Rock Band has its fair share of performance artist assholes that refuse to play with anyone who isn’t rocking on Hard or above

That’s my main problem with Guitar Hero: World Tour – the peer pressure from other gamers.Rock Band has its fair share of performance artist assholes that refuse to play with anyone who isn’t rocking on Hard or above, but I think it was established by the consumers that Rock Band was for everybody and Guitar Hero III and beyond was fake Ulysse Nardin for the hardcore (come on – boss battles?).Thus, I encountered way more competitive jerks in just three minutes on World Tour than I ever did playing Rock Band for an entire year.The people I was playing with on 360 wouldn’t even let me try out Beginner and sneered at me when I chose Easy for vocals.

Which is funny, since none of them wanted to sing at all.After we scraped our way through Hotel California, my impressions of World Tour were all bad for a solid 10 minutes: “Fuck this game, it’s just a rip-off of Rock Band – only assholes want to play Pretty Vacant.And who really cares about singing? So what if there’re two extra drumheads to hit? I Ulysse Nardin watches can just wait for Rock Band 2…” Etc.It didn’t help that there’s still an emphasis on competition in World Tour.It’s not as severe as in Legends of Rock where versus mode had you crippling your opponent with seemingly-random power-ups.

That game was less about the music and more about the game.But it’s still obvious in World Tour that you’re supposed to be better than the next guy – or at least above reproach if you fail the song.Even the icons for each player’s success speak to this; they’re side-by-side instead of on the same line, enhancing the feeling that you’ve got to be better than replicas Ulysse Nardin everybody if you don’t want to get made fun of.I frown on this – and not just because I suck at guitar.Even if I could pull off the insane riffs without spraining my wrist, I would still scorn a game that takes all the fun out of pretending to be a rock star.