A year ago, if you would have told me that Guitar Hero or Rock Band are great games – I would have laughed in your face. I used to think that all music rhythm games are stupid and gimmicky. After trying Guitar Hero 3 for the first time (on PlayStation 2), I got myself hooked. When Guitar Hero: World Tour was announced I promised myself I would get it on launch day. I kept that promise.

Guitar Hero: World Tour has a great lineup of songs (84 to be exact – not including custom songs and DLC) and almost every one of them is fun to play. The songs are from different eras in music – starting with songs that were released in the 60s, ande advancing to really recent ones. Guitar Hero: World Tour, unlike previous games in the series, lets you play songs that are not related to the Rock genre. Samba and Trance are also available for you to play. One of the nicest things in these rhythm games is that they expose the player to songs that he would have never heard unless playing these games. Of course you can find the well known songs from artist like Blink 182, The Eagles, No doubt, Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, Jimi Hendrix and more.

Like in previous Guitar Hero games, unless you make use of the special cheat code, one must play through Career Mode in order to unlock all the songs. Career Mode is a little different this time around – actually it reminds me of Rock Band’s Career Mode. You will travel around the world searching for venues to play in. After you complete a song in Career Mode it will become unlocked and playable in Quick Play Mode.

Guitar Hero: World Tour gives you the oppotunity to play as a drummer (if you have the drum kit that is), as a vocalist (you need a microphone for that), as a guitar player (if you have the guitar) or as a bass player (if you have a guitar). Every career has its own order of songs and you will need to finish all the songs to complete the game. During your travels around the world you will get the chance to play with or against famous artists like Ozzy Osbourne, Zack Wylde, Jimi Hendrix, Sting and others. When you finish playing with them they will be unlocked and usable as a charachter in the game. Also in Career Mode you can unlock places to play in, instruments, skins and accessories for your character. It is all good and nice except the fact that Career Mode is a little boring and the only reason that kept me playing is the practice.

Guitar Hero: World Tour provides some new features – some are more useable than others. The two most noticable features are the neck slider in the guitar and GH studio. The neck slider feature (which is on the new guitars) in which you have a neck slider that can be used in several note sequences. To tell you the truth, I don’t really understand why they added this one… It is just dead space on the guitar. I find it much more comfortable playing these special notes with the regular buttons… In GH studio you can compose your own songs and upload them so other Guitar Hero: World Tour users can download and play them. For the artists among the players this is a great feature. For the rest of us, donwloading custom songs and playing them is more than enough. It takes too much time to master all the options in the studio and all of its features are too slow and frustratung. It’s not fun creating a song.

In conclusion, Guitar Hero: World Tour brings another great Guitar Hero expirience that you will enjoy as long as you don’t play “Hot For Teacher” on expert…

Why Guitar Hero: World Tour didn’t get 100?

• Boring Career Mode
• Neck Slider is a drag
• Can’t play any instrument unless you buy it. Playing with the controller is not an option anymore.
• GH studio is hard to master.
• Models of famous artists are not that good.

Score – 87