft.... Never should have been picked for this job. That's the kind of interface I'd expect from shareware 15 years ago.

[Cyrano]

Originally Posted by Midnight Son

Seriously, it sounds like maybe Neversoft.... Never should have been picked for this job. That's the kind of interface I'd expect from shareware 15 years ago.

Except that the interface for GH3 was actually pretty good. It was just the difficulty curve and graphics that were bad.