Let me make this clear, I don't care about the singing, the drums, or the bass playing in Guitar Hero World Tour. I didn't buy the big pack with everything in it, I just purchased the Guitar Pack that only comes with the guitar and game.

I have played Guitar Hero 1, 2, 3, as well as Rock Band. This is the best one out of all of them in terms of the guitar game.

The control is as tight as ever. Every time I screw up, it is because of me, not the controller or the game. That is important in rhythm games, and GHWT has it down.

The guitar itself is my favorite so far. It takes the lower fret board innovation from Rock Band, makes it a touch pad. I have not gotten used to this, but it isn't completely necessary for the game. The beefed up the whammy bar, and made the select button huge so that you don't have to lift the guitar to activate star power, which can really screw you up during a long note streak. And it is wireless, although you still have to use 2 AA batteries for it instead of having an internal pack (kinda disappointing). Plus, it is compatible with Rock Band 2.

There are zero covers in GHWT. None. All I have to say is: it is about fucking time. The songs selection is pretty good too. I would put it ahead of GH 1, 3, and Rock Band, but behind GH 2.

The best part however, is actual game play innovation with the guitar game. They introduced two new note concepts. First being the sustained note hold together with other notes to be played. You could have a green hold, and have to play sucessive red, yellow, blue, or orange notes while keeping your finger down on green. A nice difficultly addition. Second, is the addition of the note string sections. This is very similar to Rock Band's Solo sections. Both allow you to use the lower fret board to remove the need to strum, but GHWT's version allows you to also tap through with the original frets. The difference between the lower and the higher fret boards in these sections is that you have to tap the fret every time on the higher fret board while you simply need to touch the fret on the lower one. Mastering the lower fret board is not easy. In my opinion there is not enough feel between the frets on the touch pad to make it intuitive. The game attempts to help out by lighting up massive column of the color(s) you are currently touching, but it not something to try and use on Expert out of the gate. I have not had trouble getting through songs just tapping through on the higher fret board as of yet, but I am nowhere near beating the game yet, and I will probably be forced to learn the touch pad frets in order to finish the game.

Like most recent games, you can download additional songs in game, and the interface is quite fast and intuitive.

GHWT includes a create song feature, but it seems greatly underpowered and will probably not elicit many quality downloadable songs from users. But once again, I couldn't care less.

I play Guitar Hero to play fake guitar. GHWT does that part better than any other game of it's kind that I have played. Well done Activision.