The "music studio" (custom songs) is pretty cool. I've played a bit with it but haven't written a full song yet. I think that feature, along with DLC, will give GHWT longer term playability than GH3 had.
GHWT is definitely less structured than GH3, which is both good and bad. In GH3 you played through the series of sets ("gigs") in the same order every time, with each set having the same number of songs. But the sets were generally theme oriented, and the songs for the most part made sense to be played at the same gig. GHWT is much more schizophrenic. It gives you the ability to choose from different gigs in different locations (with different set lists), and as you progress in the game you unlock additional gigs you can choose to play. Some of them you have to pay to play (using your earnings from prior gigs, I don't mean pay for real like using Wii points), which is funny. But the set lists for individual gigs are horribly unrealistic and outright stupid. I mean, you'll find yourself playing La Bamba and then the next song will be Metallica's "Trapped Under Ice." Or you'll play Willie Nelson, Korn, and Michael Jackson all in the same gig. It's just stupid. I meant to check if the sets you play at a gig are randomized each time you start a new career, but it definitely feels that way.
The weirdness came to a head at a New Year's gig in Times Square (New York), when all of a sudden I had Ozzy singing lead for me and Sting playing bass, and the set list included the aforementioned La Bamba, Trapped Under Ice, Bullet for My Valentine's "Scream Aim Fire," Rise Against's "Re-Education through Labor," Trust's "Antisocial," with an encore of Dream Theater's "Pull Me Under" which played the game's credits like I beat the game (like the end of GH3 when you play TTFAF), yet afterwards it dumped me back to the main room where you select the different gigs you want to play, and it showed I'm only 60% done??? Confusing.
The other thing that stands out to me after having played this for awhile is that I think the developers got a little too clever in selecting the track list. There have been a number of times when a song comes up and I think "why did they pick *that* song by that artist?" Like with Hendrix, "The Wind Cries Mary" is a great song, but it is so freakin' boring and out of place in a guitar "hero" game (they put in a terrible rendition of "Purple Haze" as well). Why not "Voodoo Chile" or "All Along the Watchtower" or "Spanish Castle Magic" or any other number of Hendrix songs that would have been more fun to play? There are also a bunch of songs that don't even really have guitar solos and leave you wondering what the point of putting them in the game was.
I also think that in addition to a lot of the songs they chose not being very guitar oriented (and hence easy to play), they must have also gotten a lot of complaints about GH3 being too difficult. GHWT is *much* easier than GH3. I've played real guitar for 22 years. In GH3 I beat the game on Medium my first time through without failing a song (just failed the boss battles a few times until I figured out the strategy of managing the battle gems), but Hard was a significant jump. I only got through a handful of songs on Hard on the first try, and a few songs took me 10+ tries. Expert basically went the same way, and I quit before completely beating the game on that level. With GHWT, I played the first gig on Medium and got 97%+ on each song even though I'd never even heard 3 of the 4 songs. So I went up to Hard (GHWT lets you change difficulty levels as you go, without having to start a new career altogether), and found that I'm still getting through almost every song on the first try, though usually in the 80-85% range. A few songs took multiple tries, but no song has taken more than 4 tries to beat on Hard. I haven't tried Expert, I suppose I should.
Anyway, while there are those things that are annoying to me, it's also a pretty fun game. I haven't tried online yet, but I've played some career mode with my 10 year old where I'm playing drums and he is playing guitar, and that's been fun. It's cool that they let you set the difficulty level per instrument rather than the entire band having to play at the same level. Makes it more fun to play with others because you don't all have to be at the same skill level to have a good time.
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