Customer Reviews

Xbox 360 Guitar Hero World Tour Guitar Kit

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I always preferred the Guitar Hero guitar to the Rock Band guitar (play-wise anyway) but the quality of the Guitar Hero guitars is weak. GH3 guitar had problems with the connection between the neck and the body. That has been fixed with GHWT, but the new one lacks in new areas. Mostly the strum bar. Occasionally mine registers extra hits (RedOctane's fix is to "hold" the strum bar and not "strum or flick"). Also, it will occasionally not register strums at all (My solution to that problem is to smack the body of the guitar with my palm, which I shouldn't have to do at all). And, probably the most irritating thing, my strum bar feels like it's rubbing against something on the up-strum, which throws my flow off just enough to miss notes.
I've done some research and I'm not the only one having these problems. GHWT would be an awesome game if the guitar wasn't crap. I highly recommend GHWT if you have a guitar the works properly.
Hopefully they can get it right, because the guitar feels good in my hands, except for these couple problems.

Beware, the online reports of the instruments working fine, and then getting worse to the point that they don't work at all eventually are true. My guitar was perfect, then the second week it stopped working entirely.

Activision's repair policy is terrible also. They won't even shell out a few bucks to ship their defective merchandise back to them.

Go with Rock Band 2: not only is the game better, but if you have a problem with the equipment EA is gracious and will replace it in a much more respectable fashion.

This review is for the Guitar/Game combo of Guitar Hero World Tour. Without getting into all the fanboy arguments about which came first, who owns who, and which game is ripping off the other; Guitar Hero World Tour is just not as good as Rock Band. Graphically it's better in that the characters are brighter, clearer, etc...though they still remain oddly cartoony. It's almost creepy when you see Jimi Hendrix because he looks so real yet animated at the same time. It's weird. As far as gameplay goes (and this is again only for the guitar aspect of it) it's definitely easier than Rock Band 2. More on par with Rock Band 1. I walked through it on expert without failing any songs up until the last set. To me that's not a bad thing since songs that are annoyingly difficult are absolutely no fun to play. The new guitar is pretty cool too. The touch pad way down on the neck makes solos INFINITELY easier to play - when applicable. And I have never had any trouble with my guitar being faulty (ie failing out of a song before it starts like some people claim). The biggest knock against this game is the song selection. First of all, a bunch of the songs are straight from Rock Band 2. And I'm not saying it's a game of copying, it's just that Rock Band got to the market first and it just looks bad when you have the exact same songs. The song selection overall is not as fun as Rock Band 2 either. But that's just personal preference. I gave the game 4 stars because it's really not a bad game at all, I just think that the song selection, note charts, and presentation of Rock Band 2 is better. But if you've played Guitar Hero and really liked it, there's no reason not to pick this one up. I just haven't played it since I beat it...and I'm still playing Rock Band 2 almost nightly.

Got the guitar bundle from Amazon a few weeks back, and the guitar had a broken strum bar right out of the box. It dropped some notes at first, and got even worse after a few hours.

I tried to get an RMA for the guitar, but after over a week of dealing with Red Octane's terrible replacement request website and Activition's automated phone system, I ended up with over half a dozen automated e-mail responses and was still no closer to getting a working guitar.
I have since returned the bundle to Amazon and haven't looked back.

In contrast, when I bought a Rock Band 1 bundle last year, the guitar was also broken out of the box. After 15 minutes on their web site, I got a replacement guitar shipped to me that arrived in less than a week, and still works to this day.

If you are choosing one or the other, I would definitely go with Rock Band. Both their customer service and the games themselves are of a much higher quality than these newer Guitar Hero releases.

I received the guitar/game set at launch and after a week of playing, the guitar stopped registering down strokes. Amazon took it back and sent me a new set. The new guitar works okay, but squeaks really bad and doesn't have a tactile click when down stroked. Up strokes, on the other hand register every time and have a nice click sound. I might have to send this one back as well.

The game is a lot of fun, though tedious at times. Big thumbs up for the inclusion of NoFX.

If you already have a guitar controller, but want a new one, don't bother getting this package. Just get the game by itself and go find a better controller. The switches that control the strummer in this guitar are crap. Mine died within two weeks. They are not hard to replace though if you are handy with a soldering iron.

If you are looking for a starter bundle for Guitar Hero, start with the GH III wired controller bundle. That controller can take a beating.

Overall it's a fun game, but not my favorite. GH III & V are better IMO. Worth picking up if you don't have it yet, but if you're just starting off, grab a different one first.

I was hoping that I would get lucky but it was not to be. The guitar is faulty - it will not register the strum. Amazon is willing to send a replacement so we'll see if that one works. Buying this package is a gamble.

If you don't have guitar hero 3, buy that package and then just buy the game for this version. The guitar hero 3 controller is better and will work with this version.

I'm generally a pretty forgiving person when it comes to electronics and their idiosyncrasies but this bundle is absolutely horrible. I took the guitar controller out of the packaging and failed out almost immediately as the downward strum simply failed to register 90% of the time. The game is quite enjoyable using my Guitar Hero III guitar. There are some serious quality control issues that Red Octane needs to address. Their customer service is terrible when it comes to defective hardware but thank goodness for Amazon.com and their easy return process. I recommend this game but stay away from the guitar controller for now.

Until a couple weeks ago I'd never played any of the Guitar Hero games. It's true! Somehow they'd completely passed me by. Well, a couple weeks ago one of my friends lent me one of the games and a controller, and since then I've learned the glory of the game! So much so that I bought Guitar Hero - World Tour and have been enjoying the heck out of it!

You know how the game works. You get a guitar-shaped controller and use it to play notes in time to what's displayed on the screen. While this is easy with songs like Linkin Park's "What I've Done" (the only song I can get 100% on), it's somewhat harder with others. No matter what song it is, it tends to be fun!

With this game you get the game itself, a controller, lotsa nifty stickers for said controller (if you're into such things), and lots of fun! There's about 85 songs on here, covering most every genre, and plenty more songs you can download. There's even a new beginner mode, made for those who are really new to the games.

As for the other modes, well, I've only ever played on easy, and I find it gives me a nice, easy learning curve, going from easy songs up to harder ones. There's little frustration here, and I've not had to play any song more than twice so far.

All the modes you're used to are here, though with the career mode things have changed some; you don't get the little cartoons anymore, and you do your songs as blocks rather than just one at a time. It makes for a bit more of a challenge.

In short, a great little game I'd recommend for just about anyone!

I bought the Guitar Hero World Tour guitar kit at launch. Within a day of owning it, the downstrum on my guitar began missing notes. I contacted Red Octane about this problem, and they expect me to pay to mail it back to them, then wait 2-3 weeks for them to evaluate it. In reading around, it seems quality control on the guitar and drums is horrible. On this grounds alone, I urge caution in buying any World Tour hardware.

The guitar differentiates itself from other plastic axes on the market by including a slide strip. It is a neat innovation at first. However, the way it is integrated into songs, many times I find it impossible to switch from the slide strip to the buttons without missing notes. The strip is also a bit clumbsy to use. Given the quality problems with the guitar and the gimmicky nature of the strip, I think the Rock Band 2 guitar is a better/safer option in the near future.

The game itself is a big improvement over previous GH iterations. 85 songs that are all from the original artists. Support for building a setlist. The one-on-one challenges are much less frustrating than GH3's. I like how they did the vocal tracks -- you can pick between scrolling (RB style) or static (karaoke style) lyrics. A lot of artists are digitally included (Billy Corgan, Ozzy, etc.). Fairly good character customization. Negatives -- the Quickplay menu is a disaster, the music studio is a waste as implemented, and they didn't figure out how to allow importing of song/DL content from GH3 (RB2 did this with RB).

I think the game only package is a worthwhile purchase if you already own a controller. I would stay away from the GHWT hardware altogether in favor of Rock Band 2's controllers.

UPDATE 12/4/08: Activision/Red Octane has now had my guitar for over 4 weeks and there is no estimate on when I'll receive a replacement. I bought this game in October, was able to use the guitar for a matter of hours, and have since had to play it exclusively with a Rock Band 2 guitar. While the price for this holiday season is very good -- I would not give this to anyone for a Christmas present unless they already have another guitar controller as a backup. The company clearly cannot handle the level of failures they are getting. Rock Band 2 hardware seems to be the most solid for this generation of band games.