Will GH:WT rock for the years to come, or strum right to the bottom?

Guitar Hero has always been a series that actually needed some kind of grind to master it, but now with Rock Band's drums, the music game genre altogether has gotten a new aspect to master. With this in mind, Guitar Hero felt like hopping along and adding its own Rock Band aspect with a few additions so they can pass them off as their own. After a crappy sequel (*cough* AEROSMITH *cough*) to Guitar Hero III, RedOctane and Activision have gone back to their GH:III roots, and released this poor remake of Rock Band, which in all respects may still have some life for years to come.

Gameplay

It's Guitar Hero, simply color matchy clickidy-clackidy strum along musical fun. Although that's a very true statement, we now have those bingidy-bangidy plastic-ass drums. The gameplay hasn't changed too much, the guitar has gotten some new additions to it, but I'll explain those later.

Much like every past Guitar Hero game, you press the corresponding colored key that appears on-screen on your plastic guitar, and strum to play that colored key. Same thing with the drums, only thing is you hit it instead of pressing it. There's not really too much else I can say, everybody that owns this game has probably played the originals.

One of the other things I could say, I guess, would be that there is a new form of notes known as the slide strum notes, which you use the new slide bar on the guitar controller for, and I'll explain that all later on.

Lifespan

It's a music game, they always have some kind of lifespan, but I think with this being the first big change to a long lasting series of games, it might not last too long. Considering the fact that Guitar Hero: Metallica was just recently announced to have all the things that World Tour has, Metallica will probably win over.

Lifespan should always be determined by how fun a game is, but it's Guitar Hero, it's always fun, it all just depends on how they make it fun. If they add little things that people think would be cool, then mess it up, then it'll be fun, but pointless, and that's what this game did.

Graphics

The Wii is able to pull off some pretty nice graphics, although Ozzy Osbourne's face looks like someone made it out of clay and Mr Potato Head pieces. The character creation mode, which is a first for the Wii Guitar Hero games, is pretty good. Almost every aspect of your character can be altered, not as well as the Miis of course though.

One of the biggest things I've noticed with this game, is the ever so amazing pre-rendered character animation. When you download a user created song, the drummers arms and the guitarist arms, move exactly with the notes, now matter how fast. It looks choppy sometimes, but it's still pretty cool.

Sound

Every song for this game is a master track, meaning everything was not heard on the album or CD before. There are the odd few songs that are live recordings (i.e. On the Road Again), but they still sound pretty good. The song selection though is pretty crappy, with maybe 81 songs, and 21 of them are actually recognizable.

This game's music would've received a 10, if it wasn't for the extremely poor music creator. The pre-rendering is nice and all, but if the music's shitty, then what's the point. I've heard cell phone ring-tones that sound better than this, and to make a good song could take days, but that's show business.

Peripherals

Well we come to the final chapter with the peripherals. We'll start with the new additions to the guitar. The first big addition, is the sliding neck bar, which adds the Wah (sliding sound) and Tap (tapping sounds) to long notes. There is also a large select button to activate the star power mode, which is now almost virtually impossible to do by flicking the controller up.

The drums are fairly good, and far outdo the Rock Band drum set in overall enjoyment. There are 5 drum pads (2 cymbals, and 3 drum pads), and the obvious kick pedal which has Velcro for rugs, and plastic for tile and wood floors. They also have a pressure sensitivity, meaning the harder you hit, the louder the sound when you make a song. Pretty nifty piece of equipment I must say.

Summary

So overall this game is a definite buy for any Wii owner, and a great collection to any library. I only really recommend this game to people who have played most, if not all, of the Guitar Hero games, or at least Rock Band.

Review by Jesse