Guitar Hero IV - October 08 - Page 7

Deca · 10-29-2008, 11:45 AM

I was hyped about this game based on the drum controller, and after having it for a day I am ready to return it. I have never been so disappointed with a purchase in my life.

Played through on expert guitar and 99% of the charts were so boring I felt like I had to struggle to stay awake. There were only 2 or 3 songs I didn't pass on my first try, and got them on my second or third. Even most of the difficult charts just weren't fun or interesting, and there were only 4 or 5 total that I had any sort of desire whatsoever to play more than once.

Though drums might redeem it. My set was screwed up but I expected it to be, and figured I would just wait for them to do something about it. In the meantime it wasn't stopping me from passing songs, just getting anywhere near decent scores on them, so i could still check out the charts. Playing on expert again, pretty much every chart I had been looking forward to playing was just a pain in the ass, awkwardly charted, not fun at all. Everlong was actually painful because of how poor the rebound is on the kit (I don't know why people keep saying it bounces better than the RB drums). Assassin was pretty much the only drum chart I really had any fun with.

But yeah, I really wanted to like this game. I was assuming it would at LEAST be mediocre and enjoyable to some degree, but it's honestly the worst music game I have ever played :/ I feel cheated.

Jinx · 10-29-2008, 04:43 PM

1. Clunky song interface (sometimes you can't even read the shorter artist names when it displays after you've picked a song but before the notes actually come down due to a large ugly graphic on that side). Also, I hope you didn't enjoy songs sorted by difficulty (of sorts). That ain't happening in Quickplay now and it barely happens in Career.

2. Loading times for the main screen? I could understand the first time it loads up, but you have to wait to load it after you get out of Options or XBox Live? Especially since it takes my console (newer model 360) about six seconds for that, it's really annoying.

3. Song Creator: If you're getting the game mostly for this: STOP RIGHT NOW! STOP! This thing is so castrated that it feels like a demo more than an actual finished tool. With the limits on song length (3:00) and a limit on your note count, kiss your dreams of making a challenging longer song goodbye.

While you're at it, kiss you dreams of making a good song goodbye, too. Lead guitar can't be assigned chords (WTF?), the new complex sustain notes, or HO/POs if they're more than, say, a quarter measure away. Rhythm guitar cannot do HO/POs at all and the Keyboard track is apparently based on those ones you can pick up at the Dollar General for $5, because there IS NO polyphony. Have fun pecking out such endearing tracks like "I Dropped My Dolly In The Dirt" and "Row Row Row Your Boat", 'cause you're not getting anything much better than that out of the Keyboard.

The guitars also cannot share their full catalog of effect pedals with each other (amazing, since last I checked a rhythm guitarist COULD just plug someone else's pedals into their guitar). Oh, and you can't change effects during a song, so you can't go from clean to DistorteD to what-have-you (this also applies for the keyboard track. No piano sound to strings or anything).

And then there is the (hollow) threat of them pulling all licensed tracks from GH Tunes, which seems both impossible and Draconian; they're either going to pay people to sift through each song and find licensed tracks or they're going to just cut everything that MIGHT be licensed through some sort of user-based flagging system. However it happens, it'll be pretty funny to watch.

4. The guitar songs apparently have two difficulties: Way too easy or overdressed with retarded patterns. I've yet to find a comfortable middle or even something that's hard and not stupid, and I've had every guitar-based US game save Rock The 80s and Aerosmith.

5. They've done little to nothing with the timing window, from what I've noticed. This, however, is still up for debate, as it seems like the timing window varies from track to track (seriously, someone try Freak On A Leash and Satch Boogie, then One Way Or Another and tell me there isn't some sort of change). D:<

6. Although I didn't purchase the new guitar with the slider neck, both my friend who did and the Gamestop employee I purchased the game from said they had lots of weird trouble with it due to the slider such as phantom hits and the like.

7. If you have RB2 (especially with a lot of DLC), you're going to notice that GH:WT has more than a few songs in common with it. Not even the popular ones either, though. GH seems to have copied some of the weirder less popular tracks as well. I'm not you, so I don't know how you feel about it, but when I hear a crappy track in one game, it goes without saying that I don't want to pay actual money for a game that supplies me with the same crappy tracks. :\

FOR THOSE WHO SAY TL;DR=

Bottom line, if you don't have RB2 but didn't absolutely hate RB1, give RB2 a try this time around. While it doesn't feel like a full-fledged sequel, they fixed the (arguably) most-hated aspects of RB1 and churned out a superior product. I rate GH:WT as less than GH3, which means two thumbs down rather than one.

If you have RB2 already and were considering GH:WT, either rent it or spend that cash on DLC for RB. :P

afex.racer_X · 10-29-2008, 11:52 PM

Thanks man, for writing that out. That pretty much decided it for me. I had a feeling the game was going to be shit so I'm not even going to bother with it.

bg_hojo72 · 10-30-2008, 12:02 AM

Drum impressions after playing the demo at Best Buy...

both cymbals weren't very responsive. keeping in mind that this was an in-store demo unit, i don't take this as a sign that the drums are flimsy or not built properly. demo units are lucky to have working mics after a month. plus it didn't have a bass pedal. it was on auto-bass, similar to early RB demo kits. but everyone seems to have a consensus about that...built sturdy, slides too much.

i don't like having to hit both cymbals to activate star power. there simply isn't an opportunity to do it during songs with constant drum rolls. plus, they put in RB-esque fills in songs anyways, and they're placed in the dumbest spots ever. every time i've ever felt dis-connected from the music while doing OD fills or BRE's in Rock Band...they were never as bad as the few drum fill sections in this game.

like me, you probably heard about the game supporting the RB drums and its lack of a 5th tom and wondered "How're they gonna do that? wouldn't that make everything radically different?" well, after playing 4 songs and hitting the blue tom less than 10 times, it became REEEEEEEEALLLLLLLLY easy to see how RB drums will work on this. now, i realize that there are going to be some songs that will likely use the blue tom heavily, similar to how certain songs in RB feature some heavy snare action on the green pad throughout. but really now. i was expecting something exciting to come out of an extra pad added to the controller, and something around 10 hits spread across a 4 song set was all you got for me?

now, i don't much care for what they did to try to differentiate themselves from RB, but i do credit Neversoft for at least attempting to differentiate themselves gameplay-wise from RB. they could have easily done what they did with GH3 and made no attempt whatsoever at making anything remotely different from what was laid before them. and it is nice that you actually play drum charts in their entirety as opposed to being forced to skip over whole measures in Rock Band (or cheese the system and hoard Overdrive to purposely skip hard sections). and the one time i encounters sustains at the end of a chart, i said "Wow, that was a shockingly brilliant way to chart a rhythmless end of song spam-cymbal-roll while staying true to the music."

so, overall, GH:WT drumming as enjoyble, but not without flaws. i'd probably say i enjoy drumming on RB more, but not so much as to say there's no point in playing WT for drums.

...wow, i'm surprised i had that much to say about playing 4 songs, one of them being the shitty Linkin Park song.

Deca · 10-30-2008, 06:46 AM

Your opinion will change the more drum charts you play...i promise. After playing Feel the Pain and Freak on a Leash I was happy with the charts, they seemed fun, and Feel the Pain was a little more involved than the RB chart. However, the more i played the more horrible stupid charts I found. There is nothing remotely enjoyable about charts like Soul Doubt and Dammit, which I guess are supposed to be the hard ones, and there are a ton of mind numbingly dull charts. This is all in reference to the expert charts, of course.

The Tool charts are counter-intuitive and never seem to really line up with the songs properly. I know Tool's drummer is crazy, and switches rhythms and time signatures and stuff constantly, but the charts were just a pain in the ass (also the tool songs are WAY the hell too long).

Assassin is probably the best chart in the game, though its introduction seems like it could have been charted better.

The biggest problem with a lot of the charts is poor kick patterns. Stuff that might not be as bad on a real kit, where your kick rebounds, just comes out horrible and stupid in this game.

Long story short, most of the time I spent playing GH4 I was wishing I was playing RB2.

alexquick · 10-31-2008, 02:12 AM

True there are a lot of shitty songs that are totally not fun, but nearly all the Death Magnetic songs are a total blast. If you feel like spending another $20 hahaha.

I actually haven't even taken the drums out yet. I'll get there eventually.

deathrazor · 10-31-2008, 10:49 AM

But you can just play the Death Magnetic songs on guitar/bass on GH3....

alexquick · 10-31-2008, 11:53 AM

good point.

deathrazor · 10-31-2008, 10:55 PM

And from what I've seen the GH3 UI is so much better anyway. Still haven't played WT.

Ben Speirs · 11-08-2008, 07:03 AM

I bought this yesterday on release (I'm in the UK remember =D) and it is pretty bad. The career mode is probably a slight improvement from the same old "play this set, encore, play next set etc." formula, but couldn't the songs be slightly more themed? It is World Tour after all, so I expected places to have maybe one song relevant to that area.

I also love how you earn cash now; but I'm never going to spend any of it cos I just don't care about making my own "dream rocker". I used to enjoy purchasing bonus tracks but even they're gone.

And the Rock Band equipment doesn't work on Wii?! Plain sucks. I'm not going to shell out another load of cash for a guitar and drum kit that I'm only going to use with this one game. I'd rather just wait until Rock Band 2 comes over here.

At least Wii got DLC. Shame the songs so far are pretty uninspiring. Another Way To Die? Come on...

I tried making a song too - but if I'm going to spend any time at all in this mode, I don't want my output song to be a shitty midi. I downloaded some songs and realised how terrible this mode is.

So overall it sucks. And the "Official" Nintendo Magazine over here gave it 92/100, claiming that it destroys Rock Band in every aspect. Screw you.

Oni-91 · 11-08-2008, 08:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ben Speirs

So overall it sucks. And the "Official" Nintendo Magazine over here gave it 92/100, claiming that it destroys Rock Band in every aspect. Screw you.

The Wii version of Rock Band. Like the others, but it came out later, with worse graphics and no DLC. They gave it 68. (On another note, they gave DS:HP 86.)