Guitar Hero World Tour: The Best, The Worst, and Everything in Between
by Derek Wilson on October 31, 2008 7:10 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Instruments: The Drums
This was where GHWT had the most potential to succeed. The low hanging fruit. Adding an extra trigger and raised cymbals was a terrific step beyond the Rock Band 2 template. It is well documented that Rock Band and Rock Band 2 feature incredibly subpar kick pedals and building a better kick would go a long long way to making a better experience. Unfortunately, Neversoft failed to capitalize where Harmonix fell short.
First the good. The GHWT kit has awesome pads. The three "toms" are much bouncier than the Rock Band or RB2 kits, and their sound is deeper and even less of a problem than the quieted down RB2 offering. The angle of the pads is a little less steep, which provides a better experience as well. We love the pads. But that's where it ends.
The cymbals aren't very responsive and are essentially dead feeling. This is similar to the ION Drum Rocker's problem, but slightly worse. Not a huge deal, but still. The placement of the cymbals is, on the surface, fine. I tend to have a splash and a crash at about the same general vicinity. But I much prefer my ride and hi-hat on the outside of the kit (far left for hi-hat far right for ride) which is not what we end up with here. The layout of the kit makes playing the blue tom sort of awkward.
And when playing the game, a roll across the toms doesn't look as natural as in Rock Band 2 because of the way the pads are laid out. This isn't a huge deal, and it just takes some getting used to. It is a little worse when using an RB kit, as the yellow pad is never (in our experience) used as a tom. Meaning rolls across the toms will skip from red to blue to green.
Additionally, as the orange (or blue on an RB kit) cymbal is not far right, there are some times where you've got to make awkward shifts of both hands. I swear there are some songs that just make me feel like I have to play like Stewart Copeland in the video for "Can't Stand Loosing You" for no reason. Actually, that sort of makes sense as he was one of the musicians that helped out with input on the kit before it was released. Seriously though, if you're playing some 16th notes on the orange cymbal (blue on the RB kit) with your right hand and have to hit the green tom without skipping a beat on the cymbal you've got to move both hands REAL fast twice (to get your left hand back to the snare and right hand back to the cymbal). Not a huge problem, but that's just not how I'd play it if the cymbal were really out of the way of the toms and I could just hit the green tom with my left hand.
ORLY?! ION/MIDI 4TW.
So yes, we have raised cymbals, but some of the functionality of that is degraded by how close to the toms the cymbals are, and the layout can be a bit confusing. It's worse on the RB kit with GHWT because they seem to have taken the easy way out and just combined the orange and blue lanes into one so that the yellow trigger is always a cymbal and the green tom is never a cymbal. No, they didn't have to, but it would have been really nice if they had adaptively combined the orange lane with either blue or green depending on context (ride or crash as per the RB conventions). Beyond that, it would have been perfect if they could have sometimes shifted the red/blue/green rolls to be either yellow/blue/green or red/yellow/blue rolls.
So... What next. Right, star power. That sucks.
Here's the problem. You've got to play the song, ideally without missing notes. In order to activate star power you need to hit the yellow and orange cymbals at the same time (or yellow and blue on Rock Band). But this is really tough in some songs, especially songs like Dammit and Everlong. Waiting for a break to throw it in is fine in some songs, but in others it's just stupidly hard. We understand the limitations of the RB/RB2 random fills method, but there should really be some other (better) way to activate star power with the drums.
One thing that does work is accent notes. These notes are visually different and you get a bigger score if you hit them harder. It's kind of cool, and it seems to get used often for open hi-hat hits in the songs we saw it used in. It works. It's neat. Unfortunately it doesn't work with the RB2 or ION kits even though they are also pressure sensitive (it just turns this feature off with the 4 lane version).
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Desultory - Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - link
I too have some issues with the drum kit and I also had problems with my first guitar. In fact, I ended up taking it back to the store for a full replacement. My down strum broke the first night and the cymbals were at once so responsive that hitting the drum pads activated them and also so unresponsive when I hit them. I'm not a "real" drummer, but I can play about half the RB songs on expert and all of them on hard and I was finding I couldn't hold a streak at all in GHWT. It was seriously ticking me off.After the exchange, I still had an unresponsive yellow cymbal. It was "dead" on one side...no problem though, switched it with the orange cymbal and it's much easier to reach the "good" side.
But the pedal...ferchrissake that thing sucks. Moves all over the floor and it's WAY too sensitive. My style may be to blame, but I learned to play RB drums keeping my foot down on the pedal and "bouncing". That's impossible with this pedal. The simple act of raising my foot often triggers a bass kick and once again it's impossible to hold a streak. I wish I could use my RB pedal with the GHWT kit. I like the kit better (more stuff to do and "real" cymbals) but the foot pedal makes playing drums impossible.
I actually found this article hoping to uncover some tricks for the pedal since I'm not the only person with this issue (Google is rife with people having the same complaint and two of my friends who bought the game are in agreement with me). I like the song selection better in GHWT but not being able to play drums is literally breaking my heart.
/sigh
jdport - Thursday, November 6, 2008 - link
It kind of bothers me when people write stuff about how Guitar Hero is the original franchise, that players "cut their teeth on". As I'm sure you know, this is true in name only. The creators of the original Guitar Hero moved on to Rock Band, so while "Guitar Hero" maybe have been the original... Guitar Hero World Tour shares nothing in common with it other than its name and the basic concept.
Also, the Rock Band 2 guitars and drums do have a hook up for the XBL headset. You just have to use the adapter that is supplied with the game instead of using the standard plug.
bootay69 - Friday, November 7, 2008 - link
I use the standard plug...the adapter is not necessary.afkrotch - Wednesday, November 5, 2008 - link
FYI: Guitar Freaks, Drummania, Piano Freaks, etc. Wiki Bemani. Now Guitar Hero was probably the first music game to be in the US, aside from DDR.EODetroit - Tuesday, November 4, 2008 - link
Honestly I'll never play more than two player mode, so I don't see the point of buying anything beyond my GH3 game.But I do like the commercial that I saw during MNF last night.
MaverickSY19 - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
Honestly I like RB 1 and 2 better for the reason that they are not to hard! I mean a lot of us can't play expert at all let alone breeze though it. I honestly like playing the songs and having fun with it, because as a kid we all did the air guitar and its nice to actually play a song with a fake one you can at least hold on to. :)Shoot I'll be happy when I can play RB or GH through all the way on hard let alone Expert. Shoot my wife can't even do easy :P I have yet to try her on the beginner level they added to GHWT.
crash resistant - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
GH isn't harder. It's more pure. RB has silly drum solos in the middle of every song, even on Expert.Singing in GH is harder, as you have to sing more to gain points- and there aren't cheesy tambourine solos that last what feels like forever.
I guess, it's true- GH requires more skill to attain higher scores- but it's relative to the game itself- You can't relate the score system to RB!
If you want to party, buy all 3 games. I'm telling you the truth.
DerekWilson - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
i disagree that ghwt is "harder" ... neither one is "real" in terms of hitting all the notes. which sucks.if you look at youtube and see the side by side charting, you'll see that some songs are harder on rock band 2 and some songs are harder on ghwt ... the ones that overlap anyway ...
as for the song choice, that does have an impact, and some of the songs that ghwt picked are really hard and some of the songs that rb2 picked are really hard. it all comes out in the wash in my mind.
crash resistant - Sunday, November 2, 2008 - link
Whoever reviewed this game made several errors and assumptions without further testing. They didn't even verify how star power works while drumming....1: You hit both symbols ANY TIME and it activates.. no need to wait for a break- and it DOES NOT lose your streak. Sad...
2: The drum pedal has never slid away from me, on two different carpets (thick and very thin at an office) or on a marble floor. Did they get a pedal with no grips? How unfair.
3: The symbols are very responsive- the problem is the angle. I can barely tap the symbols to get the response even with the little sticks that came with the kit, it just has to be at the right angle.
4: Symbols are symbols. You don't roll around and hit symbols as if they are drums.
5: The interface is waaaaaaaaay more responsive than RB1 and RB2. (Mind you, I love all three games because of song selection)
6: Tool?
Go buy GHWT and RB2, full band kits- now.
DerekWilson - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
1) you can't physically hit the cymbals anytime -- if you are required to play something else and you miss those notes, you lose the streak. any time you are physically capable of inserting a hit on both cymbals (either when nothing is happening or one cymbal is being played and you can just add the other one in) you'll be fine and won't lose your streak. The point of what I wrote is that it is very difficult if not impossible /in many songs/ to actually activate star power without missing other notes. there are some songs in which it's super easy to activate star power at any time with no problem. But the songs in which it is difficult are the ones you need it the most ...2) i've tried it on carpet and floor with no luck. if there are grips beyond the pads on the bottom of the kick pedal then we did not get anything else (and neither did my parents who also bought ghwt and are havign trouble with the kick sliding).
3) i mean responsive as in feel not activation of the trigger.
4) everlong. other's as well, but that's the big one. also, rolls on cymbals are not uncommon. especially on the hi-hat.
5) i dont know what you mean.
6) yes, sorry i didn't mention tool. tool is awesome. i love tool. i would have bought the game just for those songs ... but not everyone would ;-)