My friend wants to get either Rock Band World Tour, or Guitar Hero II for the wii. Which one would you choose? She has a pack of siblings that we can’t wait to form into a band, Partridge Family-style.
I’d go with Rock Band, just for the variety in the instruments.
Rock band for sure.
There’s no such game as Rock Band World Tour- you seem to be confusing it with the new installment in the Guitar Hero series, Guitar Hero World Tour, which is Guitar Hero’s attempt to compete with Rock Band by adding a microphone and drums. (Guitar Hero and Rock Band were both developed by Harmonix. After Activision purchased the publisher of Guitar Hero, Activision took over the franchise, and Harmonix- itself now a division of Viacom- fought back with Rock Band. The two similar franchises are now rivals.)
Ok then… let’s reframe the discussion, since it’s likely that the OP (and myself) will opt for the latest release in either franchise.
Which is better for the Wii:
Rock Band II or Guitar Hero World Tour?
Although I can’t say for sure (after all Guitar Hero World Tour only came out today and I haven’t played it yet), I think I’ll echo others and say Rock Band here. Better gameplay, slightly better tracklisting. If you’d asked about the XBox 360 or PS3 I’d also add “better downloadable content”.
The big plus Guitar Hero has is the user-generated content feature, but I’m guessing that wouldn’t be a major selling point for your friend.
I am told the Guitar Hero instruments are better.
I’ve only played RB and GH for one extended weekend recently but the consensus of all four players was that the GH guitars are definitely better than the RB guitars.
If you google around you’ll find tons of references to cross-compatibility of the instruments (as in “are they” or “where do I download the patch”), so you may be able to buy, say Rock Band (just the game, no instruments) and then pick up the Guitar Hero guitars if you prefer them, then buy a drum kit and USB mic to round things out.
Check out the song listings:
Rock Band 2:
Guitar Hero World Tour:
I’ve played every older Guitar Hero and Rock Band 2. Guitar Hero’s guitars are better, IMO, than the guitars that come with Rock Band (unless the Wii controllers are different - for PS2 at least the RB guitar’s strumming button isn’t as clicky ar GH’s and I didn’t care for it as much). But the whole singing thing is REALLY fun, it’s based on pitch mainly so if you are a bad singer like me you can still do well, and you can turn the mic volume down so your voice doesn’t come through the speakers if you want. The drums are pretty hard though unless you have some talent already or if you practice. I only play sporadically and never got good at all at playing them.
Since I have not obviously played the new GH World Tour, I can’t really say if it is better at Rock Band with the drums and microphone stuff.
The new Rock Band 2 guitar is much better than the old one. But I hear the GH:WT guitar is pretty good too.
Both the Rock Band drums and the Guitar Hero:WT drums have reliability problems. I guess it’s just very hard to make a drum set that only costs $80 and can withstand months of savage beatings. I bought the Ion kit after breaking three different Rock Band drum sets, and it’s been flawless.
Our Guitar Hero:WT drum kit didn’t withstand assembly 
We were able to Frankenstein it together with part of the Rock Band drum set.
First impression of GH:WT was that the vocals are jacked. tygre usually scores about 90-96% on Hard or Expert level songs on Rock Band 1 and 2. She felt like she was doing just as well on GH:WT, but she was only scoring in the 70%'s, even though the vocal bar was on green for almost the entire song. Otherwise the game play is, well, it’s alright. A bit clunky. Our kid JP likes the GH series but he was disappointed at first impression. Not what you want to hear after shelling out $180 plus.
I know I’m just about alone on this but I much prefer the Rock Band guitar to the Guitar Hero guitars. Yeah it’s a bit softer but I like the fact that the RB one is significantly larger and prefer the button positioning. I initially didn’t care for the lack of clicking from the strum bar but that quickly grew on me.
Sam, is your Rock Band on the Wii? I have been told (but don’t have direct experience to compare with) that the delay in the Wii version helped it get a bit more refined hardware (the foot pedal is cited as one improvement).
I haven’t played any of the Guitar Hero releases on the Wii (I invested in the instruments for the initial PS2 release) but I’ve been generally satisfied with Rock Band. I do wish both brands would include a lot more older songs than they do (it’s kind of funny but you can tell when a song was released in by how many stars I got on the vocals in RB; 90% of the list I’m barely scraping by with three stars and then suddenly five stars when I hit something older… 
)
Regarding the song choices - I understand that the existing DLC library will be made available to Wii users or Rock Band 2 over time. I’m not sure how that’ll work though with the limited storage on the Wii, but at least they’re attempting to make the Wii version the real deal this time.
I just realized I kept saying I had experience with Rock Band 2 - oops, not true. Only the first one Forgot there were half the number of RB as GH’s.
I too prefer the Rock Band Strat guitar - especially the Rock Band 2 guitar, which really is a lot better. I like the lack of a click on the strum, except when doing super-fast alt-strums - it’s much harder to find the timing when you’re not getting any aural feedback. With the Guitar Hero’s ‘click’ sound, it’s much easier to find the beat. But overall, I’ll take the Rock Band guitar.
No, it’s for the Xbox 360. Rock Band 2’s drum pedal has a metal cover on it to strengthen it, but the hinge is still plastic. I think the Wii pedal might be like this. I reinforced my Rock Band 1 drum pedal by putting a metal plate on it, but it still broke at the hinge after a few weeks. I finally just went out and purchased a real drum pedal, then stripped the magnet and magnetic reed switch out of the busted Rock Band pedal, glued them to the real drum pedal, and it works great. You can find a drum pedal for maybe $30, and it takes about an hour to convert it. It’s even much better than the Ion kit’s pedal, which I don’t use.
I’m with you. There are so many great, great songs that haven’t made it into the Rock Band games. But that’s what DLC is for. I understand that the game itself has to appeal to a large audience, and mainly gamers under 30. So we’re probably getting about as much Classic Rock as is possible on the actual game disc. Fortunately, there are hundreds of songs available for Rock Band as DLC, and plenty of it is older music. With even more to come (I’m anxiously waiting for Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Texas Flood” album, which will be out before the end of the year).
picks jaw up off of floor
The Mars Volta? I’ve dreamed of that for Guitar Hero. At the Drive-In, Tool, Satriani, Hendrix, more Tool, Billy Idol. . .Damn, I’m sold.
I like the song list in GH: WT, so I plan to get that one for my 360 eventually, since it can use my RB instruments (including the ION Drum Rocker). For the most part, I’d go with whichever song list you like best; the games should be close enough to the same experience for most people (I’ve only played GH3 of that series, but it was very close to my first Rock Band experience).
For me, the decision to get RB2 first boiled down simply to the fact that I could import my RB1 songs into the song list, but I don’t think the Wii has that feature.
I can’t say a lot for RBII yet, since I only have the first and GH:WT, but I’m really digging WT. I’m enjoying the tracklist so far (lots of classic rock that I’ve heard but never knew the name of the song/band for, mixed with plenty of modern rock which I’m more familiar with (yay Filter)).
I like the new GH guitar. Has a strum bar more similar in feel to the RB strat, but still retains the click. Honestly, the only thing the strats have over the new GH axe is that I like RB’s fret buttons. If I could find a guitar that combines the GH strum bar with the RB frets, I’d be in heaven.
Be warned, the WT drum set has been having issues. Our red pad only registers if you WAIL on it (which my brother discovered is probably due to a second wire being glued in place, rather than soldered, so it came loose). Others have reported this problem to activisition as well. When they work, though, they sound better than the rock band ones (a lot quieter–less likely to screw my rhythm up when I play the guitar) and my brother says they have a better bounce to them.
For the Wii specifically, as I understand it there’s DLC for Guitar Hero World Tour, but not for Rock Band. The DLC can be stored to SD cards, and played from there in-game, without any mucking about transferring things manually between the card and the Wii system memory.
Ok, now I’m not sure about the DLC issues. I have read a few reviews today, and there seems to be confusion about how the storage and transfer works in RB2 on Wii. The way I described it for GH is correct, but some sources have said that RB2 has things working similarly.