More Guitar Hero World Tour Songs and Guitar Picture

The good folks over at IGN just released a nice big preview of Guitar Hero: World Tour and here’s all the important information.  We’re going to get started with the instruments.

Instruments

Guitar Hero: World Tour is the first game in the Guitar Hero series to feature a full band kit, that is to say that this game will have not only a guitar controller, but will have a drum set and microphone as well.

The Guitar

Starting with the guitar, you will notice that the new guitar controller has a few new features.  The most significant change is the touch sensitive pad just down from the regular fret buttons.  The new pad will allow notes to be altered during sustains by sliding up and down the strip.  The new strip can also be used to tap out notes as well, and is used extensively in the music creator.

For those who would be worried about compatibility, Activision has said that all previous Guitar Hero controllers will work with Guitar Hero: World Tour.

Oh…  We’ve got plenty more information for you…  after the break

From an aesthetic point of view, the back/select button has been modeled to look like the bridge of a guitar.  This is fantastic for those who prefer to use the select button to activate star power as well because it’s not only bigger, but easier to locate while playing.  The body of the guitar controller itself is also bigger, more closely mimicing an actual guitar, and the d-pad has been shaped to look more like a real control knob on a guitar.

The Microphone

The microphone is pretty standard as far as video games go, and in fact looks very much like the Rock Band Microphone.

We were hoping for some improvement to the rock band design by an addition of some form of game navigation (hello 3rd-party manufacturers, we’re talking to you here).

Activating Star Power in the game with the microphone is done by tapping it quickly or “making a quick similar sound” during gameplay.

The Drums

Guitar Hero: World Tour’s biggest addition is without a doubt the drums.  The drums with the game are the most realistic compared to a real electronic drum kit that we’ve seen yet.  The drum set features 3 regular pads, a bass pedal, and two raised cymbals.

Activision promises us that the Guitar Hero: World Tour drum kit is quieter than Rock Bands, the sound of which has been a concern for some gamers (and their housemates).  The drum heads are also larger than the Rock Band drum heads at 8 inches in diameter making them easier to hit, and they are also spaced out a little more.

As a bonus, the drum set is wireless and because the drums are now “velocity sensitive” they will respond to your touch appropriately.  Hit the drum pad hard and it will be louder, hit the drum pad softly and it will sound softer.

Tracklisting

There will be over 85(!) songs in the game, and they’re all masters.

On top of the artists and songs we already know about, it was mentioned that these songs will also be in the game;

Foo Fighters - “Everlong”
Billy Idol - “Rebel Yell”
Sublime - “Santeria”

Downloadable content from Guitar Hero III will not be available for use in Guitar Hero: World Tour, but Activision has promised that they will be commited to providing regular DLC releases in the in-game music store.  They have also mentioned full album releases.

Game Characters

Guitar Hero: World Tour brings back all of the game characters who were in both Guitar Hero III and Guitar Hero II.  The game will also feature a number of real-life rockers as well, but Activision isn’t releasing that information just yet (but we’re thinking Travis Barker, and *possibly* Ted Nugent - If you’ve been reading our site you’ll know why).  With Guitar Hero: World Tour you will also have the option to create your own custom character from scratch.

As we’ve mentioned before on Console Hero, Guitar Hero: World Tour will have the most extensive customization options yet - similar to the Tony Hawk games as an example.

On top of the obvious-  for instance sex of the character, body build, “style”, etc… - you will be able to adjust the age, shapes and sizes of the jaw, chin, cheek, ear, mouth, eyes, and eyebrows of your character.  You can also add make-up, change the skin color, choose hair style and color.  You can buy clothing for your character in the game’s ’store’.

The game will also let you create a custom “decal” that can be applied to your character as a tattoo, or used as a sticker to add to your instrument.  Did we mention that you can create your own instruments?

Even More Customization

For the guitar and bass, the game will allow you to customize them by choosing the shape of the guitar body, and applying a color and finish.

Once you’ve got the basics down, you can further your customization by changing “the fret board inlay, the headstock shape and finish, the pick guard, knob design, pickups, bridge and even the string type”.

The drum creator allows you to pick from a variety of shapes and colors, and will allow you to choose from various skins as well.  Like the guitars, you can add your custom decal - throw it on the front of your bass drum  You can even choose the type of drum sticks you use.

For the microphone the choices aren’t as great, you can only pick from a range of various microphones and mic stands and change the colors…  but it’s better than nothing.

One of the customizations that we’re extremely thrilled about is the ability to even change the in-game highway - the background behing the notes when playing.  We find that some of the in-game highways are a little more difficult to read the notes against.

Gameplay

Guitar Hero: World Tour plays much like the Guitar Hero’s of the past, and like Rock Bands for the microphone and drums, but there are a few new additions.  For the bass parts, there is an added 6th note that is played by just strumming on the strum bar and not fretting any notes.

Like previous games cash is handed out at the end of a performance, but this time it’s divied up amongst the band members based on performance.

Guitar Hero: World Tour has careers for each of the individual instruments, as well as a full band career that can be played online or offline.   The new career modes will allow you to tour around to different locations in the world to play setlists.  Unlike previous versions of Guitar Hero, the career is non-linear in terms of progression and difficulty - that means that you can start your career at any difficulty or location, and change as neccessary if you’re having difficulty with a certain section.

There are still boss battles in Guitar Hero: World Tour, but Activision has been listening to gamers and have made the battles optional really.  Battle Mode will still be in the game for multiplayer, but it’s role has been minimized.

Neversoft is saying that easy will be even easier than before, and the leaps between difficulties will not be so extreme.  Guitar Hero: World Tour will have a very consistent difficulty curve.

For those of you who just like to jump into the game, and don’t like to have to go through a career just to unlock things, Activision has made some more changes.  For everything you do in the game while with your primary character you will get rewards…  cash and guitarhero.com bonuses.

They’ve even jazzed up the quick play mode so that you can create a “gig” and play up to seven songs in a row without any loading time between them.

Music Creator

The Guitar Hero: World Tour music creator is the most significant leap for the Guitar Hero series and similar rhythm based games.  The Music Creator will allow you to create your own tracks by simply playing, but you can certainly use the extensive editor as well.  One downside however is the lack of vocal support - the lawyers thought it might cause copyright issues.

We were expecting the Music Creator to be kind of basic and perhaps somewhat cheesy… but we’ve read the options availble for creating the tracks and it looks like we were mistaken. 

The music creator does feature a wizard tool to help create tracks quickly by allowing you to select premade bass and drum loops, and choose an appropriate tempo (fast, slow, somewhere in between) to get things started.  When you’re creating the main track, even if your notes are somewhat off, the game will allow you to lock the notes to the beat.  You can of course feel free to create you own drum loops.

The real power of the music creator comes from the guitar controllers new slide touch bar.  The new touch sensitive strip allows you to control various options in the music creator, from manipulating the drum machine and other song loops, to tweaking notes that have been tracked.

You create tracks by choosing a kit from a list of options which will define the basic sounds of your track, with the sounds assigned to various parts of the guitar.  Starting and stopping loops will be down with the neck buttons with tweaks added with the rest of the guitar.  The touch pad allows you to add snare hits or 16th notes, or even kill parts of the loop.  Tilting the guitar will allow you to change the sample speed, and the strum bar will change the pitch.

When you finally get around to adding the guitar parts and solos, you will get to choose from a wide array of options to get the sounds you want - think effects processors.  Activision has enlisted the help of Line 6 on this.   This allows you to add complete amp and cab modeling that changes the way your guitar gently weeps.

To add staccato notes or sustains to the notes, you would employ the touch strip again, while tilting the guitar, once again, allows the pitch of the notes to be altered, thus enabling the ability to play more than 5 notes.  Hitting the back button adds a palm muting effect.  At any point during the music creation process you can pause, rewind, and playback everythng and even re-record.

Once you’re finished your masterpiece, you can share it with the world.  Guitar Hero: World Tour will automatically apply note charts to your songs to be played back in real time.  Don’t worry about the song being too difficult as the exact notes you played will be the hardest difficulty, but the game will auto-generate easier note charts for easier settings.

These is also GH Mix, which is the built in Neversoft editor where you can edit/copy/paste various loops and sections in the song.  From there, publish it to GH Tunes where you will be asked which tracks are played by which instruments.  You can select a genre, assign your own cover art for the song, as well as inputting some other song to identify it as yours.   Once the songs is up on GH Tunes anyone can download the song and play it.  After a song it played, it asks the player to rate the songs and the data is uploaded to the servers where you can see which songs are the highest rated, most played, fastest moving, and more.

You will be able to save 100 of your own songs and have 5 of them uploaded to GH Tunes at any one time, and you can download up to 200 tracks that other players have created.

Additional Info

Activision has confirmed that the Wii will have the same capabilities as both the PS3 and 360, so you can not only create, upload, and download user created songs, but you will also be able to purchase DLC content as well.

The price has not been officially confirmed yet, with Activision saying the price would be “competitive”.  Mind you it seems they were testing out a price of $179.99 according to recent market research leaks.

Source: IGN - Guitar Hero: World Tour Preview

Related Links:
Console Hero - Guitar Hero: World Tour Information
Console Hero - Big Guitar Hero: World Tour Leak