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Guitar Hero World Tour (October 26)

The Scoop: Guitar Hero World Tour; Genre: music/rhythm; By: Neversoft (PS3, Xbox 360), Vicarious Visions (Wii), Budcat Creations (PS2); From: Activision; For: PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii; Rating: Teen

Info: The Guitar Hero series finally catches up to Harmonix's Rock Band with its first band-in-a-box edition, one-upping the competition with the world's first wireless, velocity-sensitive, six-piece drum kit.

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Matt: Rock Band was probably the reason I started getting nightly requests to party at my house, but Guitar Hero III has it beat for solo shredding. Guitar Hero World Tour's mellower, crowd-friendly soundtrack (Sting? Fleetwood Mac? Paul McCartney & Wings?) has me on the fence. While the new touch-sensitive guitar controller and six-piece drum kit look tasty, the game is missing an equivalent to Rock Band 2's most important feature: the ability to import virtually all of the original game's songs. It's unfortunate that Guitar Hero World Tour has no such option.

Darren: Though I haven't had the time to sit in on a proper jam session yet, a couple things in World Tour look intriguing to a faux rocker like me. For starters, the gear is inching closer and closer to real. I mean, now we're getting deep drum kits, a guitar that attempts to feel more like the real thing, and a recording-studio mode that lets us remix and release tunes. That got my attention. On the other hand, Matt, you also hit on something that's really cheesing me off: The battle lines being drawn between Guitar Hero and Rock Band 2 are getting ree-dic-u-lous. I can have AC/DC only in one game, and I can find all of Metallica's tunes only in the other. At least there's some good news, with the Xbox 360 version's limited support for Rock Band 2 peripherals. For example, if you plug in the four-pad Rock Band drum kit, Guitar Hero: World Tour will compress its drum track from five to four buttons (Guitar Hero's drums have five pads).