In Guitar Hero: World Tour, you not only play the songs, you write them too. The question is... do you want to?

Travis Barker looks ready to rock.

The mohawked drummer from bands like +44 and Blink-182 peers out from behind a mountain of toms and cymbals on the virtual Guitar Hero World Tour stage, making him the latest in a growing list of celebrities to lend both his music and his likeness to the powerhouse Guitar Hero franchise. Paramore vocalist Hayley Williams has also signed on, making them appropriate spokes-avatars for aspiring singers and drummers eager to jam with their guitar- and bass-playing friends.

And who wouldn’t want to be on this Tour? With more than 5 million copies of Guitar Hero II and III sold on Xbox 360 alone, Guitar Hero World Tour is poised to take the franchise in some ambitious new directions this year — everything from eight-player online matches to a music-creation suite that could completely change the rules about user-created content on Xbox Live, not to mention cloud the issue of where playing fake music ends and making real music begins. Lucky for us, Neversoft’s invited us over to play the game for ourselves.

You’ve Got the Touch

Most of the main points about Guitar Hero World Tour were covered in our July 2008 preview — four-player co-op as a band, both online and offline; 4-on-4 online showdowns dubbed Battle of the Bands; a deep character-creation tool and an instrument builder to match; and a crazy-deep DIY music-making mode. It’s not unfair to call it a response to Rock Band with a new challenge right back. Lists of features sure are nice — but how do the new instruments feel?

Like the wireless Les Paul that preceded it, the new Strat-shaped guitar features a detachable neck for easy portability and swappable faceplates for personal customization. (Activision has mentioned plans to take advantage of the faceplate functionality a bit more this time, but wouldn’t go into details.) Just about everything else, however, has been overhauled and redesigned. The unit itself is larger, for a sturdier, more realistic feel. We found the new, longer whammy bar easier to grab without looking; there’s less groping around for it. The strum lever features a flanged end like its Rock Band cousin and is wider than the old one by about a centimeter, which also makes it comfortable for adult hands to grip and widens the target zone of sloppy/active players. We found it to be quieter than the GHII and GHIII guitars, but the switch is still pleasantly clicky and tactile. We put it through its paces on “Feel the Pain” and “Everlong” with no surprises — it felt solid, responsive, and comfortable throughout.

Some of the controller’s best perks are the most subtle: RedOctane and Neversoft have cleverly disguised all the navigation controls so they look like the parts of a regular guitar. What appears to be a volume knob is actually a four-way D-pad, and the guide button sits atop it. The Start and Back buttons look like anchors for the guitar’s bridge, which is actually the Select button. Many expert players don’t like to tilt the guitar to trigger Star Power; now it’s as easy as leaning your wrist on the wide bar-shaped Select button. The end result of all this clever design is an aesthetically subtle controller that plays into the rock ’n’ roll fantasy a little further. Simply put, it looks less dorky.

On the other hand, it still has five big colored buttons on the neck, which are now joined by a track pad. Split into the five colored sections, this pad is used as both a secondary strum bar (just tap the pad to register a strum instead) and for new sliding sections in some songs. When you see a purple rope connecting gems in the note highway, use your picking hand to slide between the colored zones of the strum bar or tap each of those colors in sequence. It’s technically challenging to use the pad — it gave us trouble, in a positive, time-to-improve-your- skills kind of way — but it’s something you simply won’t be able to do with the older controllers. You can play these sections normally, but once you learn the sliding technique, it will arguably be easier to do it the new way. (The touch pad also gives you access to advanced functions in the music studio — more on that in a bit.)

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

For guitarists, this new gizmo alters your approach to the more technical songs (such as the nigh-impossible-on- Expert “Hot for Teacher,” which appropriately simulates Eddie Van Halen’s two-handed tapping technique), but bassists will find a fundamental change in just about all tracks. You’ll now be able to play “open” notes, designated not by an extra colored gem on the note-chart highway but by a purple line, just like the drummers see for a kickpedal cue. In real bass, many songs call for the string to be plucked without being fretted — an “open E” or “open A,” for instance — and the inclusion of this in GHWT makes for a more realistic experience. It’s also a great way to make the oft-maligned bass more technically challenging: Neversoft has essentially added a sixth button without having added a button at all, which will keep things interesting if you choose to go with the dedicated (and overdue) bass career. Combine this aspect with the touch pad, and you’ll be able to approximate playing funky slap bass.

On the vocal side, there’s nothing unique about the hardware: the GHWT mic is the same Logitech hardware used by Rock Band, just with the GH logo screen-printed on it instead. The real differences lie in the software. The pitch-matching should look similar to that in Karaoke Revolution — an orange trail means you’re on pitch, a purple trail means you’re not, and a blue pitch means Star Power is in effect. Singers can trigger Star Power on command simply by tapping the top of the mic (or by using the controller’s joystick) — no more waiting for special segments of the song to amp things up.

You’ll also find two improv segments during songs. One has an animated graphic of hands on it called Hype, where your only job is to call out to the crowd and get them stoked. We suggest imploring them to put their hands together, tip their waitresses, and/or to try the veal. “Depending on how on-rhythm you are and what you say, you’ll boost the rock meter,” says project director Brian Bright. The other section, Freeform, features a wavy line texture, which is your cue to freestyle with wild abandon…as long as you keep the rules in mind. “You can sing whatever you want there, but we define particular pitches in the song,” explains Bright. “If you sing on those pitches and on the beat, you’ll earn bonus points.” We belted out a hearty rendition of Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell” just fine, triggering Star Power whenever the moment seemed right.

Beat Boxes

That leaves the drum kit, which is in some ways GHWT's biggest gamble. On a technical level, the drums represent a major jump. The kit features six strike zones (three drums, two cymbals, and a kick pedal) in a symmetrical design. The soft silicone drum heads make significantly less noise than the original Rock Band drums whilte offering better tactile feedback and response — they feel more like real drum heads. Velocity triggers inside mean that as you vary your tempo and force, the game reads your technique accordingly. We found the drums to be responsive (even in our ham hands) and comfortable to play on “Float On” and “No Sleep ’Til Brooklyn.” Getting used to a five-lane musical highway and two cymbals doesn’t take long at all — they’re perfectly spaced and height-adjustable.

A peek at the rear of the unit reveals three important expansion ports. One is occupied by the kick pedal, but that can be split with an adapter to allow a second kick to be added, giving expert players a double-bass setup. There’s a similar port that Neversoft says will be used for a future hi-hat pedal. And digital musicians will recognize the MIDI jack — just plug in your favorite electronic music hardware and use it instead of the GHWT drum kit.It’s not something many gamers will use, but it does show a warm embrace for the industry standard.

Speaking of standards, the only real downside to Neversoft’s kit is that Rock Band owners already have a set of USB drums in their living rooms. Who has the space or budget for two incompatible drum kits? When asked, Bright calmly and happily explains away one massive assumption. “I think people immediately saw this,” he says, pointing to the second cymbal — “and thought, ‘Oooh, it’s not compatible.’ But we did extra work to make sure it is compatible. We’re going for openness on instruments this time. Rock Band drums will work with our game. We give you a four-lane highway; we remap anything [on the second cymbal] to the blue or the green pad, depending on where it makes sense. So Rock Band guitars and drums work just fine in this game. Our kit works with the first Rock Band — you just don’t use [the second cymbal]. It should probably work with Rock Band 2, but I couldn’t tell you that for sure. I don’t know if the way we’re doing velocity is the same in both games, but I do know drums will trigger just fine in the original Rock Band with our drum kit.”

Studio Musicians

Guitar Hero World Tour’s four-player co-op mode feels very much like its Rock Band brethren. Groups rely on each other to trigger Star Power simultaneously, to rescue each other in times of need, and to work together as a tightly knit rock unit to get big scores and big bonuses. Money is earned individually, but the dynamics feel very familiar. What truly differentiates GHWT is the Music Studio, which gives anyone with or without musical talent the chance to create their own songs. Use the GHTunes mini-application to release your homemade GHWT tracks into the wild for free download by everyone on Xbox Live. The world plays and votes, giving the most creative composers some well-deserved recognition.

Making noise with the Music Studio is easy enough. Naturally, you can just connect the guitars and drums (sorry, you can’t record vocals) and play freestyle, then record your tracks on demand and produce/arrange them in a special editing program called GHMix — cut and paste segments, correct bum notes, the works. It’s impressively powerful and not hard to figure out the basics. If you’d prefer to let the computer do more of the work, use the WZ-RD 5000 to auto-generate some basics for you. Or start somewhere in-between: Each of the five potential instrument tracks (drums, bass, lead and rhythm guitar, and keyboard — pick four for your song) features “machines” loaded with loops that you manipulate to of polish, and a basic grasp of some musical concepts (you know the difference between a minor pentatonic scale and a chromatic scale, riiight?) to create something truly awesome — and while the system seems stunningly accessible, it’s not designed to be mastered in a single session like ours. Plus, here’s a cynical catch-22: Won’t non-musicians make unlistenable crap, real musicians will dismiss the game as toy compared to all real-world “prosumer” equipment? Neversoft’s Bright — himself an electronic musician your liking. Combining the fret buttons changes the solo pattern in Lead Machine, while tapping the trackpad alters the loop rhythms with every touch. Its percussive companion, Drum Machine, focuses on different parts of the kit — hold down a few buttons to get a groove going, then play around with the touch pad to trigger just the kick or just the cymbals to make breakbeats. Each instrument has something familiar; combine that with 20 different drum kits and a wide palette of keyboard patches and licensed Line 6 guitar tones, and you have very few creative restrictions.

The Music Studio encourages creative play and lets you capture your brilliance on command with its record feature, but it’s not effortless. Think of the entire suite like the ocean: accessible, but terrifyingly deep. It’s fun to play around in the shallow end, but the further you go, the deeper it gets and the harder it seems to fathom. It’ll take time, plenty of polish, and a basic grasp of some musical concepts (you know the difference between a minor pentatonic scale and a chromatic scale, riiight?) to create something truly awesome — and while the system seems stunningly accessible, it’s not designed to be mastered in a single session like ours. Plus, here’s a cynical catch-22: Won’t non-musicians make unlistenable crap, while real musicians will dismiss the game as a toy compared to all their realworld “prosumer” equipment? Neversoft’s Bright — himself an electronic musician for 20 years — disagrees. “I have more MIDI gear than I can shake a stick at, but I can’t do half the stuff [with that] that I can do with our game,” he tells us.

All the World’s a Stage

Our trial was encouraging — and, after following other people’s icons on the screen for years, oddly liberating — but we figure about 5 to 10 percent of players will seriously create tracks, while the rest will simply download everyone else’s greatest hits. Even if that’s true…what’s the downside? Whether you plan to be a creator, player, or both, it means a hell of a lot of free DLC for Guitar Hero World Tour — everybody wins. “I can’t wait to see what people do with the music studio,” says Neversoft director of development Scott Pease. “We have guys here at midnight, making songs and not going home. They’ve been killing themselves on this game for a freakin’ year now. You’d think they’d be sick of it. But they’re sitting here building songs because you just get drawn into it. If you have any desire to make music, it will suck you in.”