Guitar Hero World Tour vs. Rock Band 2

As far as the games themselves, it appears that both sets of developers have gotten my angry letters.  The gist of these complaints is that Guitar Hero is generally too hard, and Rock Band is generally too easy.

With the exception of two songs, the entire set of the original Rock Band can be played on Expert by a monkey.  Many of the songs are straightforward 4-beat songs with power chords.  Most of the chords in 98% of the songs are only two-notes, and very predictable.  Hammer-ons and pull-offs seemed to be harder to accomplish than Guitar Hero, so it was difficult to really nail the more complicated solos using a “legacy” guitar controller..  Rock Band 2’s song list now dips more into the 70s and 80s, and the songs are more challenging to play, and feels as satisfying as Guitar Hero 3’s songs.

On the flip side, Guitar Hero 3’s song list had a lot more technical pieces that really had your fingers moving.  Many of the songs featured had complicated solos with tons of hammer-ons and pull-offs (which were very forgiving, and alot easier to hit).

Guitar Hero’s developers have toned down the difficulty quite a bit. Two new difficulty levels have been added, which adds more granularity to the learning curve, but favors the n00b.  There is now a level below Easy called “Beginner” in which you don’t even have to hold down any fret buttons… just strum to the beat.  This is so easy that my ADD-inflicted son had plenty of brain cycles left over so he could yap away while I’m trying to thrash on Expert.

Guitar Hero has taken another cue from Rock Band. Power Notes don’t disappear when you’re in Star Power mode… meaning that you can finally prolong your Star Power by landing a difficult lick.  Using Star Power doesn’t save you from failing a song (in solo mode) as it does in Rock Band, however.

In Guitar Hero 3, Hard difficulty was quite an accomplishment, and really prepared you for Expert Level (honestly, if you could conquer GH3’s Hard level, then Rock Band would not be a problem for you).  Hard level had plenty of satisfying 3-note chords, and Expert pretty much just added more notes between the same chords.  Now in GHWT you don’t get the same experience until you are in Expert mode.  In the beginning of the game, Hard only has two-note chords, which feels a lot like the original Rock Band.  Expert introduces the complicated chords.  I feel that there is a very large learning curve between Hard and Expert now, whereas GH3 has a more linear skill progression.  Now you are either a total shredder or a wuss.