[Fallen124Angel]

Of all the Wii and DS games we play at ONM Towers, Guitar Hero III is one of the games that gets loaded up the most. Almost every night the sounds of Metallica, Muse, Rage Against The Machine and Dragonforce ring through our offices. So when we got the chance to have a look at the fourth game in the long-running series, we were well up for it.

There are three major additions to Guitar Hero: World Tour (which, we might add, may not be the final title). The first of these is the introduction of other instruments. Taking a leaf out of Rock Band's book, you can now play guitar, bass, drums or vocals, just like in EA's title. Hindsight is a wonderful thing though, and the developers have improved on their rival's instruments by fixing many of the things people complained about. For example, the drums have soft padded surfaces, meaning they won't annoy the neighbours and don't sound like you're hitting a big piece of plastic like the Rock Band ones do. They're also pressure sensitive, so the harder you hit them the louder they'll sound out in the game.

Going Solo
The developers also assured us that while Rock Band is focused more on multiplayer gameplay (if you didn't have mates, you couldn't play the huge Band World Tour mode), Guitar Hero: World Tour is fully playable in single-player, with full-length Career modes for every single instrument, even bass. So if you just want to unlock every song by singing through them all, you can do so.

Speaking of the songs, Guitar Hero 4: Wotld Tour is set to feature "by far the largest number of songs available on a disc-based music game". There'll be a wide range of genres, from classic rock to metal, and even a bit of hip-hop. Confirmed artists so far include Van Halen, Linkin Park, The Eagles, Sublime and The Answer, and we were also shown some fantastic tracks that we're not allowed to talk about yet. Needless to say, there are some big artists still to be announced.

Get The Net
If for some strange reason you don't like any of the tracks on offer, you could always make your own. Yes, the second huge addition to Guitar Hero: World Tour is the Studio, where you can create your own songs note-by-note with an in-depth music sequencing tool and add different layers (lead, rhythm, bass and drums). One of the developers showed us how it worked by creating his own version of Iron Man by Black Sabbath.

The plan is for players to upload their own songs to GHTunes, an online service where other players can download them. There are still discussions being held with Nintendo as to whether this can work on the Wii, but we're hoping that as the files should be tiny (since it's only a set of instructions) it won't be a problem. Given that Guitar Hero III is one of the best examples of online Wii gaming, we're optimistic it'll happen.

Finally, Guitar Hero: World Tour will now offer a huge number of customisation options. If you don't want to choose one of the default band members from previous games, you can create your own rocker from scratch. As you'd expect, you can choose normal things like clothes, facial features and the like to make them look as rocktacular as you want, but you can also customise your instruments in insane detail. Want your own guitar? Then choose your own body, style, shape, finish, fret board, inlays, head, pick guard, knobs, strings and pickups. Oh, and you can make your own logos to go on them too.

Although it's really early in the production cycle, this is already looking awesome. We'll report back with a full tracklist soon.

Linky
Its shaping up rather nicely