A brief word about difficulty here - as I've alluded to, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock on Expert is extremely difficult to master. Even early songs in the set list have chord changes and strings of hammer-on and pull-offs that almost always require a great deal of practise to get through. Having completed all but the last set of GH3 tracks on Expert, I can confidently state that World Tour is, for the most part, significantly easier than Guitar Hero III.
There are several reasons for this - personally I think Neversoft probably copped a bit of flack from punters at the release of Guitar Hero III, which could explain why the Aerosmith add-on game released afterwards was technically much easier. I also believe they looked hard at Rock Band and saw that a co-operative band game didn't have to be brutally hard to be fun. And again, you can fail a song over and over when you're the only one affected - it's not particularly enjoyable for your team mates to put up with playing Michael Jackson's Beat It for the fourteenth time in a row, and there's every possibility they'll take the song title as a suggestion.
There are several changes to the way in which notes are represented in World Tour as well. For guitarists, there's the introduction of the aforementioned translucent gems. These do not need to be strummed, as the idea is to use the new touch pad on the neck of the guitar to tap these out. You can also use the conventional fret buttons, which is handy when using older controllers. The inclusion of these notes is somewhat confusing - they invariably require less skill to hit than hammer-ons or pull-offs, as there is no "trigger" note to begin the sequence, so it seems for the most part they've been included to allow players to visually perform more outrageous tapping tricks in front of their friends.
Your mileage may vary with this sort of thing - personally, there isn't enough alcohol in the world to make me leap about tapping notes on a plastic guitar, but each to their own.
Perhaps the reason behind the inclusion of the translucent gems can be found with the modifications made to the hammer-on and pull-off structure. In Guitar Hero III, any HOPO could be lined up by pressing the respective fret long before the note travelled over the threshold at the bottom of the screen. This has been tightened significantly for World Tour and you will need to be much more accurate with your timing. Personally I think this is a shame - despite the fact that it's technically closer to how an actual guitarist would use a HOPO, it makes for less rewarding gameplay. For this reason, you won't find too may walls of HOPO notes in World Tour, so those who still suffer nightmares after watching the first ten seconds of Through the Fire and Flames on GH3 Expert can rest easy.
Bass players - often overlooked - can now strum without using fret buttons. The cue for this is much like the bass pedal on the drum kit - a horizontal line will scroll down the screen, at which point you'll have to take your fingers off any fret buttons and simply strum. Overall, it's a nice touch.
Finally, long notes and chords can now be accompanied by additional notes, which can be strummed during each chord. This is a much more interesting addition, although it's hard work to figure out how to play them initially. Sure, it's easy to physically hit the note, but crank up the difficulty and the speed at which they appear takes some getting used to, particularly if you're expecting them to behave like GH3 notes.
Despite the changes, purists will still look to Guitar Hero III as the ultimate fast-paced test of skills. It's not that World Tour isn't difficult - it's just tailored towards group play, so if you're looking to buy the World Tour software to compliment your Guitar Hero III skills, you need to be aware that the guitar experience is quite different.
Using the drum kit, on the other hand, isn't really far removed from what we've seen previously in Rock Band. The elevated cymbals are relatively easy to use, and despite the bass pedal lacking any sort of retention mechanism it rarely moved around on our carpeted floor. There are some great tracks that can really push your drumming skills - even on lower difficulty settings - although if you struggle to hold a beat you'll suffer on Hard or Expert.
The vocals aren't any different to what you would expect, although it's a little hard sometimes to know how well you are doing as there isn't really an immediate feedback from the software. Having said that, if you need a piece of software to tell you that you're a bad singer, you probably shouldn't be allowed near a microphone anyway.
For the more creative out there, you can actually design and record your own tracks within the World Tour software, and upload them for others to use. There are various limitations however, naturally anything approaching copyright infringement is frowned upon, and you can't record vocals. The recording studio is best described as "complex" and will require time to master, although we did see some rather ingenious track available for download in the process of compiling this review.
As for online play, you'll be able to take on another band over Xbox Live or PSN, and this still suffers from the same latency related issues we saw with Guitar Hero III. Again, your results will vary, so you might want to take into consideration the state of your own broadband connection before assuming your online experience will be problem-free.
So, what exactly do we have here? Well, fundamentally Guitar Hero World Tour is more polished than Rock Band, although as it's a year newer and more expensive you would have to expect it to be. A lot of people out there will be looking at track lists to determine which product to buy - which is fair enough - and as this is a subjective matter there's no point in dwelling on it, other than to say that I've listed the World Tour songs on the next page, and the Rock Band list can be found here. Make of that what you will.
Guitar Hero World Tour represents the softening of the Guitar Hero franchise, coupled with a more group-orientated veneer of respectability that endears it to young and old alike. Where Guitar Hero III was a balls-to-the-wall, twenty-five-note-per-second unforgiving behemoth of a title, World Tour now facilitates and encourages co-operation, humility and outright hilarity, and has claimed it's own place in video game history as a hugely entertaining experience.
Which of the two competing titles should you buy? Both of them. World Tour for the instruments, and Rock Band for the diverse career mode.
Either one won't fail to put a smile on your face though.
