I rented Guitar Hero: World Tour over the long weekend last week and played through the guitar campaign, a big chunk of the bass campaign, and a little of the drums. My wife checked out the vocals for a bit and we tried a little online. I’m probably expecting to much after playing Rock Band 2 for a few months, but overall, I’m found myself frustrated and annoyed with GH:WT. Before I start ripping on all the stuff I did not like there were a few cool parts.

– I like playing the bass and having open notes to play (with no fret buttons pressed down). It made it feel a little more like playing a real bass.
– I also liked how you can stop after any song in the middle of a set in the campaign and it saved your spot. It would nice to have that for some of the 8 and 12 song sets in Rock Band 2’s tour mode.
– The other nice little touch was the ability to change difficulty mid set if you’re having trouble. It came in hand when I was playing drums and hit a song with a lot of bass pedal action.

While there were a few bright spots I was mostly just glad to when I finished the guitar tour and returned to Rock Band 2.
– The overall graphical style of the game drove me crazy. I much prefer Rock Band’s simpleness. I know that is just personal preference but it still bugged me.
– The song selection in GH:WT is lousy. Even my wife asked where all the good songs were. I probably only knew half of the songs in GH:WT and the half I did not know were not that fun to play. in Rock Band 2 the songs I did not know were still pretty fun.
– Even on songs I know and like the note charts feel weird. Like I’m not so much playing the song as trying to hit notes to the rhythm of the guitar. Rock Band 2 does a much better job of making you feel like you could actually be playing the song in my opinion.
– The music creation portion is brutally hard to use. Unless you’re really wanting to make your own song in GH:WT and have a lot of time and patience it is not worth the effort.

Unless you’re a hardcore Guitar Hero fan I’d recommend skipping GH:WT and getting Rock Band 2.