It was long rumored that Guitar Hero IV would include vocals and drums to compete with Rock Band. Well, now it’s official: we have Guitar Hero World Tour. The game was demonstrated for the first time at the All Things Digital 6 conference, with this unintenionally hilarious introduction from Kara Swisher:

Kotick: We have a new product coming out in the fall called Guitar Hero World Tour, which is the first time you’ll have multiple instruments — drums, mic, bass, a different guitar …

Swisher: It’s called Rock Band, I think.

Kotick: (pauses) We’re calling it Guitar Hero World Tour.

Heh. On to the demonstration. And yes, that is Tony Hawk on guitar!

It’s a little scary how exactly Guitar Hero World Tour copies Rock Band. Take a look at a still of the user interface captured from the video.

I’m actually fine with the blatant plagiarism, because I adore Rock Band (and its weekly downloadable content schedule). I can hardly bear to go back to just guitar these days when Rock Band offers so much: more instruments, far more songs, better presentation, smoother difficulty progression. The more Guitar Hero remolds itself to resemble Rock Band, the better, as far as I’m concerned!

But there is one problem — the drums.

The Guitar Hero drum arrangement, while cool, will almost certainly be incompatible with the current Rock Band drums. Which means fans of the genre are stuck with two different and incompatible drum sets cluttering up our houses! That sucks. Still, there are some cool features here, as documented in the promotional Guitar Hero World Tour drum video:

1. The drums are pressure sensitive, so the harder you hit them, the louder the drum sound in the game. (likely a software issue, as the piezo sensors in all electric drums are 99% the same.)
2. More realistic arrangement of the drums, with two cymbal pie slices mounted above.
3. It’s wireless!

I’m reasonably sure that existing Rock Band microphones and Rock Band / Guitar Hero guitars (at least on the Xbox 360) will be compatible. But it also looks like there will be a new fake plastic guitar design — probably as a result of the Gibson lawsuit against Activision. These will be “generic” unbranded guitars, no longer the Gibson Les Paul, Xplorer, or SG models of previous releases. They’ve been coy about releasing any details, but images captured from the Guitar Hero World Tour website and the Guitar Hero World Tour promotional trailer provide some clues:

1. These guitars are significantly larger, perhaps to mirror the the more realistic size of the Rock Band stratocasters.
2. Based on the white outline, I’m hoping these guitars will continue the Les Paul tradition of removable, customizable faceplates.
3. The first image also implies that there will be “solo” fret buttons, again aping the Rock Band stratocasters.

It’s no secret that I greatly prefer the Guitar Hero guitars; the Rock Band stratocasters have what I consider to be crippling flaws. I’m willing to give Activision the benefit of the doubt on the new hardware, even as I’ve resigned myself to the drum incompatibility.

Pricing information for Guitar Hero World Tour is as follows.

GH: World Tour Super Bundle (game, guitar, drums, mic)
Xbox360 / PS3 / Wii - $189.99
PS2 – $179.99

GH: World Tour Guitar Bundle (game, guitar)
Xbox360 / PS3 / Wii $99.99
PS2 – $89.99

GH: World Tour (game only)
Xbox360 / PS3 $59.99
Wii / PS2 $49.99

A bit more expensive than Rock Band at $169 and $159 respectively, particularly since the prices for the Rock Band bundles have dipped significantly since launch. But the drums and microphone are both wireless, which is a nice touch arguably worthy of the extra $20. Do note that the Wii version of Guitar Hero World Tour is confirmed to have downloadable content support, unlike the current Guitar Hero 3 and Rock Band ports for that platform. As usual, I’d recommend avoiding the Playstation 2 version like the plague, unless you have absolutely no other way to play the game.

I will definitely be buying the Guitar Hero World Tour Super Bundle on the day of release. What can I say? If loving fake plastic rock is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.

The introduction of drums and mic to the Guitar Hero franchise isn’t terribly surprising. But Konami — the great-granddaddy of the music rhythm genre — announcing Rock Revolution certainly was! Konami kicked off the entire genre outside the US with Drum Mania and Guitar Freaks. Those games never got any traction in the US, but are clear spiritual influences on Guitar Hero. So perhaps they’re entitled.

But Rock Revolution is sort of.. weird. It’s playable by a maximum of three players: bass, guitar, and drums. Don’t pass the mic, leave it on the table. And take a look at the oddball Rock Revolution drum set:

Just what the world needed — a third extra-freaky fake plastic drum set.

It doesn’t help that the game looks incredibly.. generic next to Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

I strongly doubt that vertical 2D fretboard UI is going to scale to even two players, much less three.

Unfortunately, all the songs in Rock Revolution are covers — and a good percentage of them have been previously featured in Guitar Hero or Rock Band anyway. This is a huge disappointment as the general trend in the genre has been toward more and more original masters. It feels like a giant step backwards.

On the whole, it’s difficult to get excited about Rock Revolution. The prospect of a third player in the “band” genre isn’t all that appealing. Here’s what I know about it so far that could set it apart from the competition:

1. Will have its own unique guitar controller. The five buttons have different colors than the ones we’re used to. Compatibility is unknown, but highly likely.
2. Drums have six oddly shaped, irregular surfaces (as seen above) plus the kick pedal.
3. The Wii version will allow using the Wii controls for “air drum” and “air guitar” play.
4. Like Guitar Hero World Tour, includes freeform modes that allow creating original tracks.
5. During drum play, there is no penalty for improvisation (aka extra notes) throughout the entire song.
6. Does not introduce the drum kick pedal until medium difficulty level.

I might pick up Rock Revolution cheaply at some later date after its release, and play it as a standalone guitar game; a few of the covers do appeal to me. But there’s no way I can deal with three fake plastic drum sets.

At this point, Harmonix silence on Rock Band 2 is positively deafening. I’m anxious to see what they have in store for us now that everyone else has played their cards. Remember, kids, competition is good!

Well, except for the three incompatible drum sets.