Guitar Hero -- World Tour Guitar Mystery Images

Erik Johnson writes "I noticed something interesting tonight when re-tolerating that Guitar Hero: World Tour trailer and took a few screens, nothing solid of course, just some intriguing visuals on the alleged new guitars for the game. Whoever directed the commercial obviously had strict instructions to avoid having any clear shots of the guitar controllers. Get a closer look at the images."

Pitch bending

[meadowsoft]

I assume that the "slider bar" on the frets below the buttons is exactly that. Hold your finger down and slide it up and down to adjust the pitch. I envision a satisfying, StrongBad-esque "breeeeaaaaaaaaaoooooooooowrwrwr" happening as a result.

I play guitar

[kellyb9]

In my experience, people who feel the need to bash this game because it's not like playing a "real guitar" usually aren't that good at "real guitar playing". I play this game, and I play the guitar. If nothing else, I see at least one positive to come out of this game as far as real guitar playing goes. This is that you learn how to move your fingers more independently. Maybe eventually, they will be able to improve upon the design so it becomes closer and closer to the real thing, but in the mean time, I think they are doing a great job at putting out an entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable game for musicians and non-musicians alike.

Re:Drums

[flibuste]

Let's say it helps a lot to be a drummer. You have the body, hands and arm position right to start with on the drum kit (still akward though), a developped sense of rythm (which others have too of course), you already know most of the basic beats and you already have independence of hands and feet.
In a sense, yes, it's "overcoming ones own natural lack of rhythm" but that's what playing *anything* is to start with.
Having said that, RB is extremely frustrating if you actually are a drummer: there is zero room for interpretation (beside the small solo you do at overdrive time), the drum kit has the drum pads positionned weirdly and no cymbal. It sucks when you want to do freeplay as, although you're adding to the drum section, you lose at the game because you're hitting notes you shouldn't.
Interestingly enough though, the drums are much more close to real drum playing that the plastic buttonized guitar is. You can actually learn something from the drums. You won't from the guitar.
I'm looking forward to see what GH did with this new drumkit.

Re:Drums

[ericvids]

That's what I thought when I started playing Drummania (a Konami arcade game where Rock Band's drum portion was loosely based on).

Then it got really tiring. Literally. I was struggling to finish songs because my arms are getting tired with the fast rolls. I'm getting callouses all over my hands. I'm getting leg cramps from hitting the bass pedal too fast. Etc.

That is, until I met a few people playing the game who taught me some basics that you do on the real drums. Things like basic posture and stick control, bounce-rolling, perididdling, the heel-and-toe technique for hitting the pedal, etc.

Then the game became infinitely easier.

The real problem is that games like these do NOT actually teach you those basics at all; they just assume that you will learn it intuitively after playing the game for hours, but it's not really the case for some people, e.g. me.

So, yeah, you definitely need MORE information to play drums on a rhythm game like this than just "hit the pad corresponding to the color of the note". It's a totally different game than, say, DDR, where you don't NEED to learn how to dance to play it.