Guitar Hero IV is titled Guitar Hero World Tour

A few more details have trickled out today about Guitar Hero IV. The most important piece of information is that it will be titled ‘Guitar Hero World Tour’.

New Play Mode

Guitar Hero World Tour will feature a ‘Band Career’ mode which can be played with up to four people online. There will also be a ‘Battle of the Bands’ mode which will allow for a 4 on 4 online play.

Controllers

Not a whole lot of new info was announced regarding the controllers today.

A new tagline for the drums, with activision promising the “most realistic drum experience ever in a video game”.

They are also saying they guitar controller is “newly designed” and “more responsive” but they haven’t released any specific information on what’s new.

No word on whether the guitar controller that was shown in the trailer released today is representative of the guitar controller that will be released for Guitar Hero World Tour, but we thought a screen shot was in order.

There doesn’t appear to be anything innovative about the controller, but we suspect it was just put in so they could get out the trailer quickly.

Click on the thumbnail to get a larger view.

More info and a few screenshots after the break.

Customization

Guitar Hero World Tour will allow for even more customization than Guitar Hero games in the past.
You will be able to completely customize your characters - everything from hair to clothes, tattoos to the type of guitar pick, as well as custom band logos and album artwork.

And of course the biggest revolution in Guitar Hero World Tour would have to be the “Music Studio” which will allow players to create custom tracks.

RedOctane spokesperson Dusty Welch said “With Music Studio, we are once again delivering unprecedented innovation that has the potential to revolutionize consumer generated music, much in the same way that video sharing hubs have driven user generated video”

Project Director Brian Bright mentioned that the whole inspiration for the ‘Music Studio’ were the people who were using tools to create their own custom Guitar Hero disks with custom tracks. A quick search of YouTube for ‘Guitar Hero Custom’ will find plenty of videos where gamers have created their own notes charts, for songs not in the game, before converting them into a playable Guitar Hero disk.

Bright told Eurogamer that “We’ve embraced the whole custom community and we’re giving fans what they want. It’s a full recording studio and an online repository, a library for people to post their songs.”

Soundtrack

While no more songs or artist were confirmed by Bright, he did say that they will will “a pretty even split between the ’80s, ’90s, and classic rock” with a “good amount of emerging bands”.

And while this may be just a bit of speculation on our part, Lenny Kravitz’s “Are You Gonna Go My Way” was the soundtrack for the Guitar Hero World Tour trailer that was released today.

Various Tidbits

The ‘Jam Over’ feature was shown to some members of the press but it doesn’t appear as though it will be making it into the game. While the ‘Jam Over’ mode would have allowed players to ‘jam over’ top of existing tracks in the game, a spokesperson has said that it has been dropped for the time being.

Bright also addressed the concern that Guitar Hero World Tour might become easier in the Expert modes, much like Rock Band’s Expert is said to be way easier than Guitar Hero III’s Expert level. “The Expert level will still be what it is: you’ll play every note in the song,” says Bright. “If it’s a really hard song, it’s going to be really hard to play in the game. And that’s what the hardcore fans want. But for the rest of the people [from Easy to Hard] we’re trying to make the ramp a little more linear.”

Still no word on a price point or exact release date but we did find it amusing that Activision chose this week to make more announcements regarding Guitar Hero World Tour.

I’m sure they were planning on this week for a while and that it has nothing to do with Rock Band being released in Europe. Only a conspiracy theorist might think that Activision is trying to capitalize on the furor over the high cost of Rock Band in the UK, thinking that gamers might wait a bit longer if they know a new game is just around the corner…

Related Links:
Console Hero - Guitar Hero World Tour Trailer