Back in October, when it was our 10 year old's birthday, we wanted to give him a present: Rock Band 2 or Guitar Hero Word Tour. To find out which would be better, I scoured the Net for comparison reviews, I grilled the guy at EB Games, I even increased the amount of fibre in my diet, so that I could make a good clear-headed decision.
Fast forward till now. We have both Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero WT. So much for fibre.
Our original RB2 drums broke. Our replacement drum kit also showed signs of starting to break, which is why we scooped up Guitar Hero World Tour and try its version of a drum kit.
So here we are, both games. As far as we see it, here's how the two compare:
Guitars
First off, I may be biased. I'm a Fender Strat guy. Played 'em since the age of 13. Love 'em. Rock Band's guitar is designed right after the Fender Stratocaster. However, beyond that, the fret buttons are flush to the fretboard, giving it more of a guitar mechanic because you are searching for a fret, not a button to push. The strum bar is also very quiet and responsive, however, the tone switch is right below the strum bar, so we're constantly knocking it down to its lowest position. This is annoying but not huge.
The Guitar Hero guitars are very toy-like. They've made an attempt at modelling them after Gibson's guitars, but its in shape only. The strum bar is very loud and clunky. I'm not a fan of that, but there are worse design sins.
Advantage: Rock Band
Drums
Rock Band's drums are very easy to learn. You hit the circles, and the kick pedal once in awhile. But they are very flimsy. Not good.
Guitar Hero's drum kit is built like a tank. Very solid. However, one of us missed the cymbals once and hit the Xbox directional navigating button which broke off. Not a big deal, but still a minor design flaw. But the addition of cymbals are a real plus, makes the drum experience more life like.
Advantage: Guitar Hero
Game story
Rock Band has you create your band then hit the road to various gigs. You can hire a roadie, tour manager, even a tattoo artist. You earn fans and money as you continue to open more cities and gigs. But there's a lot of reading, its not jazzed up very well. There's times where we're just sitting there reading a screen.
Guitar Hero has a collection of very humorous cut scenes. There's not as much going on as Rock Band, but Guitar Hero seems to be a little more entertaining. You earn clothes, money, instruments, which is good enough for us.
Advantage: Guitar Hero
Game play
I get the sense that the Rock Band designers did their homework. They must've played a lot of Guitar Hero and noted what they didn't like. The interface as you play is very well laid out. The "highways" are deliberately simplistic. There's also a big ol' meter to the left, letting you know how you're doing. Its so well designed that you can just concentrate on the highway and let your peripheral vision keep track of the rest.
Guitar Hero is very busy. There's a tiny gauge in the upper left that you can try to look at mid-song. Good luck with that. Also, you get messages like "50 note streak!" or "Star power ready", but you have to take your eye off your highway to read it. Not as clean. However, the background CGI singers are funnier in Guitar Hero.
Advantage: Rock Band
Overall Experience
I get the sense that the family prefers Guitar Hero. We like the way that we get challenged to an "encore", in addition to the animated sequences. Sometimes when the crowd really cheers, the camera shakes. Funny little touches like that often leave us wanting to play more. Guitar Hero is a harder game to put down. It seems funnier.
Rock Band is far superior with its gameplay screen lay-out. We just wish the Rock Band design team had a "class clown" in its midst.
Advantage: Guitar Hero
I have to mention that our kids are going through a Guitar Hero effect. My oldest boy is showing interest in making real music with a real guitar. We have a few guitars in the house, so I bought him one of his own and I'm giving him some basic lessons. The 5 year-old also plays the drum kit with the Xbox turned off, just playing drums.
With one playing guitar, and the other drawn to drums, I wonder if they could be the next Jonas Brothers?
11 comments:
You broke your GHWT drums already too? Seriously, are you using sledgehammers for drum sticks?
Someone must've hit the directional switch dead-on with a drum stick. I saw it lying on the floor.
Actually the drum stick holder also snapped off. My 10 year old forgot to collapse the holder and hit it with a drum stick and it flew off.
These are so minor, that I'm just going to crazy glue these things back on. Not worth the effort to take 'em in.
We really dig the drums though. Built like a tank!
Wow, I wish I had such trivial stuff to be worried about. Is this what my life would like working for the city?
You do have trivial stuff to worry about, they're called SMARTBoards.
I've never seen such a flimsy, poor-excuse for technology as that sad-sack device. Makes me ashamed of technical devices in general.
The way I see it you owe your current well-to-do lifestyle to SMARTBoards. Wasn't it testing SMARTBoards that gave you your big break? I guess all that money has clouded your memory... too bad you didn't start your career doing QA for Guitar Hero. Oh wait, but then you probably never would've kissed a girl/boy.
Hey, I kissed a girl and I liked it. (now I put that song in your head, ha!!)
Yes, testing SMART products gave me my big break because it was such sorry excuse for "technology" I learned how to deal with massive amounts of defects.
SMART's new philosophy for guarding against defect discovery is to hire knuckle-dragging cro-magnons like yourself. Your lucky if you can find the men's room, let alone technical issues with that thing you call a SMARTBoard.
I guess your legacy lives on in the Testing Dept. I saw this on their wall the other day, some kind of bug defect grading scale:
1. a 'Gerry' - minor bug, annoying but tolerable.
2. a 'Hutch' - major bug, must be eliminated immediately. Is counter-productive and is detrimental to company moral.
3. a 'Royal Gerry Hutchinson' - a show-stopper, company could go bankrupt or worse be unionized.
Those words of anger come from the ladies in the marketing department. I see they are still bitter about not getting enough equal time from the Hutch.
I said, "Ladies, there's only so much of the Hutch to go around!" But sooner or later, feelings get hurt.
'The Hutch' is referring to himself in 3rd person. Should we be worried? Back to the post topic for a moment (as interesting as SMART alumnus banter can be)—I cannot bring myself to play Guitar Hero OR Rock Band being a struggling guitarist that plays in admittedly non-heroic and yet chord-strikingly realistic fashion. There is just something, I don't know, wrong, about pretending to be a rock star with a device that best resembles a keytar from the 80s, Nash the Slash style.
I just hope they don't come out with 'Job Hero' or 'Life Hero' lest we raise yet another generation of kids with useless skills, saving finger dexterity and wicked fast eye-hand coordination.
Major flashbacks with your "keytar" comment.
Ah yes, I can hear you struggling with your guitar like it was yesterday. You were in your basement dwelling strumming a lovely tune 'Crimson and Clover, over and over' and over and over and over and over...
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