Details have been revealed for Guitar Hero: World Tour. Yes, it is a Rock Band rip-off, but it's actually got quite a few new features over Rock Band, plus some good peripherals. But I have faith that Harmonix will step it up again with Rock Band 2... and if they don't, I will be disappointed. But here's what I think Harmonix needs to do with Rock Band 2.

1. Compatibility with Rock Band 1 DLC. First and foremost, THE most important thing. I'm lazy. I don't wanna take the Rock Band 2 disc out to play Rock Band 1 songs that are already on my hard drive. Somehow, GH4 will be compatible with GH3 DLC, which doesn't make that much sense because GH3 was guitar-only...but yeah, I'd say backwards compatibility with RB1 DLC is a shoe in. I'd also like them to take it one step further and let you import all the on-disc RB1 songs onto your hard drive for use in RB2. Then I could just throw the RB1 disc away...or sell it or something. Then Rock Band 2 could technically have the largest initial selection of music available for a music game.


2. Improved peripherals. Personally, I don't plan on buying any new instruments (aside from a new guitar for bass) for Rock Band 2, and, of course, the old instruments should be compatible with the new game. but other people would love to see the instruments be improved. Obviously, the GH4 instruments look very impressive, and they have that new touch-senstive crap on the guitars, and the velocity-sensitive and quieter drumpads. It's clear what Harmonix needs to do with their instruments: improve the guitar strum bar, quiet the drum pads, strengthen the kick pedal, and make the drums more portable. Other improvements could be making the fret buttons better (I don't really have a problem with them, though they are a little clacky), make all the instruments wireless, and maybe make the cymbals look like cymbals to compete with the GH drumset. I don't want them to add more pads to the drums, and touch-sensitive necks could be neat, but not necessary. Velocity-sensitve drumpads fall in the same category. Maybe Harmonix should team up with a quality hardware company (like Nyko or something) to make their instruments if they're not up to it themselves.


3. Online Band World Tour. I'm really just starting out with the most popular requests, rather than my own personal requests, but it makes sense. Let us form bands online and progress through World Tour from...all over the world! I think that's all I need to say about that.


4. Fix/simplify the profile situation. I hate it how I can't use my created characters when playing multiplayer unless the controller that's signed in with my profile is the band leader. Just put all created characters in one pool that any profile or guest can access.


5. Online band vs. band. Quite obvious.


6. More character/band customization options Again, obvious.


7. Recored replays and YouTube support. Now we're getting into stuff that might not be realistic, but totally awesome. Lots of people like recording videos of their playthroughs of songs. But not everyone has capture equipment. Halo 3 started this on the 360, so I think every game needs it now: let us save replays and let us share it with others online. The YouTube thing, I'm talking about, comes from my experience with the Spore creature creator. The Spore CC lets you record a video, then directly upload it to YouTube through the game itself. No capture equipment required! So I think Rock Band 2 would be awesome with this kinda feature. This also leads me into another thing I think that would be awesome...


8. Let us make music videos! Skate let you record skate videos, and that fits well with the skateboarding culture. Music videos fit well within in the music culture! Rock Band's visual presentation already resembles a music video, but letting us have more control over it would be awesome. Like, my band could play through a song, the session is recorded, and then we can play around with camera angles, lighting, animations, video effects, and neat stuff like that. Also, let's remove that obtrusive fretboard with all those silly colored notes on it. Those would be fine for regular gameplay videos, but this is a music video. I wanna see the virtual band playing the song. Perhaps the vocalist's voice could also be recorded and played back over the original vocals. Then, of course, with the hopeful built-in YouTube upload feature, we could upload this directly to YouTube. Oh yes, this would be awesome.


9. Better online community features. I was sorely disappointed with the Rock Band "online community", which basically just featured a forum, band pages with no pictures of your band that you have to update with stuff manually, and leaderboards. I hear SingStar PS3 has some awesome community features. Basically, I want MySpace (or Facebook for the sophisticated ones) for Rock Band. And I want band pages to be automatically updated with your progress in the game. Like, if the last song your played was The Touch by Stan Bush, then your page would say something like, "Recent Shows: The Touch" and it'd show your score up there or something. I'd also like it to automatically generate photos of your band and upload them to your page, similar to how the loading screens look in Rock Band 1. Yeah, this kinda stuff would be awesome.


10. Song creation. I personally don't care about making my own songs, but Guitar Hero: World Tour will let you create songs, and I see that as a good way to finally play some awesome F-Zero tracks that other people arrange. So if I wouldn't have to buy Guitar Hero for that, than that'd be cool. Of course, I'd also like to see some improvements here, like maybe adding the ability to add vocals to your song. I think I've heard the reason GH4 isn't doing it because of legal problems of copying other bands, but really, I'm sure most people would rather listen to the real band sing a song that they'd be willing to pay for the originals. But I'm no lawyer, so I dunno how all that would work. But if other people could play ASDFLL..Ka;k23's latest hits, including vocals, then I think it'd be pretty cool.


11. Spectator mode online. Maybe I'm just weird, but I like to watching other people play Rock Band. Perhaps a spectator mode online would let you watch a band perform in real-time. Maybe let you talk to the band while they're playing (of course, the band with specify to allow spectators or not), or have camera support to watch them playing on their plastic instruments (while they're naked probably). 'course, I don't know if this would be a laggy nightmare or what, but I just think it'd be really neat.

And that's all I can think of right now. If Rock Band 2 had all of this stuff, then I'm sure it'd kick the crap out of Guitar Hero: Rock Band.