Metareview: Guitar Hero: World Tour

This week marked the debut of a second contender in the full-band-simulator genre. It's hard to find a review for Guitar Hero: World Tour that utters Rock Band less than a half dozen times. Comparatively, the 87 mean score for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions are 5 points lower than Rock Band 2's average. Of course, for the European gamers and PS2 / Wii owners worldwide who still don't have Rock Band 2, you're not left with much choice.

• 1UP (A-): "Maybe if I squeeze my Rock Band and Guitar Hero together and leave them overnight in the same case, I can come back the next morning to find that they made an über-game that combines the best of both. But until then, Guitar Hero delivers exactly the things I want out of a rhythm game: great peripherals and fun-to-play music. It's not perfect, but I have a great time whenever I turn it on -- and that's what's most important."

• EuroGamer (90/100): "Were Rock Band 2 on the market today, the decision would be more difficult, as the gap between instrument quality would be reduced and the software battle would go in Rock Band 2's favour. But it isn't on the market, we don't know when it will be, and its new guitars and drums aren't so wildly different or superior to justify waiting. And by the time it is available, Harmonix may discover that the tables have turned, and that Rock Band 2 is competing for money "As spent happily on" this instead."

• Official Xbox Magazine (85/100): "World Tour is a big leap in content and polish over last year's game, but we're disappointed by a few unsatisfying creative calls. The extended song endings aren't always enhancements, the unlockable gear doesn't match the effort put forth to earn it, and we prefer Rock Band 2's looser career-unlock structure. Most of all, Rock Band 2 simply feels more musical and organic; we get the suspicion that some World Tour songs had notes added to their charts simply to make them trickier, and not because the music suggested it."

• IGN (79/100): "Guitar Hero World Tour is a fun title, to be sure, but it's also a disappointment in a lot of respects. A number of things it tries to accomplish were already done better in Rock Band, which you might figure would have provided a simple blueprint to be followed and expanded upon, but that's not the case. The music creation tools are a great idea in theory, but the end result isn't as robust as I would have hoped it would be, both in terms of abilities as well as the songs that come out the other end."

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