Guitar Hero World Tour [X360]

In many ways, Guitar Hero: World Tour is like the younger, brattier brother to Rock Band 2, full of in-your-face attitude, aggressive competition and always one beat away from picking on your performance. And like your little brother, he's just better at almost everything -- or at least thinks he is. Guitar Hero is back in all its splendor, though not without some flaws, as it attempts to be the master of all music games.

New to the Guitar Hero series is its full-band set up, featuring a wireless drum kit and guitar alongside a wired mic. The drums are very well made, quiet and with raised cymbals that make all the difference in drumming versus playing Simon. The guitar feels better than any other plastic instrument on the market, outdueling Rock Band's mushy Stratocaster knock-off. The gear is simply great.

More than gimmicky hardware, these new instruments actually affect the gameplay; for example, new transparent notes can be played by simply tapping on the touch-sensitive slide bar on the neck of the guitar. Naturally, none of this is a real surprise, as RedOctane has been making quality instruments for some time now, but it's nice to see it in practice.

After starting World Tour, your first stop is the Rock Star Creator, the new character customization tool used to build your rock star avatar and design your own instruments. While not as robust as, say, Second Life, it goes a step past Rock Band by allowing you to tweak weight, face shape, nose bridges, etc. As you beat gigs, you'll unlock new wearable gear and new variants for your instruments, though having to buy items you've just unlocked is a drag.

The core of Guitar Hero: World Tour is simple: Jam through a series of gigs around the world, playing pre-determined set lists to open more gigs to play more sets, and so forth. There are no specific challenges, though some gigs need to be purchased before play. This aspect of the game is a bit underdeveloped, as despite its attempt at being open-ended, it's rather straightforward and leaves few options.

Of course, no one's buying the game to manage a band; they've come to rock, and here's where World Tour excels as a wonderfully authentic Guitar Hero experience that's both deep and accessible. For casual players, songs can be skipped and difficulty changed at will per player, while the more hardcore can focus on cash rewards for great play or dig into stats to see exactly where they're having trouble. On higher difficulties, World Tour is a more complex music game than Rock Band 2, adding in elements like a sixth note for bassists (an open strum), and freeform vocal segments where singers match pitch for bonus points.

The truly daring can shred it out against the rabid Guitar Hero community. World Tour offers local and online co-op and band play, a Battle mode where you attack the other player with power-ups, and the good old-fashioned Face-Off. Nothing is more eye-opening than struggling on a Hard song while watching your buddy grind Expert. It's a shame you can't earn anything but bragging rights in these modes, but they are a lot of fun.

A music game is only as good as its music, though, and World Tour rocks an 86-song set that reaches far and wide. Recent hits like Linkin Park's "What I've Done" and 30 Seconds to Mars' "The Kill" balance older tunes like Bon Jovi's "Livin' On A Prayer" and Pat Benatar's "Heartbreaker," leaving plenty of hard rock like Black Label Society's "Stillborn" and Ted Nugent's "Stranglehold" for guitar fans and, of course, Van Halen's shred-fest "Hot For Teacher." As its name implies, Guitar Hero: World Tour emphasizes strong guitar play over all else, with some songs picked predominantly for their guitar solo opportunities versus the generally recognizable party favorites of Rock Band 2.

Unfortunately, in the quest to keep true to Guitar Hero, the interface suffers. Every important element of the song is tucked away on a Rock Meter to the side of the screen, so if you want to see how much star power you have or how close you are to failing out of the song, you need to look up and away from the music highway -- not a deal breaker during solo play, but problematic if you're jamming with friends. When playing in a band, individual performances are smaller slivers underneath this meter, making them difficult to follow. Worse yet, there's no way to tell how you're doing on a song as star ratings are handed out once you're done. Feedback is important, and in this case, Rock Band 2 does a much better job keeping the game transparent to its audience.

Graphically, World Tour looks like a crisper version of Guitar Hero III, but what really shines are the character animations. Certain songs have specific animations tagged for the roles, so a lead singer will bust a move like Michael Jackson during "Beat It" or look into the camera during a key moment of "Crazy Train." Using headliners like Sting and Billy Corgan is fun, especially when they're miscast. You haven't lived until you've watched Ozzy Osbourne belt out "La Bamba."

Of course, you could always try to write your own rock classic using the game's innovative Music Studio. The suite of recording tools is an impressive step forward into the world of user-generated content, a very deep, robust music creation engine similar in many ways to the legit recording program Pro Tools. That being said, it's so unwieldy that maybe 1% of all gamers will use it, and only a fraction of those will likely make something worth a listen. The average player may get frustrated with the complexity required to craft a quality song, while the absence of lyrics and poor overall quality of most user-generated stuff makes it hard to want to add any of these tracks to the already-strong set list. We'd love to be proven wrong, however.

Either way, virtual musicians looking for a different way to rock will no doubt be pleased with Guitar Hero: World Tour, especially with the new instruments and gameplay mechanics. We played with hardcore and casual rockers alike, all of which had loads of fun regardless of what songs we were playing. Whether you want a good time with friends or a tense battle of the bands, Guitar Hero: World Tour offers an unparalleled experience. Just check your ego at the door.