Rock Band 2 vs. Guitar Hero World Tour

Intro:
For those who do not know what these two things are, I'll keep it brief. Harmonix has been making games that require you to rythmatically sync yourself with a game to accumulate a score. In recent years, they have refined this to attempting to make it's participants feel like rockstars. This is simply acchieved by using plastic controllers in the shape of real-life rock instruments and attempting to replicate it's feel by making you the center of attention. You press buttons and strum the bar at the same time to make music or as there has been recently, make a lot of thumping noises. There is also the ability to sing and play bass which makes you and up to 3 friends feel like your actually opening for a big band's like Aerosmith.

Concept:
Since the original Guitar Hero for the playstation 2, adults and children alike have been tapping and strumming their way to rockstar glory, doing covers of songs that at least a good group of people enjoyed at sometime between now and the 1950's, Which means you could be playing songs by The Who, Nirvana, or even Metallica. Many of those people you've probably seen on youtube or at that drunken christmas party no one ever talks about know someone who likes to do the air guitar thing. Since the people that are ever inspired by Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure can testify, Guitar Hero has to be the best thing since sliced bread and wool undergarments. You might be ashamed of these people, you might be living with them, you might be raising one, you might be one yourself, but what you get out of this game is imitation superstar glory. Not the same as real glory, but so close it still tastes a little like Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Back story:
Up until the fourth installment, Harmonix was the main developers of the guitar hero game and they did a mighty fine job with it. Then Activision came in and bought the property out and Harmonix ran away. While Activision laughed menacingly, Harmonix realized they were still game developers and started up a new property with the same concept; They made the game Rock Band. Then, Activision sat back and made the new shiny Guitar Hero 3, but to people like me who cared about the series, it's shinyness was enough to make my eyes bleed. They changed it too much, axed the good characters and bastardized the old ones. They also focused on filler and final difficulty (like all activision games nowadays) and it made they a boat load of money due to advertising.  Since Guitar Hero 3 came out first and in time for the holiday season, it made activision a boatload of cash. However, they weren't actually looking into the long run. Rock Band came out later and didn't meet to the sales specs at first but because they featured weekly downloadable songs and the entire experience, they came out on top in the gaming community. This must have made someone in activision blow a gasket because they immediately started work on their Guitar Hero World Tour game which was essentially the same as Rock Band with the drums and the singing, but also the rhythm guitar. They released it right after Rock Band 2 and because they're essentially the same looking games now, new players aren't sure what they should sink their money into.

Judgement GHWT:
Guitar Hero World Tour has a fully multiplayer and single player campaign with little animated cutscenes like the 3rd one and god-awful background coloring like the 3rd one and a slightly confusing interface like the 3rd one.  There are unlockable characters like Billy Corgen, Sting, Travis Barker, and Ozzy Ozzebourne. Some might say "Ooo baby, I wanna play with the prince of darkness!". Well, there's a small problem with that. While he is there, they didn't acount for the fact that having him in your all star line-up, he'll sing whatever you put him in. You wanna see Ozzy sing La Bamba? You see Ozzy sing La Bamba and dance around like a schoolgirl for the entire song. After growing up listening to him and seeing the people that idolize him, it's a little disturbing. There's a pretty solid setlist and the audio quality is ok. The create a rockstar is there but it's pretty uninspired. There's also the create your own song studio. I used this to make some songs but realized that it's hard when you can't immediately control every little detail. You have to adjust so much that it becomes frustrating. Also, just going to the studio to "jam" is a little boring. Without the structure you get from actually playing guitar, you run out of good ideas 10 minutes in and it suddenly dawns on you how stupid you look and sound. Also, the downloadable content they added is the same price as Rock Band but not updated as frequently. You can however download other peoples songs but there aren't many worth playing yet.  Also as per the new hardware,  the guitar is essentially the same except for the slider bar and it's frustrating to uses and will break if you even look at them funny,  and the drum set works but the cymbols break down much to easily but hopefulle activision will remedy that soon.
Overall, the game is solid but it's still not the fun you'd be expecting with a game so overly hyped as this. 8/10

Judgement RB2:
Rock Band 2 is exacly what it sounds like, Rock Band 2.0. Why fix what's not broken? The gameplay is as solid as ever, the backgrounds are lively and original, The songs from the first one are there if you import them, the new instruments are fairly reliable, and Tour mode is less clunky. You can play as any instrument by yourself, there's a battle of the bands feature which lets you do events and compare yourself to other players and your character isn't confined to one instrument. All that sounds great but the real selling point is the fact that Harmonix is all about the music. Most of the people who work there have their own bands so they know what people want to play. Every song has some reason you'd want to play it which gives it a substantially higher replay value then normal. The audio quality is downright breathtaking and the songlist is as strong as ever. The online is top notch now and bands can be played online.
Overall, They kept all the good, fixed all the bad. It's a very very refined game which makes it very good. 10/10

Final Judgement and Overall Opinion:
I know that GHWT will get better, but Rock Band is already better. The one feature GHWT has on Rock Band is the song creator. It means that as of right now, the hardcore Guitar Hero players should get it. Not however, the hardcore rockers, because they should make music with real instruments. If you want a game for people who wanna play casually and have a good time at parties, then Rock Band is your boy. I rented both before and I chose Rock Band because it was a more reliable choice and also because I had a good amount of downloaded songs and i wanted to still play what i came to know and love.