Guitar Hero World Tour: The Best, The Worst, and Everything in Between
by Derek Wilson on October 31, 2008 7:10 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Drum Hardware Way Ups and Way Downs
Downs first: physical problems. Yes we have them.
First and foremost: the kick pedal sucks. And beyond that it sucks worse than the RB kick pedal. There is no excuse here. Allow me to elaborate.
The pedal is built out of a much more flexible plastic than the RB pedal. This will probably mean less breakage as it has some give to it. On the down side, if you thought the RB pedal was squishy, you haven't seen anything yet. The GHWT pedal is ... I'm having a hard time thinking of polite words to replace sucks. Sorry. It just sucks.
Unlike the RB kick pedal, it doesn't have any sort of anchor or attachment to the rest of the kit, and it doesn't have any of its own anchoring devices. This means it will slide away from you. Horribly. No matter what. Our solution is seriously to turn the kick pedal sideways with the base facing left (for a right footed person) and step on the base with your left foot and hold it there. Then play the top of the pedal with the ball of your right foot. Obviously you play off the pedal, very literally. It works, but it's still not anywhere near ideal. If you want to build something, you can make a more permanent solution like nailing it to a platform that extends under the drum throne.
Here's another problem. Because of the flexibility of the pedal and the fact that it only has one point of contact with the bottom of the pedal (where the sensor is), it wobbles from side to side very easily. This is not something you need to deal with while playing a kick drum. A little off center and it's all over. Fast double hits are MUCH harder with this kick pedal and I would not recommend it for anyone. Ever.
Okay, enough about the pedal.
We've heard about the fact that people are complaining that some GHWT kits have sensitivity issues, that Activision has confirmed this, and that they will be releasing a kit or instructions or something to tune sensitivity. We may have this issue, and it might be tainting our view of the rest of the kit. Our trouble is that when playing the pads, sometimes the cymbals trigger due to vibration. And we don't play hard and never had this issue with any RB kit. At the same time, if we don't play the pads hard enough they don't register. So it's nearly impossible to play songs well even if you don't miss a note with either hits not registering or cymbal hits showing up because of vibration. It's really frustrating.
So we'll deal with that, and I will write a blog post at some later date to elaborate on whether or not adjusting the sensitivity of the pads fixes it. We hope it does, but that still doesn't fix the layout issues and other usability issues we have with the GHWT drum controller implementation.
So all that sounded pretty bad. And it kind of is. There's just no getting around that. But we've got one more really great thing to report on. The saving grace of the GHWT kit if you will.
It's got a midi input. This means you can connect an electronic drum kit to it and play GHWT with it. Now, we haven't tested this yet ourselves, but I should get the chance to use a Roland TD-8 on it soon. Again, future blog post. The other thing we suspect will work that may or may not is using the midi input with Rock Band 2. If this is, in fact, possible, our recommendation will be that anyone with an electronic kit should pick up the GHWT drums to use as a midi-to-XBox converter.
Yes Please? (Roland TD-12, image courtesy wikipedia.org)
This could also mean easy cheating for GHWT though, as you can hook a drum machine or sequencer up to GHWT and very easily program in a song. Again, this is untested by us. But the functionality is there. We'll definitely post something when we get the equipment we need to test it.
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Desultory - Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - link
I too have some issues with the drum kit and I also had problems with my first guitar. In fact, I ended up taking it back to the store for a full replacement. My down strum broke the first night and the cymbals were at once so responsive that hitting the drum pads activated them and also so unresponsive when I hit them. I'm not a "real" drummer, but I can play about half the RB songs on expert and all of them on hard and I was finding I couldn't hold a streak at all in GHWT. It was seriously ticking me off.After the exchange, I still had an unresponsive yellow cymbal. It was "dead" on one side...no problem though, switched it with the orange cymbal and it's much easier to reach the "good" side.
But the pedal...ferchrissake that thing sucks. Moves all over the floor and it's WAY too sensitive. My style may be to blame, but I learned to play RB drums keeping my foot down on the pedal and "bouncing". That's impossible with this pedal. The simple act of raising my foot often triggers a bass kick and once again it's impossible to hold a streak. I wish I could use my RB pedal with the GHWT kit. I like the kit better (more stuff to do and "real" cymbals) but the foot pedal makes playing drums impossible.
I actually found this article hoping to uncover some tricks for the pedal since I'm not the only person with this issue (Google is rife with people having the same complaint and two of my friends who bought the game are in agreement with me). I like the song selection better in GHWT but not being able to play drums is literally breaking my heart.
/sigh
jdport - Thursday, November 6, 2008 - link
It kind of bothers me when people write stuff about how Guitar Hero is the original franchise, that players "cut their teeth on". As I'm sure you know, this is true in name only. The creators of the original Guitar Hero moved on to Rock Band, so while "Guitar Hero" maybe have been the original... Guitar Hero World Tour shares nothing in common with it other than its name and the basic concept.
Also, the Rock Band 2 guitars and drums do have a hook up for the XBL headset. You just have to use the adapter that is supplied with the game instead of using the standard plug.
bootay69 - Friday, November 7, 2008 - link
I use the standard plug...the adapter is not necessary.afkrotch - Wednesday, November 5, 2008 - link
FYI: Guitar Freaks, Drummania, Piano Freaks, etc. Wiki Bemani. Now Guitar Hero was probably the first music game to be in the US, aside from DDR.EODetroit - Tuesday, November 4, 2008 - link
Honestly I'll never play more than two player mode, so I don't see the point of buying anything beyond my GH3 game.But I do like the commercial that I saw during MNF last night.
MaverickSY19 - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
Honestly I like RB 1 and 2 better for the reason that they are not to hard! I mean a lot of us can't play expert at all let alone breeze though it. I honestly like playing the songs and having fun with it, because as a kid we all did the air guitar and its nice to actually play a song with a fake one you can at least hold on to. :)Shoot I'll be happy when I can play RB or GH through all the way on hard let alone Expert. Shoot my wife can't even do easy :P I have yet to try her on the beginner level they added to GHWT.
crash resistant - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
GH isn't harder. It's more pure. RB has silly drum solos in the middle of every song, even on Expert.Singing in GH is harder, as you have to sing more to gain points- and there aren't cheesy tambourine solos that last what feels like forever.
I guess, it's true- GH requires more skill to attain higher scores- but it's relative to the game itself- You can't relate the score system to RB!
If you want to party, buy all 3 games. I'm telling you the truth.
DerekWilson - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
i disagree that ghwt is "harder" ... neither one is "real" in terms of hitting all the notes. which sucks.if you look at youtube and see the side by side charting, you'll see that some songs are harder on rock band 2 and some songs are harder on ghwt ... the ones that overlap anyway ...
as for the song choice, that does have an impact, and some of the songs that ghwt picked are really hard and some of the songs that rb2 picked are really hard. it all comes out in the wash in my mind.
crash resistant - Sunday, November 2, 2008 - link
Whoever reviewed this game made several errors and assumptions without further testing. They didn't even verify how star power works while drumming....1: You hit both symbols ANY TIME and it activates.. no need to wait for a break- and it DOES NOT lose your streak. Sad...
2: The drum pedal has never slid away from me, on two different carpets (thick and very thin at an office) or on a marble floor. Did they get a pedal with no grips? How unfair.
3: The symbols are very responsive- the problem is the angle. I can barely tap the symbols to get the response even with the little sticks that came with the kit, it just has to be at the right angle.
4: Symbols are symbols. You don't roll around and hit symbols as if they are drums.
5: The interface is waaaaaaaaay more responsive than RB1 and RB2. (Mind you, I love all three games because of song selection)
6: Tool?
Go buy GHWT and RB2, full band kits- now.
DerekWilson - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
1) you can't physically hit the cymbals anytime -- if you are required to play something else and you miss those notes, you lose the streak. any time you are physically capable of inserting a hit on both cymbals (either when nothing is happening or one cymbal is being played and you can just add the other one in) you'll be fine and won't lose your streak. The point of what I wrote is that it is very difficult if not impossible /in many songs/ to actually activate star power without missing other notes. there are some songs in which it's super easy to activate star power at any time with no problem. But the songs in which it is difficult are the ones you need it the most ...2) i've tried it on carpet and floor with no luck. if there are grips beyond the pads on the bottom of the kick pedal then we did not get anything else (and neither did my parents who also bought ghwt and are havign trouble with the kick sliding).
3) i mean responsive as in feel not activation of the trigger.
4) everlong. other's as well, but that's the big one. also, rolls on cymbals are not uncommon. especially on the hi-hat.
5) i dont know what you mean.
6) yes, sorry i didn't mention tool. tool is awesome. i love tool. i would have bought the game just for those songs ... but not everyone would ;-)