Amazon.com: Guitar Hero World Tour: Playstation 2: Video Games

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3.2 out of 5 stars (37 customer reviews)

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28 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Lost and Forgotten Are the Traditional Guitar Hero Fans, November 6, 2008

Kyle Slayzar (Bismarck, ND) - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars

This review is from: Guitar Hero World Tour (Video Game)

OK, so this is a review of the game-only Guitar Hero: World Tour Playstation II game. If you're here looking to get information and feedback on the bundle version or to hear about online play, you're on the wrong product page.

This review is for those traditional Guitar Hero fans. The fans who...

1: Thought the price of a full set (nearly $200) is a little steep.
2: Play casually.
3: Do not necessarily own a next generation console (Xbox360, PSXIII).
4: Do not play online.
5: Just want to play some good songs.

This was the original targeted audience of Guitar Hero back in the day and has been up until about a year ago when Activision took over and began trying to sway the demographic to the hardcore players. The general audience of gamers who may not even have considered themselves gamers until they picked up a plastic guitar and began jamming to Carry on Wayward Son. To me, this audience has been abandoned in favor of a very specific audience that doesn't mind paying more. Marketing wise it makes some sense but along the way Activision alienated their traditional family and casual audience.

I'm sure the game is uber-fantastic on the next generation consoles with the drums, mic, and internet options but for those of us who just want to play guitar, we've been sold short.

Let us begin.

First is the soundtrack. It boasts some excellent classic songs like Beat It, which is ironic since my review on Guitar Hero 3 called for this song and everyone thought I was insane, believing the franchise should not be "Pop Hero." There are other great songs like Hotel California, Crazy Train, Eye of the Tiger, etc. There are even some decent recent ones by Haley Something and Jimmy Eats World. However, there are several issues with the selection.

For one, it is overwhelmingly songs from the past 15 years. The designers had a huge love for 90s music. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but when you're trying to entice gamers from a wide-range of generations and bring in new ones on the basis of song recognition, you MUST balance your selection. It's as if the designers wanted to focus on young adults ages 13-21 and throw 22+ gamers a bone or two with Ted Nugent and Pat Benetar. This is bad marketing. Rock Band, at least, had the brains to balance their selection nearly perfectly. Very few songs prior to 1975 were used and the designers could've used considerably more.

I have a few minor issues with some of the selection of live versus recorded tracks such as Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze and Sweet Home Alabama. I thought the vocals were considerably better on the recorded tracks.

Lastly, the television advertisements showed players (hilariously portrayed by famous athletes including Michael Phelps) playing Old Time Rock and Roll by Bob Segar. This excited me as I love that song, so I searched and searched all 90+ songs for it... to no avail! I should have looked on the official website for a complete track list as they didn't include it. This is false advertising. Commercials for previous installments used songs actually from the games, this game should not have been an exception. If the song is there and I'm not seeing it, someone please tell me how to get it!

Next, the game is severely glitchy. I can tell Activision dumbed down the graphics and then directly ported it to the PSXII. Many times the characters on stage will do one move then immediately change a pose or position entirely. This happens at the end of every song. I've also had the game freeze a number of times when I'm customizing my character. Fortunately, this does not delete my memory card or data... yet. Lastly, the loading time is atrocious. I thought Guitar Hero 3 was bad, this one is even worse. Just to sign in under co-op, you have to wait ten seconds for the character visuals to load even if you're already set to go. Making changes to your rocker takes several minutes and half of that is loading time.

Again, I can tell they dumbed it down for last generation systems but daaaang. This was more then awful.

My last complaints deal with the format itself. Unlike previous Guitar Hero installments, World Tour requires you to play through an entire play list to advance to the next group of songs IN ONE SITTING. This means you gotta set aside at least ten minutes to play each 'gig.' To make matters worse, the more you advance in the game the LONGER the gigs get. One particular gig took me almost an hour. This WILL alienate casual gamers as the game requires a lot of time just to advance. This is not Oblivion or some extensive RPG that requires a lot of effort, this is Guitar Hero, the game that is supposed to market to the casual gamer! The audience should never be forced to do anything unnecessary and that's exactly what this is.

To a certain degree they did keep the boss battles albeit under different rules. Instead of sending battle thingies back and forth to screw the other up, you just play and play. I still think they could have done without it. Lastly, they now make you pay money to unlock certain gigs. I think this is a big no-no especially since the songs were not even worth it unless you're a Tool fan.

Now, despite my large reservations I do have some praise. The designers did fix two major issues. The first is when you pause. Originally you had to immediately jump in the song but now you have a few seconds to align your hands. The second improvement is that you can now hoard star power in co-op and build star power even when it's deployed. This makes point maximizing that much easier.

Then there's the sound studio. I'm still trying to get it to work but I think you need the full kit. It's a nifty idea but will be lost on those who just bought the game only.

All in all, the game is not bad but the designers forgot many things. It seems as though you have to play it on a next-gen console and with the full set in order to truly appreciate it. This is bad for marketing. I'll stick with Wii Music until the prices on the sets drop like 50%. Get Guitar Hero 2 if you're new to this. It's not glitchy, had great songs, and doesn't require a whole paycheck to own.

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Impressive..., November 1, 2008

J. Brittman "The Bottom Line" (Long Island, New York) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars

This review is from: Guitar Hero World Tour (Video Game)

Guitar Hero World Tour lives up to it's lofty expectations. The set list is LONG and diversified ranging from metal to world music to pop and country. The introduction of drums, bass and vocals greatly enhance the games long term replay value. I am really impressed with the BASS option for the game it is spot on and very fun to play. The difficulty levels now include a BEGINNER level in addition to the EASY, MEDIUM, HARD and EXPERT options. Another good feature of World Tour is the ability to toggle between difficulty levels and still continue through the same set list. There are also some new play options for guitar/bass such as continued sustain notes and open strum notes. It took me a good couple of days just to complete the game ONE time, so you really get a good bang for your buck. I have not even gotten to the create your own rocker or song creator options yet. The Bottom Line...this is the BEST title in the guitar hero series...yet...Guitar Hero Metallica is on the horizon. Highly Recommended.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Trying to keep up with Rock Band while alienating some Guitar Hero fans, April 14, 2009

Leicester Dedlock (Ames, IA United States) - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars

This review is from: Guitar Hero World Tour (Video Game)

First off, I don't use the World Tour equipment. I use the wireless Kramer Striker guitar from the GHIII bundle, and I use the Rock Band drums and microphone (which work flawlessly, by the way, although the Rock Band drumkit has one less drum).

Overall, it feels like they're trying to mimic Rock Band and succeeding in some ways, but failing in others.

Graphics:
The graphics are a little bit better than GHIII. The drummer no longer moves like a robot, and they ditched GHIII's deformed singer. The settings are pretty nice too, especially the freaky one during the Tool songs. However, I'd say the graphics pale in comparison to Rock Band 2, or even Rock Band 1. The Rock Band games have very realistic characters, and things still seem a little artificial here. Also, the graphics on the note charts are slightly tweaked (the notes are raised a little more), but I don't think it's much better or worse than the graphics on the GHIII note charts.

Interface:
Fail. Honestly, the menus are quite confusing and it's disorienting for a while. For one, some reviewers mentioned that you can only save the game if you finish the entire setlist. That's actually not true, but it's definitely easy to draw that conclusion based upon the interface and lack of instructions (note: just pause the game during a song, select quit, and the previously beaten songs will be saved...you can pick up where you left off anytime or play any of the previously beaten songs you wish). Also, without Rock Band 2's World Map, the menus don't really add to the touring-around-the-world feel that Rock Band 2 has.

Difficulty:
In addition to mimicking Rock Band, the overall difficulty is another area where they have alienated some fans, although I personally like the change. As you may have heard, World Tour is easier than GHIII. However, I think the drop in difficulty is overstated. In World Tour, I can beat most but not all songs on Expert guitar. Currently, I have two left, Joe Satriani's "Satch Boogie" and System of a Down's "B.Y.O.B.". Let's put this in perspective since you don't know my skill level (for Expert guitar, my main instrument):
RB1: beat everything
RB2: can't beat 1 song
GHI: beat everything
GHII: can't beat 1 song
GH80's: beat everything (on sightread)
GHIII: can't beat 4 songs
GHAerosmith: beat everything
GHWT: can't beat 2 songs

Looking back, it's easier than GHIII but not that much easier. I'd say if you dropped "Jordan", it would slightly harder than Guitar Hero II. Sure, there's no "Through the Fire and Flames", but I thought GHIII was a little too hard and I welcomed the change. It's at least much harder than Guitar Hero:Aerosmith. Expert players may disagree, so be forewarned that it is at least a little bit easier on guitar.

The difficulty on bass is pretty good. They added open notes which take a while to get used to. Overall, I'd say it provides a decent challenge, slightly easier than guitar on World Tour but much harder than bass on Rock Band 1.

Drums are bit easier than on the Rock Band games, but they're still pretty challenging. I can't say how using the World Tour drums affects this.

Vocals are harder than in Rock Band 1 or 2 and it's almost impossible to get 100% on a song.

One very nice thing about the difficulty is that it can be changed in the middle of a game. You can switch the difficulty between songs and even in the middle of a setlist, so you no longer have to get stuck. If you got stuck on a song in GHIII, you could only play later songs in Quickplay but not Career mode. Even then you had to unlock the later songs for Quickplay by beating them on an easier difficulty setting. Now if you get stuck on a song, say on Expert, just drop the difficulty to Hard, beat the song, and then put it back on Expert. I had to do this with "B.Y.O.B." which I haven't beaten on Expert, yet it didn't stop me from playing later songs (which is good, "B.Y.O.B." is undertiered).

Setlist:
Decent. There's some good metal, indie-rock, classic rock, and even a good country song. Overall, there's a nice variety and some decent choices. The only problem is that there is a significant overlap with Rock Band 2. There are of course a few songs I don't like, but that's to be expected and you can't perfectly please everyone. There are at least very few songs that I can't stand.
Favorites:
Metallica - "Trapped Under Ice"
Michael Jackson - "Beat It"
Ozzy Osbourne - "Crazy Train"
Jimi Hendrix - "Purple Haze (live)"
Willie Nelson - "On the Road Again (live)"
Modest Mouse - "Float On" (also in RB2)
Silversun Pickups - "Lazy Eye" (also in RB2)
Tool - "Vicarious" (they have 3 songs in this game)

Gameplay:
It's definitely a fun experience and it has plenty of new elements.
Specifically...

Guitar:
It now allows you to strum notes or add notes to long notes. You'll get used to this quickly. Also, there are tapped notes, notes that work like hammer-ons/pull-offs except you aren't required to hit the previous note. Overall, the songs are fun to play, even if a little less challenging than on GHIII.

Bass:
It works like guitar in GHIII except it now supports open notes where you strum the note without holding any frets. They are represented by a horizontal line on the note chart similar to the bass drum for drums. I find bass to be more fun here than on the Rock Band games, and the challenge is pretty good. It does take a little while to get used to the open notes, however, but they're easy enough when you get the hang of it.

Drums:
This works just like Rock Band drums except the kit has one more drum. I use Rock Band drums which are compatible, and the note charts are adjusted to account for the fact that I'm using one less drum. Drumming in this game is super-fun. It's a little bit easier than Rock Band drumming in my opinion, although that may be because I'm using Rock Band drums, but there are a handful of fairly challenging songs.

Vocals:
This works like Rock Band vocals except scoring is handled differently and the game doesn't really give you as much feedback to how well you are doing. Vocals are pretty hard in this game, but not unreasonable. Songs like "B.Y.O.B." and "One Way or Another" can be very challenging, yet fun.

Saving/loading:
Like GHIII, saving on the PS2 version is soooooo slow. Also, like GHIII, sometimes it saves when there's really nothing to save. Saving has been second biggest source of frustration with this game (the first being trying to pass "B.Y.O.B" on guitar ;) ).
"I failed the song. Why are you saving?! There's nothing to save!! Waiting, waiting, waiting...should I take a smoke break? AAARRRGGGHHH!!! Save already!!!"
Loading is kind of slow too, but it's much better than saving.

Character/guitar customization:
Although the Rock Band games have character creation, they were stripped from the PS2 versions. Finally, we get a PS2 game which supports character creation. However, it's a pretty limited system. It's hard to develop a unique character that looks interesting, but not deformed. Although it's nice to see character customization on the PS2, we still got the short end of the stick (supposedly it's better on the other systems). At least the guitar customization was good. I was actually very impressed by this. It gives you plenty of options and you can come up with a good-looking, unique guitar fairly easily.

Overall:
I'd say GH II and III are still my favorite Guitar Hero games, but I'll put this one in third place (fourth surely once I get a crack at Guitar Hero:Metallica which I'm picking up tomorrow). It's not too easy or too hard and the setlist is pretty good. The interface is bad and saving takes forever, but it's not enough for me to to hate the game. If you're deciding between World Tour and Rock Band 2, I'd say get both, but if you are going to get only one, my preference is Rock Band 2. World Tour is fun, but Rock Band 2 has an even better setlist, slightly better challenge (MUCH harder than the too-easy Rock Band 1), a better interface, and better graphics.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Rounding out my Guitar Hero collection
I bought 'World Tour' mainly because I have played my other Guitar Hero and Rock Band games a lot and was looking for some new songs. Read more

Published 8 months ago by Jamie

4.0 out of 5 stars good game
Its a good game but you cant play with two guitars you have to play with a guitar and another instrument. Overall a pretty decent game!

Published 10 months ago by Heather Meginn