Kind of surprising, but the 'casual' Mii Freestyle Mode in Guitar Hero:World Tour is actually receiving some good press.
Also, this is the first time I've heard of being able to play drums without using the drumset. That seems pretty nice for people who don't have the money to get the drums.
http://wii.ign.com/articles/910/910398p1.html
In Mii Freestyle, two players can select their own Miis and jam locally with half a dozen different beats and themes in the game, and use the controllers to literally "jam" together with no needed song progression, scrolling notes, or danger of failing. You simply pick a theme (which will dictate the tempo), grab an instrument, and go, jamming on the instruments however you want, with your Miis rocking out on stage. Making use of the Wii-mote tilt tech in the controllers, guitar and bass will actually access different tones and octaves when tilting the controller from flat, to mid, and nearly vertical. When in the highest tilt mode, each button or held frets will actually trigger multiple notes at once, again playing off the "anyone can play" aspect of the mode. It's simple to get into, and a lot of work went into the mode to make sure that even if you don't have perfect timing in your playing, your notes will hit on some division of your 4:4 beat, be it a 16th note, 32nd note, or 64th note.
It's a strange concept to describe on paper, but it really does work quite well. In fact, outside of the general "play as you go" notes and modes, you can also morph the experience as you jam, keeping specific riffs or tones you've hit in a constant repeat. Want to lay down a simple hold note progression in the background? Lay it down, and then hit the repeat trigger to keep it looping. Want to build on top of that backbeat? Just riff over it, and then cancel the beat whenever you want to move into a new phrase of music. In fact, there's even an option to progress the song itself as you play, allowing you to move from intro to chorus, bridge and reprise as you play. This won't do much outside of changing the pre-canned backbeat as you play, but it does give the experience more of a start and finish that you otherwise wouldn't get, and it's yet another way to mix things up when rocking the freestyle mode.
And if Freestyle didn't sound big enough, Vicarious decided to build on the mode once again by adding the drum kit into the mix. By either hooking up your full drum kit or using a variant on the Wii Music drum design (Wii-mote and nunchuk, with different buttons making different sounds when you motion; not our preferred way of playing, to be honest) you can freestyle with any backbeat, or accompany a friend on drums while he riffs on guitar. This opens up the drums in Guitar Hero to take the same form as Rock Band's "virtual drum kit" add-ons, letting you just sit down with your set, crank out your own beats or solos, and use the kit as a real electronic drum set. And yeah, just like the rest of the package, this added option also kicks a whole lot of ass.
http://kotaku.com/5050356/guitar-hero-world-tour-owes-me
The Wii has Music Studio, too, but it also has Mii Freestyle mode. And if just now, you’re rolling your eyes and muttering “Wii Music, feh,” I’ve got news for you: this mode was probably the most fun anyone had all night (next to getting sloshed and singing Michael Jackson’s Beat It without shame or inhibition). Mii Freestyle is just like jamming in your friend’s basement when you’re young and don’t know what you’re doing – a carefree setup where there is no wrong and no right, with little cue cards and an optional looping drumbeat to get you going if you don’t know where to start.
When I found my way to the Wii version, everything got better. It wasn’t just the Mii Freestyle mode that changed my outlook; it was the gamers that gravitated to Nintendo’s little white box. These were the guys and girls who didn’t care who was playing on what mode and were patient as people combed through the song list over and over again, looking for that one song they weren’t ashamed to sing (Eye of the Tiger was a big hit). And they didn’t give me lip when I set vocals to Beginner so I could screw up the live version of Sweet Home Alabama (I have a Texan accent – I just can’t say “Alabama” the way Lynyrd Skynyrd intended).
