Game Review: Guitar Hero World Tour

Jose Moreno - Newsday

Guitar Hero, the game that killed karaoke nights and launched a million armchairs, released its latest version, Guitar Hero: World Tour, available for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, and Nintendo Wii.

This time around wannabe musicians get a slew of instruments to rock out on. The guitar riffs too complex? Try the smooth bass. Bass to easy? How about a couple of percussion solos with the drums. Not rhythmically inclined? Grab the microphone, and belt your heart out. Plop spectators on your flanks singing backup and beer and pretzels on the coffee table, and Guitar Hero: Word Tour becomes a living room mosh pit.

Guitar Hero: World Tour marks the fourth entry in a series that attempts to one-up the Rock Band series with more sophisticated play modes and a full complement of streamlined instruments.

The redesigned guitar's whammy bar has been extended to make it easier to grab and hammer, and the strum bar is both wider and quieter so you can theoretically rocket through power-rhythm stuff like Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train" or Joe Satriani's "Satch Boogie" without burying the music in a blizzard of teeth-juddering clicks.

Top that off with a tap pad that lets players play notes straight or "tap-strum" like they are slapping strings on an electric bass.

The drum set adds a whole new splashy vertical dimension. Rock Band's drum kit was four pads and a kick pedal, but World Tour adds cymbals to the mix along with velocity sensitivity (how hard or fast you strike the pads) so you can actually vary the sounds the drums make.

The game's innovative new Music Studio lets players express their musical creativity by giving them access to a full complement of tools to create digital music from scratch, utilizing all of the controllers, and then play their compositions in the game.

Composers will be able to share recordings with friends online through GHTunes in which other gamers can download their unique compositions and play an endless supply of unique creations.

As for the actual track list included in the disc, gaming musicians will be jamming to a wide variety of 87 hits like The Guess Who's "American Woman," System of a Down's "B.Y.O.B," Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger", Michael Jackson's "Beat It" and Ritchie Valens "La Bamba."

Guitar Hero: World Tour will be available in a couple of different packages. Players can opt for the complete $190 band package which includes the game, a guitar, bass, microphone, and drum set. Players can also choose just the "guitar kit" version for $100 which comes with just the guitar and game.

Since World Tour is backwards compatible with older Guitar Hero peripherals, players can also choose to grab the game all by it's lonesome for $60.

For players needing to relive their "Jesse's Girl" days or are just want to try to reincarnate the Jimi Hendrix experience from their own living room, Guitar Hero: World Tour is just a guitar riff away.

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