Since their first Guitar Hero game release back in November 2005, Activision and RedOctane have been the top players in the music gaming industry, when just 2 years later a sort of new player stepped onto the stage, Rock Band.
The developers of the original Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero 2 games were Harmonix, but after they completed their second Guitar Hero game, they moved onto a new publisher, MTV Games and EA. After Harmonix left, Neversoft took their place and the first thing they did was release a new Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock, which was released in the later part of 2007. The game proved to be a great success, until later that year Harmonix came back into the business with Rock Band. This game featured a whole set of instruments, guitar, drums, bass and mic.
After a good year of Rock Band being released, the competition is back on because in November 2008, both publishers, Activision and EA released a new music game. Guitar Hero World Tour from Activision and Rock Band 2 from EA, let battle commence.
From Guitar Hero's view, this was a new venture for them, a new range of instruments, but they certainly hadn't cut any corners. Their new guitar has a touch sensitive bar to allow finger tapping during song sections, their drums feature 5 pads and a foot peddle, one more than Rock Bands. Aswell as a whole range of shiny new instruments, their game featured a music maker where you could create and share your own songs.
On the Rock Band 2 side, they haven't changed their instruments much. They have improved the drum set by making it velocity sensitive, basically the harder you hit the pad the louder the sound in game makes, they also changed the foot peddle to metal as people found they broke the plastic one. Apart from a few tweaks, not alot has changed instrument wise.
On the actual game side of things, they haven't got a music maker, however, they do have one great thing that Guitar Hero does not; a huge selection of downloadable songs on top of their 80+ song set list. This also gets better, any songs that you have already downloaded for Rock Band 1, are still compatible with Rock Band 2 and appear on the set list when you load up the game. Another advantage is that for a small fee, under $5, you can transfer almost all of the 70+ Rock Band 1 songs onto Rock Band 2, giving you a minimum of 160 songs on Rock Band 2.
Now that you've heard the advantages to each game, now comes the tricky part, deciding which one to get. With all the economic problems, many people won't have the money for both games, plus the space for 2 sets of instruments.
With both games instruments being compatible with either game, many people will leave it down to the set list or the features within the game, some people may go for Guitar Hero for the music maker and suited up instruments, whereas some people will go for the chance to have a massive set list on Rock Band 2.
I personally prefer Rock Band 2 simply because of the set list and I prefer the layout of the screen, but as for which one will become the top player in the music game industry, it's an open stage.
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