Guitar Hero World Tour Band Bundle for PlayStation 3

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I preordered this game from Amazon, but impatience got the better of me, and I bought it from Wal Mart on opening day. My review is based on that band kit, but I will be taking it back today. Why, you ask?

I played this game through two songs (Sweet Home Alabama and The Joker) and realized something wasn't right. I'm normally a 95% player on medium (On Rock Band 2) and a 90% player on hard. Yet I was scoring in the 60's on medium. After checking my calibration settings, I went over into the training mode, and realized that I couldn't even make it through the basic training because the red pad was not registering every time, and was not registering hard hits at all!

I switched over to the song recording mode, and it verified that the red pad was intermittent at best, thus the reason it's going back, and I will hope the one from Amazon is a better copy.

Now, let me say, overall, I give the feel of the drums two very big thumbs up. The pads felt much better, and they were much quieter than I was used to. However they get a thumbs down on quality. And before you think that this is just one bad experience, check around. There is a very big issue, first with the sensitivity of the pads (Apparently a program is coming out to allow you to change the sensitivity using your home PC) and second with the pads working intermittently. This second issue (Which I experienced) seems to be the most concerning, and from other sites, it looks like I am just the tip of the iceberg. I'm reading about people having to go through 2, 3, even 4 drum sets to get a good one. Many of the stores are not sold out, but are returned out. And this apparently stems from the wires to the drum pads simply being held on with silicone which is not holding everything together.

I really really can't wait until they get this set completely fixed, but since Activision is requiring YOU to pay for shipping if it's broken out of the box, might want to delay, at least for now.

Also, since I bought this game based on the promise of cross-compatibility, it should be stated that the drums do NOT work with Rock Band 2 at this point! Hopefully it's just a matter of a patch coming out, but it's a little disconcerting.

*******EDIT 11/10/08*******

As I was still having problems with a cymbal, I did contact the nice support people, who sounded quite exasperated, but immediately sent me out a tuning kit. This kit allows you to modify the sensitivity of each drum pad (Or cymbal, or pedal) to where you want it to be. Too sensitive, it may trigger when you hit another pad. Not sensitive enough, it may not trigger it all.

Now, I previously stated that some sites had talked about loose wires causing problems. In an effort to be thorough, and since my cymbal wasn't working, I did take apart the cymbal to look at the sensor. At least for my cymbal, I noted that the wires were definately SOLDERED. I was relying on information previously supplied by someone else in stating that the wires were not soldered, and I still do not know the condition of the wires on the drum pads themselves. As I said, this was my individual yellow cymbal. Since then I have sent it back through the RMA process, which, yes, did require me to send it (insured and traceable!) at my own expense.

Also, as of this date, the GH:WT drums are still not working with Rock Band 2, which is still a bit frustrating!

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Let me say that I own Rock Band 2 as well as purchasing this first thing Sunday..I used to be a bigtime Guitar Hero fan.

However, I soon round out, like many others, that the drum kit doesnt work well. Not only that...it does a HORRIBLE job at letting you know how other people are doing, so you may randomly fail while playing through a song and you could be thinking that you were doing awesome. Not so. Dissapointment...now I'm stuck with this broken drum and they are asking that I pay shipping charges. Not going to happen. I'm going back to Rock Band 2 and never picking this up again.

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So we were out yesterday and we found a local store that was open late and they were selling GHWT on the day of release and we thought we could pick it up, so we did and then when we got home we started thinking wether to open the box or not?!

First this is maybe our 4th or 5th rythem/music game. we have GH3 RB1, and some other karoke games. Our greatest concern was that we dont need anymore instruments than we already have (3 plastic guitars, 5 mics and 1 wired drum set)

RB2 or GH-WT? it really depends how much your willing to spend because you can always get both!! but I think if you already have RB1 just pick up the RB2 standalone game the instruments though much improved dont warrent the investment from my point of view. GH-WT instruments on the other hand especially the drum kit have something relatively new to offer.

So the big question for us was do we open it or not? should we get RB2 instead? we decided to go ahead and open the box!! and we are glad we did, very positive experience so far.

The actual handson review broken down to diffirent sections:

1. standalone game: GH-WT is a great addition to the GH series with a lot of really great tracks, graphics are cleaner but cartonish as usual( which has some kind of special appeal to it). There is also the compostion mode which allows you to creat your own playble tracks, I looked into briefly and I would say it has a lot of potentialin it. There is also the added bonus of publishing your tracks online which may help uleash your inner composer.

I still havn't tried online play so maybe I'll update this section later.

Overall the game alone is really worth getting but the important part is wether to get the band kit or not?

2. Instruments:

A. The Guitar has a nice feel to it, it has been redesigned with removable face plates which can make it really customizable. they also added a slide bar which could be helpful for nailing some of the difficult solos.

B. Drum set: You get a wireless drum set that feels and looks really well made, its heavier than RB1 set(which makes it feel even more solid) but not too heavy though, and it Looks better than the new RB2 drum set. The presence of cymbals also adds a nice touch of authenticty and enhanced game play. I tried it with RB1 and until now its not compatible with it( treated like a regular controler not as a drum set)

c. Microphone: its your standerd wired rythem game mic nothing fancy here.

RB Vs GH instruments compatibility:

I only tried the GH kit on RB and doenst work, ill be cross testing soon and updating this review.

So overall its highly recommended if your into rythem games and if your not then maybe its time to get started! its really great for when you have friends or relatives over or maybe a family activety with your kids.

what are you waiting for? add to cart :)

Update: I faced some issues with the performance of the drum kit so I contacted activision and they sent me a cable to adjust sensitivety, now its working great no issues, so beafore you take it back give it a shot.

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Having enjoyed Guitar hero for ages, and Rock Band since its release, I found myself looking forward greatly to World Tour, in large part due to its new drumset peripheral with dedicated cymbals and an extra input. The infusion of a more party-centric set of instruments sounded good on paper. Thus, my pre-order of this game with early and full of anticipation.

Unfortunately it really failed to live up to most expectations I had, and in the end came across as a poor copy of the original Rock band. A lot of my dislike is preference based, but was enough so to sour me on the experience quite quickly.

The good:

--The drumset is solidly made, and sets up easily. Dedicated cymbal notes really are a nice concept as opposed to Rock Band's optional take. The pads have good bounce, and are much quieter than Rock Bands first set.

--Guitar looks great, and is setup well in terms of standard controller input, whammy bar, strum bar, etc.

--Open Bass notes, ability to change difficulty and skip songs mid-setlist, family friendly beginner mode. All good concepts for the genre.

--Stages. Each new stage was an interesting experience, and though the art style made me appreciate them less, they tended to be rather neat. Having the stage change shape for an encore made that energetic extra act all the more fun.

--Guitar continues to be fun as always, though since it's a group game they aren't always center stage anymore. Still got the best parts in my opinion.

--Vocals. Can't complain, works pretty much like Rock Band, but you can set off Star Power when you feel like it!

The bad:

--Both new instruments were not working right out of the box! Drums (red and yellow inputs dropped a lot of hits) and guitar (green fret did not work) being the focus of the game, should hopefully be good to go on arrival. Red Ocatane what happened!? Sure this will be fixed eventually, but it's not a limited problem right now.

--Cymbals. I thought I'd love these, but because they are locked in place with only a limited amount of adjustablity, it was hard to find a comfortable position to strike them, and I often found my shoulders hurting after a few songs. Still a nice concept, but could use work.

--Menu system. It looked rather slapped together in general, but most importantly was very hard to read on a regular television screen, with text often being so small I thought I was playing Dead Rising again.

--ShAkInG FrEtBoArD on the drums when you miss a note! This is VERY distracting. I have to pay attention to six commands spread over three limbs going in multiple directions, as well as armored notes broken by strong hits, and a fairly complicated method of setting off star power. I don't need more distractions making it hard to see what's coming at me if I slip up.

--Overcharting. On the drums even! It's the new Guitar Hero style, combined with more forgiving timing. I felt more like I was playing to keep the noise going, rather than contributing music. Obviously you're actually doing the first, but the game shouldn't make that obvious.

--Art direction. The character models, animation and lighting made this game look less appealing than the publicity stills led me to believe. Everything tended to be lit unattractively, and the animations were robotic and distracting. I couldn't really create an avatar that looked like me given time and in game money, whereas RB1 had me mostly good to go in minutes.

--The Tool levels. I wanted to like them, really, but they screamed of trying way too hard to be...whatever they were trying for, and just didn't pull it off with the engine. Some of the lighting effects worked well with other songs, but it was odd to have this stage pre-empt the avatars for the entire setlist. Another concept that was neat, but not that well done.

Having taken more to singing and drumming of late, I also didn't care for the more guitar friendly setlist, but that in particular is too much my own preference to hold against the aptly GH:WT.

In the end, I just couldn't get the kind of fun out of this series that I used to. Perhaps with updates and revisions they can get a new shine, and actually one-up Harmonix at their own game, but it's going to take a LOT of work to get there.

In the end, I had to return the game for a new set due to the instruments, only to find the same issues affecting my new drums, which inspired me to return the whole set for a refund and wait for the hardware problems to be resolved.

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I purchased the band pack from best buy the first day it was released and was disappointed that the guitar would randomly strum and didm't work correctly. also the red drum pad had to be hit much harder than the others to respond, which was throwing off my game.

Then i get a new guitar and game but keep the same drums because the reason didn't "qualify" for new ones even though I'd purchased the extended warranty. The new guitar worked fine but soon the drum's symbol's stopped working all together no matter how hard or soft i hit it. I then decided to return the whole thing and try out rock band 2. I'll have to see how it works.