Guitar Hero: World Tour

Reviewed by:
Gerasimos Manolatos

Price: $49.99–$189.99

The Skinny: The invasion of plastic instruments continues with Activision's latest installment—now with drums (sort of) and a microphone!

The Good: The new guitar features a snazzy touch pad that helps you to nail solos but it lacks a bit on the tactile end and you can't use it every song, so you likely won't end up using it much at all. Nevertheless, the controller looks and feels great and is probably the best plastic guitar under 100 dollars you can get right now. The game's 86 master tracks are a bit more varied than Rock Band 2's, especially with quirky additions like "La Bamba" and "Beat It." Although Joe Satriani's "Satch Boogie" takes home the Holy-Mother-Mary-My-Fingers-Are-Going-To-Die Award.

The Bad: While the drums feel quite authentic to play, they, to put it bluntly, don't work. Or at least, the ones we reviewed didn't. Neither did the replacement ones Activision sent. With a record of 0-2 and consumers up in arms on GH's message boards, we give the drums two broken sticks down. We recommend grabbing the $99 guitar bundle until things settle down.

You're In For a Fix: For those stuck with drum issues, Activision has put out a tuning kit that may alleviate some of the issues with the drums.

Buy, Rent, or Disembowel? Wait on taking the drum plunge, especially if you have Rock Band's laying around somewhere. As one of our co-workers put it, "I don't want to have to choose between having refrigerator space and plastic drum space."

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