Toronto Thumbs

Guitar Hero World Tour’s Drums Are Awesome

We all knew that in order to compete with the awesome Rock Band, Guitar Hero would need to do something special for its next outing. And it has. The next game in the series will include more than just guitars. Much like Rock Band, the game will focus on a whole band experience.

Today, we take a look at the two coolest new features to be added into the mix. The first, pictured above (and further on if you want the full shot) is the drum set. First, the similarities to the Rock Band kit are obvious – we’ve got some pads and a foot pedal. But wait, what’s this? The cymbals are raised higher than the toms, and they’re wedge-shaped, much like the ones many real electronic drum sets.

Another thing worthy of mention is that here, although we have one less drum pad, we do get an additional cymbal up top. So we’ve got what is essentially all the pieces that one really needs to rock out on drums, save for the high-hat pedal (which would be nice still – maybe Rock Band 2 or Guitar Hero 5 will bring that?).

As if all this wasn’t enough, the drums can sense how hard they’re being hit. So if you’re a quiet tappity-tapper, the drum sound in-game will quieter. Those of you who are of the Bonham school of rock will be happy to know that harder hits will translate to louder drums in-game.

The second cool feature the game will offer is a composition mode, where players can assign chords to various guitar key combinations, which should in turn allow for the creation of custom songs. Does this mean we’ll see a band do an album completely in Guitar Hero? It wouldn’t surprise me at all. In fact, I’d love to use this feature to try out some of the songs me and my old band used to play. Oh, and if the system is robust enough, it’d be awesome to finally rock out to Electric Six (though master tracks would be preferable).

Posted in News Bytes |