Well, its that time again. With another new music game release comes another new peripheral. For your convenience, I took the liberty of purchasing the Guitar Hero: World Tour guitar controller. How does it stand up to the past axes? Read on to find out.
Right off the bat, we can see that this guitar is dead sexy. The body is painted to resemble reality rather than plastic, and even the tuning pegs up top stand out more. The whammy bar has been lengthened, which makes for more natural movement and allows optimal star power extraction from sustained notes. The strum bar is also changed slightly, the end is rounded a bit to help you keep a grip on it. This seemed to work, as I rarely had a finger slip through a 9 hour marathon, which included devilish strumming songs like ‘Assassin’ and ‘B.Y.O.B’. They’ve also taken a page out of the Strat controllers book and made it more quiet. However, where I feel that the Strat’s silence was actually detrimental to the gaming experience, this controller clicks just loud enough to put you in a comfortable spot.
You see that big ‘ol button below the strum bar? That’s the star power button. If you normally activate star power using the back button, you’ll warm up to it well, although it takes more effort than it looks to push it in all the way. If you only use the tilting, than it wont get in your way. Those two smaller buttons to either side are actually Start buttons, to pause the game. There are reports of accidentally pausing when trying to activate star power, but I had no such issue. In fact, I found the start buttons were embedded in the body so far that I had a bit of trouble finding them in the middle of a song. To the right of the whammy is the guide button. But what you can’t tell from the picture is that the guide button is in a raised column that acts as the directional arrows when moved around. While this is better for things like navigating menus, it becomes bothersome when you hit it while whammying, activating a directional movement that you can also use to strum, breaking your streak. Angriness ensues.
One of the Les Paul’s biggest issues was the detachable neck, which caused some people’s (a.k.a. me) fret buttons to not register presses, because it jostled easily. This time around, it snaps into place real good, and you wont have any problems unless you actually try to pull it out of it’s socket. The fret buttons themselves are exactly like the Les Paul’s, which means they function beautifully. (Although, strangely, they were not very broken in out of package like the Les Paul)
Okay, I know why you are really reading this, you want to know about the Neck Slider. So how does it perform? Actually, not as well as you would think. You can use the Slider to ‘wah’ notes and extract star power, but the actual whammy bar is infinitely better at filling up those bulbs. You can use it to strum as well, and even though this works fine most of the time, don’t expect to hit every single note in a song without touching the strum bar. The touted ‘slider sections’ in which you can tap the notes with the slider aren’t made any different, and you’d actually get an advantage by playing them with the normal fret buttons, since it is tough to tell the colors apart by feel. But at least it looks and feels cool.
Overall, this guitar is extremely responsive, and attractive to boot. It’s possibly the guitar to get for all you score heroes out there, because of the star power button and whammy bar. However, if you are just thinking of buying it for the touch slider, think again. You may not want to spend money on it if you have every other instrument peripheral out there, but if you are in dire need of a new guitar controller, I’d say this is the best one yet.
Side note:
I know you guys can’t wait for the full game review, and I AM working on it. Just give me a bit of time. Its a gargantuan game, and I want to report all the details for the most picky buyers. Oh, and yes, there will be comparisons……
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