Review: 'World Tour' comes to party late

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BY AIMEE GREEN / Lincoln Journal Star

If “Guitar Hero World Tour” had been released two years ago, it would have been exactly the rhythm game for which players had been clamoring.

Unfortunately, “Rock Band” created the full-band game first, and even expanded on it, before “Guitar Hero” finally took its turn. Because of that, “World Tour” feels a bit behind.

But “World Tour” is still a great game because it doesn’t really do anything wrong; it just doesn’t do enough. It still has solid gameplay, a fantastically large list of master tracks (more than 80) and an interesting music-creation tool.

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"Guitar Hero: World Tour" includes guitar, bass, drum and vocal parts. (Activision)

The big disappointment comes from the band career. Previously, songs would be unlocked five at a time, and you would play them each to unlock the next set. Now, your career follows gigs, which are usually sets of two or three songs followed by an encore.

Unfortunately, the career is simply slogging from one gig to the next. Finishing one gig unlocks a few more, and you can play the unlocked gigs in any order, but in essence you’re still running down a list of songs.

I missed the features found in “Rock Band,” such as earning fans and hiring people. I’m not saying “Guitar Hero” should do this — then it would be the same game — but I wanted more than just playing all the songs until they’re done.

With a band, your star power (gained by playing all the notes in a special phrase) goes into a combined pool, and each player can individually trigger a bit of it.

Unfortunately, if one band member fails a song, that’s it. There is no bailing them out as in “Rock Band.”

I found it hard to keep track of how well everyone was doing because the meter was up in the left corner, while my notes on guitar were in the bottom right.

The notes themselves have a few new features. On the good side are strum-only notes, which appear as lines across the board and give it a more realistic feel.

On the bad side are slider notes. The new “Guitar Hero” guitar has a set of touch-sensitive slider buttons. When notes are connected with a purple line, use these touch buttons to slide between notes without strumming.

It’s hard to find the correct touch buttons when moving quickly from frets to touch buttons and back again. On larger sections, you can still get most of it, but a lot of the sections are short and easy to miss completely. Nice idea, poor execution.

The drums are a little different from “Rock Band’s:” two cymbals and three heads that are velocity-sensitive, meaning they can tell if you hit them harder. The drums feel sturdy, and the setup is comfortable, though it takes a while to get used to the different button-color order.

“World Tour” has a music studio that allows you to create songs and upload them. It’s a nice feature, though likely a bit too complex and time-consuming for most, and the resulting songs sound too much like MIDI songs.

Overall, “World Tour” is a solid effort that needs to step it up a bit in the band career. Maybe the next iteration will be the one to overtake “Rock Band.”

Maybe I’m too used to “Rock Band” and “Guitar Hero,” but I didn’t find much fun in “Wii Music.”

The game brags that you can jam with your friends without being penalized for wrong notes. It has more than 60 instruments to choose from, all played using the Wii remote and nunchuk.

Here’s how it works: Choose a song from the list. The song starts, with little guys down in the corner lighting up to indicate rhythm. Depending on your instrument, you shake the controllers at the speed you like, either keeping with the beat or adding extra notes. The song ends.

That’s it. You have no control over what notes you play, just how many, how quickly and in what style (rock, Latin, etc.).

You can play by yourself or with friends, or with computer-controlled characters. You also can record your jam sessions and send them to friends.

The controls vary depending on the instrument. For example, a piano part has you swinging the two controllers up and down as if hitting keys. With a saxophone part, you hold the remote to your mouth and alternate between the 1 and 2 buttons. There’s also a drum mode that uses the Wii Balance Board for foot pedals.

I get that it’s kind of fun to imitate playing an instrument. I don’t get why it’s supposed to be fun to just move the controllers around while the game chooses the notes. I kept playing, thinking there had to be more to it, but there’s not. I quickly grew bored.

On the bright side, I enjoyed the minigames. My favorite, Handbell Harmony, assigns a handbell to each controller, and you have to “ring” them as the note for that pitch scrolls across the screen. Sound familiar?

I know a bit about real music (I played clarinet for 10 years), and I appreciate the effort to educate, but “Wii Music” is just dull.

Maybe if I were a young kid, I might get some joy out of shaking the heck out of a controller and getting pre-created sounds out of it. As an adult, I’ll be sticking with “Rock Band” and “Guitar Hero.”

Reach Aimee Green at 473-7326 or Aimee.Green@lee.net.