Rock out! (Guitar Hero: World Tour Band Bundle (Wii))

Member Name: houndour

Product:	Guitar Hero: World Tour Band Bundle (Wii)
Date:	12/01/09 (298 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Loads more songs to master, now got drums and vocals too

Disadvantages: Poor font for lyrics, do not get all DLC

Just a note before I begin, this is my initial impression. I hope to update this after a few months of gameplay.

After spending the last 6 months playing Guitar Hero 3 nearly every day on the Wii, I think I can safely say I'm an avid Guitar Hero fan.

I had pre-ordered Guitar Hero World Tour months in advance and was like a kid at Christmas when it arrived (I'm 28).

It was pretty easy to set up - I'm a girl and I figured out how to put the 'drum kit' together.

Price
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The bundle is £149.99 in most shops. This is steep and I wouldn't have bought it had I not played GH3. Maybe if you're completely new to Guitar hero and have not got a friends game to play on then a purchase of GH3 might be wise. You can get some bargain prices for this now.

Free Bass Guitar
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Firstly, I got conned into thinking the "Free bass guitar" was something special, but it's just a normal les paul, like the one you get with GH3. So now I own 4 guitars. Oh well.

The new guitar
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The new guitar is pretty cool. The frets are the same as the les paul. The strum bar I'm actually finding a little annoying at the moment. It's more clicky, and the clicks get on my nerves, but maybe I'll get used to it. The star power activator is in a different place, it's a long bar that sits under the bottom of your palm, for my hands it's perfect. But I've read for bigger hands it's not necessarily better than before.

There are new frets for solo-ing. I've not got the hang of these yet, I think it'll be better on a song where theres a very long complicated solo.

The Drums
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I've read reviews that complain about the pedal moving away as you use it, but personally I'm not having any problems with it. You activate star power by hitting the 2 symbols at the same time. I also read in a review that this is silly because it requires you having to wait for a break. And as a complete beginner to any form of drums, I'm finding it hard to find time to activate star power and generally do it by accident when I hit the wrong notes! I'm sure I will get better though.

The microphone
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The microphone is the only thing that needs to be plugged into the Wii (by USB) which is a shame, but the cord is very long. You activate star power here by tapping it.

Gameplay
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I haven't explored all of the game yet, so I will just cover the bits I have played so far.

There's Quickplay, and it's a little different in that you can pick a setlist and play up to 6 (Could be wrong here) songs in a row. The songs are listed alphabetically and also grouped at the bottom are the downloaded songs and then the songs that are created.

Career mode - This is a bit different to GH3. It seems you play set lists, earn money and then new sets get unlocked as you go along. Some set lists require paying for to unlock them. I guess this is the equivalent of buying songs in GH3.

Create-a-rocker
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If you enjoy personalising your games then this is for you. It's quite similar to creating a mii, but frankly I don't have the patience and am happy with a random rocker :)

Battle mode
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There is still 2 player guitar battle mode, face off and pro face off. The pro face off allows you to play different difficulties. Where as in GH3 I believe you had to play the same difficulty.

Music Studio
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Here you can create your own music, but I haven't touched it as I have no musical creativity what so ever.

Downloadable Content
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Finally the wii has DLC (Downloadable content)!! Sadly the whole Death Magnetic album is not available (at time of writing), but there is a decent selection so far from artists such as Metallica, Oasis, The Killers, Nirvana and now a Nickelback tune too (Because of You). Each song is 200 wii points. You can buy 2000 wii points for £15 or less if you shop around.

For those who have not used wii points before, it's very simple. The points card comes with instructions on how to load your points. Once you've registered the card on your wii, you just go to the Music Store via the GHWT menu and simply buy the song you want.

Singing
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I have one big complaint and that is the font! I find singing almost impossible as I struggle to read the lyrics! Previously I had a 27 inch widescreen TV and it was unreadable. We've since upgraded to a 37inch and it's a bit better but still terrible. I'm really disappointed in this as I've always enjoyed Singstar on the PS2, but singing on GHWT is not fun for me.


Overall opinion so far
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I think I still prefer the guitar to the drums, but I know when I get bored of the guitar then the drums will give me a new challenge. I still prefer the set list on GH3 but I think I will grow to like GHWT just as much. I'm really disappointed with the font of the lyrics for singing, but maybe that's just me? Also disappointed that some songs aren't available for download that are available on other consoles. However, this game is still a must for all Guitar Hero fans.

One other thing, but it's not really GH's fault is some songs are really boring to play on the guitar. I guess this is because they've tried to put a nice range of songs so there are great songs to sing or play drums on.

I give this game 4 stars because of the few niggles I have with it. I would give it 4.5 stars if I could though :)

Summary: Great fun, a must buy for all Guitar Hero fans