NSider 2 Newspaper

Guitar Hero World Tour is all about bring friends together by having new instruments.

The Guitar: Red Octane developed a new guitar that features a touch sensitive strip in the middle of the neck that will enable players to "tap", Alter sound on sustained notes and or sliding fingers. Guitar is also planned to have a longer whammy bar for easier access. Also the strum bar will be longer for easier convenience.

The Drums: Is a six piece drum set. Two cymbals, one snare, two tom toms and one bass pedal. The drums will be wireless just like guitar the drum set will have a place to put the wii remote inside. The Drums also feature velocity sensitivity for the music creator so the drums will know how hard you are hitting them. Activision has stated "they wanted the drums to be quiet and be realistic as ever."

The Microphone: The Official Guitar Hero Microphone will just be a USB Microphone

The Bass Guitar: You can use the guitar but the main thing changed in gameplay is there will be a 6th note which is preformed by strumming with holding NO fret buttons.


Career Mode
The traditional single player Career Mode has been reworked such that instead of playing through a linear setlist, players will encounter gigs during career mode, which offer a choice of songs to play; one does not, however, have to complete every song in the list to proceed. The game will allow the player to change their difficulty during a career. The player will also be able to switch to a different instrument during the same Career without having to restart. There are four instrument career modes within the game: lead guitar, bass guitar, drums, and vocals.


Gameplay of a whole band. On top is vocalist, bottom from left to right: Guitar, Drums, Bass. There is also a Band Career mode, which can be advanced by oneself or with others offline or online. A player that has not progressed as far as another player's band, or has progressed farther, will still gain benefits for successfully completing songs when playing together. The in-game interface features vocals along the top of the screen, and three tracks underneath, for bass, drums, and guitar. Full four-player bands will be able to compete with other bands online in a "Battle of the Bands" mode.

The Boss Battles that were present in Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock and Guitar Hero: Aerosmith will return; however, the format has been tweaked to remove the focus on attack power-ups and instead features a call-and-response mechanic similar to the existing Face-Off mode. Artists are writing new original songs for their battles. The current battle mode will remain playable in multiplayer.

Character Customization

Users will be able to use a "Create-a-Rocker" mode, Players will be able to affect their character's poise, clothing, tattoos, makeup, and age. Selected characters from previous Guitar Hero games will also be available as starting templates for creating a rocker. As a result of the present lawsuit with Gibson Guitars, the player will also be able to customize their own guitar for the game to a high degree. Drum sets and microphones will also be customizable.

Leipzig Game Convention Updates! (Aug. 20-24th)

World Tour Stage

From Neversoft Blog

So I got back form China and had a little more than one week until I need to head off to Leipzig for the Games Convention. The progress we made in China was crazy good. We've built a real professional caliber kit for the price of a game peripherial....and I't also got a midi in. That alone...getting midi data into the PS3...is some pretty advanced tech. I'll be showing that off closer to launch, but the possibilities are endless.
While I get to leave China and jet set off to Germany the rest of the team has to sweat it out in the home stretch finishing up the game. (Thanks Neversoft!) It's not all fun and games though. In China, we worked 12 hour days and typically the town we were in had no power. The one restaurant in the town would be closed, or just serve fruit and nothing else. The hotel we were in had a bathroom with just a hole in the floor to go in. The hole was tiled, but still....
Germany will be cool. We do a big stage demo and then meet with press for two days. Talking to so many people back to back about the game can get tiring though. It's not that I don't enjoy meeting different people from all over the world, but just speaking non stop for 10 hours about the game is enough to wear anybody out.
Check out the latest issue of OXM for an exclusive cover story. Dan Electro came into the office and jammed with Alan, Andy and the crew. I give him props for playing a pretty mean guitar and drums.
Heads up for some new info dropping this week.

Brian