Rock Band Vs. Guitar Hero World Tour

Rock Band is better. Simple as that. The games are basically the same: notes scroll down the screen and you fake play them on fake plastic instruments, or you sing pitches without embellishment. Even many of the songs are the same (this is unacceptable). But Rock Band, also known as the iTunes of music games, is clean and elegant. Guitar Hero's presentation hasn't changed since 2005, when the series debuted on the PS2. That's really not that long ago, but when you bring out pseudo-sequel after pseudo-sequel, once-innovative ideas get stale fast. Now, playing World Tour is like seeing a Motley Crue concert in 2008... you just want to say, "You're too old! Go home!" Before music games, presentation in games was more of a scondary, back-burner, we-still-have-a-few-weeks-before-ship-date-and-we-still-have-$3,000,000-left kind of priority. Now, it's the only thing separating Activision's and Harmonix's babies. The difference: Harmonix is full of musicians. Activision is full of businessmen. Who do you think will make a better music game?

Still, Guitar Hero does have a 3D drum set that feels more authentic, and the create-a-song aspect lets aspiring fake musicians create and share unlimited free songs (at least for now, until Activision starts selling subscriptions to GHTunes...). But when you consider that all the drum sets are interchangeable between games now, and the fact that basically any given downloadable song that you have to pay for will be better than a free one, the choice is still clear. Rock Band rocks. Guitar Hero, once the master, is no longer the only music game on the block. Time to bring something new to the table, Madden.